#1662 Bolus 4 - Tomatoes
Bolus 4 - Tomatoes
Scott and Jenny Smith bolus for a tomato — why it barely moves you, what a restaurant salad actually costs, and how a few uncounted grams add up across a meal.
Jump to a moment
- This one opens with a new roadmap. Every Bolus For episode now runs against something Scott calls MEAL BOLT — measure the meal, evaluate yourself, add the base units, layer a correction, build the bolus shape, offset the timing, look at the CGM, tweak for next time. He's clear they won't recite every letter every time, but it's the pathway they're thinking along. More at juiceboxpodcast.com/meal-bolt.
- A tomato is a fruit, and it barely matters. Jenny explains the botanical distinction — it's about where the edible part develops from the flower — and Scott reads out that the Supreme Court settled it as a vegetable for trade purposes in 1893. Practically it lands with the vegetables anyway: very low carb, low glycemic, well under the 55 threshold.
- The numbers, and Jenny's shortcuts. Small poppable grape tomatoes are about a gram apiece; a typical sliceable tomato runs five to ten grams depending on size. For mixed salad vegetables she uses a fist as the unit — roughly three to five grams. Most restaurant salads land at fifteen to twenty grams of very low glycemic carbohydrate, though chain salads can run far higher than people expect.
- Does it need a bolus at all? Their answer depends on the situation rather than the food. Eaten while gardening or moving around, probably not. As part of a sit-down meal, yes — Jenny boluses ten grams for her standard summer bowl of tomato, cucumber, feta, garlic, salt and pepper. Either way it doesn't need a real pre-bolus, and if you're curious what it does to you, look an hour or two later. Not medical advice.
- The actual lesson is about accumulation. Scott's example: you swag a burger roll at 25 when it's 30, ignore the two-gram tomato, and forget the ketchup — and you're suddenly seven or eight carbs short without having made a single obvious mistake. Jenny adds the piece that decides whether it matters: at a ratio of one to twenty, two grams is nothing. At one to four, it's half a unit.
- MEAL BOLT roadmap — The eight-step pathway Scott and Jenny think through in every Bolus For episode.
- Diabetes Pro Tip series — Episodes 1000-1025 with Jenny Smith — settings, insulin timing, and food impact.
- Bolus estimator and tools — Educational estimators for working through a meal. Not a dosing tool.
Every word of the conversation
MEAL BOLT, and the disclaimer0:00
Welcome back, friends. You are listening to the Juicebox podcast in every episode of Bolus for Jenny Smith and I are going to take a few minutes to talk through how to Bolus for a single item of food, Jenny and I are going to follow a little bit of a roadmap called meal bolt. Measure the meal, evaluate yourself. Add the base units, layer a correction. Build the Bolus shape, offset the timing. Look at the CGM tweak for next time. Having said that, these episodes are going to be very conversational and not incredibly technical. We want you to hear how we think about it, but we also would like you to know that this is kind of the pathway we're considering while we're talking about it. So while you might not hear us say every letter of meal bolt in every episode, we will be thinking about it while we're talking. If you want to learn more, go to Juicebox podcast.com. Forward slash, meal, dash, bolt. But for now, we'll find out how to Bolus for today's subject, nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare
plan is on the list. You said the top 10 is what you found. Jenny
Second on the most-eaten list1:25
started without me. Okay, so second on the most consumed vegetables in the US list is, do you want to guess or
most consumed vegetables? I'll give you the weight. Had
people eat about 31 and a half pounds of it a year, including canned versions
and pureed Huh? I wonder if. Is it corn and fresh salsa?
Oh, tomato, tomatoes, yes. Did you know that
tomatoes aren't really a vegetable? Well, know that, right?
Fruit or vegetable?1:54
I mean, the government doesn't seem to know it, because it's on the list. Yeah, I know. Is it a fruit? It's a fruit because it has seeds.
