Cereal Lows???

Here's a sentence you won't read often:

Twice in a the span of a week, my daughter has ended up in the nurse's office with a low blood sugar and I think it's because of her breakfast cereal.

You see, breakfast cereals are notorious for causing high blood sugars, not low.  Also, blood sugar tends to spike in the morning, making any breakfast carbs harder to cover with enough insulin.  So I'd say these may be the first 2 times in 7+ years of school my daughter has ended up in the nurse's office low before 10 a.m.

Our tactic for combating  post-breakfast highs has worked well of late.  A few years ago, a registered dietitian at our clinic suggested trying cereals with 5 or more grams of fiber per serving, which would slow the digestion of the cereal and thereby even out the spike.  Occasional experiments with old favorites like Cheerios and Kix prove that the extra fiber in the new choices really does help.

In her quest to reduce breakfast boredom, my daughter spotted a new cereal in what might be referred to as the 'healthy' aisle of our grocery store.  We enjoy other cereals of the same brand, so we picked up a box.

This cereal has 6 grams of fiber per serving, the same as several others my daughter eats.  The serving size, and the number of carbs per serving are comparable. The same almond milk is added.  The first time she ate it she needed 2 juices to get her back to class.

Several days of her usual breakfast foods and standard post-breakfast blood sugar results went by, and then she tried again.

Despite mediocre reviews the first time around of both flavor and chew-a-bility with braces, she had a bowl of the new many-grained flakes this morning.  Already suspicious of last week's low, we subtracted a handful of carbs from the total per serving, and she ate 3 slices of my peach which we never covered.  Again she ended up with the nurse and a blood sugar of 58.

I guess if she really loved this cereal, I'd put on my scientist cap and try to figure out what was going on here. Instead, I'll finish the box (which will require lots of peach slices for flavor) and we'll move on.