No it has to do with the designation. Of my understanding from having looked it up, is it has to do with the flower and where the edible portion develops from out of the flower, okay, and so that is what designates a tomato as a fruit. It's interesting. So there you go. Tomatoes are technically a fruit, but they are very low carb and low glycemic, so they get grouped in with, oh,
vegetable, yeah. Here it is. The difference is, in botany, a fruit is the mature ovary of a flowering plant, typically containing seeds. Tomatoes form from the flowers, ovary after pollination, ink and contain seeds, which means they meet this definition perfectly, just like apples, peppers or cucumber in culinary terms, we call tomatoes vegetables because they are used in a savory dish rather than a sweet dish. So that distinction that says is cultural, not scientific. In 1893 the Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes should be taxed as vegetables for trade purposes, officially classifying them as vegetables in commerce, even though botanically, they're fruits. Interesting. Okay, now you
got a little bit of information behind how to Bolus for a tomato? Yeah? Before
How many carbs is a tomato?3:22
we get to the Bolus thing part, you've learned something. Look at you out there in the world learning something. Would it four or five grams for a raw tomato?
Yeah? Again, this is where, kind of like potatoes. It's like, small, medium large, you know, you're I usually think of the grapey kind of tomatoes. Like, there's a little small, poppable kind of tomatoes, maybe a gram of carb a piece at the most. Honestly, they're really good in terms of nutrient quality too. But your typical like sliceable tomato, probably somewhere between five to 10 grams based on the size.
The whole tomato in a chef salad3:56
See, when I think about talking about this, I think about like a chef salad coming out that clearly has like, a whole tomato, like, wedged up in it and split around. I don't think that's the thing people generally look at and go, oh, there's carbs there. No, you know, because it's a vegetable, or it's, you know what I mean, like, that kind of stuff too, like, so I just wanted to bring it up.
No, that's a good one, because in terms of talking about vegetables, when they're mixed up like that for a salad, really good mixed greens, lots of salad veggies, the onions, the tomatoes, the peppers. I usually use that fist kind of piece as well. A fist of raw vegetables is about three to five grams. And most salads from a restaurant are a pretty good 15 to 20 grams of very low glycemic carbohydrate. Yeah. Also that people aren't thinking of
Restaurant salads are not what you think4:49
restaurant salads from like chains have an astonishing number of carbs in them that you wouldn't expect. So it's definitely worth looking up if you're in a certain setting. Because you could just think salad, what, uh, this is 1520, carbs, like, you know, and it could end up being a lot more. So, yeah, tomatoes, glycemic index not huge.
They're not high at all. I mean, they're definitely low glycemic if I don't even know what the glycemic index of them is, I know they're in the low category, which is under under 55 is low glycemic,
Does it even need a bolus?5:24
not a quick hit. So okay, so let's say you're gonna sit down with that. I've seen people eat tomatoes like apples before. It is not uncommon. I'm gonna sit down with my tomato. It's, I don't know, five carbs. I've measured it out. Gonna evaluate myself. I gotta think, if I'm a person eating a tomato raw. I'm probably a fairly healthy person with a low, stable blood sugar. If I am in that situation. Does it need a Bolus? Do you think, like, put a five car Bolus on and eat it? Like, I mean, I would always, but, you know, not if I was active, like, if I was if I was out in the yard, gardening, and I picked up a tomato and ate it. You win Bolus? I don't imagine I would think that that Bolus thing was necessary because of the activity, but if it was a sedentary thing, it might be a Bolus and eat thing to me as well. Like, I don't see a ton of need for a Pre-Bolus there, right, correct?
Jenny's summer bowl6:13
If it's something like in the summertime, we always have tomatoes and cucumbers, and they're really starting to ripen now in our garden, and and I love tomato, cucumber, a little bit of salt and pepper, and then I put some garlic in it, and I put a little bit of feta cheese in it. And absolutely, 100% I Bolus for that. Again, if I'm going out for yard work, probably not, but absolutely, if it's part of a meal, my typical bowl that I eat is, I've averaged it to 10 grams. That's what I give myself. This is for, you know, a medium ish size tomato, and probably a four, four to five inch cucumber.
“I've never had a tomato in my life”6:52
Yeah, I've never had a tomato in my life. Are you kidding me? I've never
eaten a tomato in my life. You've eaten sauce, though, have you not
sure? Yeah, I make sauce from fresh tomatoes. If you're talking about taking the tomato and cutting it into wedges and putting a piece of it in my mouth, it seems horrifying to me. Wow. It's something about the skin and the squish and the mush all together. It's too many different
so you wouldn't even eat them on a salad. If they came sliced up, I
would give them to my another person at the table. So that's like,
our neighbor we have right next door. And when we first moved in, we planted the we had loads of tomatoes and brought them over. She was like, I'll take some of them, because I do like tomatoes. But she's like, my husband does not. He's like, he doesn't even look to look at them. And I'm like, Well, I'm so sorry that our garden faces your house, and you have to look at our tomatoes because there are a lot of them. But I won't ask you again, visually.
Except the baked ones7:51
I think they're very appealing. I like everything about them, you know, I guess I've, maybe I've lied to you. I have taken what are the ones that look are like plum shop? Are they plum tomatoes? Plum? What are they called? Oh,
well, yeah, they're kind of like the plum the roma tomato kind of idea.
I do have a recipe I like where I bake them, and I have eaten one like that, but I'm telling you like, so I have, I lied, but I'm telling you like a raw tomato, like I am. I imagine you've eaten a raw tomato before.
Oh, I eat like my I grew up with, again, a garden. Yes, my dad was the one who ates tomatoes. He ate them like an apple, along with the salt, not salt, pepper, pepper. He loved them with pepper, right? As he ate them, he kept shaking the pepper on All right. Well, listen,
Her dad ate them like apples8:39
they're so tasty, all right? The next time I see one in a salad, I'll try it. Okay. I mean, I'm, I'm 54 I should probably give it a shot. Dip it in some salad dressing. Oh no, that is another texture I need to I got to limit these textures in this thing. I like crunchy and dry. That's my vibe. Oh yeah. I prefer
crunchy dry. So it's like the weird wet kind of thing that grows
skin along with this. It's, it's the breaking. Oh my god,
everyone, hold on skin into soft, squishy inside.
Yeah, we'll talk about the meal in a second. We'll first go through my mental illness. So there's something about the skin being crisp and breaking along with the mushy and then the fibrous. Like, it's too many different
you don't like grapes either. Do you? Oh, I like grapes. You're weird. I can't explain. Sorry, I tell you, Grace. Scott is weird. I
Textures, grapes, and salsa9:29
just I can't explain. I need grapes to be firm and I need them to be cold. Okay, all right, then I can eat a grape. They're also sweet. I would also tell you, and I'm more I wasn't embarrassed when I started saying this, but I am now. I don't even know that I know what a tomato tastes like, if it's not sauce or ketchup, and I also have never had salsa before in my life.
Salsa, yeah, oh my gosh, I make Well, I'm glad I've never sent you one of my canned salsas then, because you don't look at it and been like, Well, this was really nice. Here you go.
Kelly. You can listen, salsa is consuming my house constantly, but, like, and I don't know what it is about it, if it's just I didn't grow up around it, and I associate it with being spicy. For some reason, I don't love spicy foods. So I'm sure there's mild salsa, because I've seen the can in my, like, at my house. So I know there is all right, I'll try salsa too.
Try salsa. If you Yeah, they're actually, I really like salsa on my eggs. Saute like eggs cooked with sauteed kale, some garlic, and then salsa on the side is, like, one of my favorite things. I would put a little hot sauce on my eggs. Oh, yes, like Sriracha. No, I would do that. Yeah. Okay, sorry. Measure the meal.
Walking the roadmap10:42
Measure the meal, and how many carbs Elevate, you know, evaluate yourself. Like, what are we looking at here is, what's our blood sugar? Do we need a correction in there? Do the calculation? You know, you know how to do. I think we're gonna, I'm actually gonna talk it through once, and probably put it in each one of these episodes. At the end of every episode, there'll be just a little like, discussion of this, yeah, because when we talk about it, we don't always go all the way through it, layer in a correction if you need it, you know, know which correction factor is, etc. Then build the Bolus shape, I'm guessing, with a tomato. Like, like you said, a little activity might eat it up, but if you're going to Bolus for it, you could probably Bolus and eat right? I don't think it's going to
hit you hard. It's really not going to need your typical Pre-Bolus consideration at all, really low glycemic and eaten along with other things, like vegetables in a salad. Again, you may not need that, unlike
with a potato, do I have to look at my CGM an hour two hours, two hours later? Or I'm not expecting to see much from this. I think
if you're trying some of these things for the first time in consideration of foods that you have in your diet, but you're not really quite sure what what they're doing. Sure. Take a peek at the one hour mark, especially if you didn't Bolus for it, right? If you really don't know what a tomato is going to do, even if you're not going to be active, you're just kind of curious. Does it hit me at all? Great. Take a peek an hour or two
Where people actually miss12:00
later. Yeah. But after you know, you should probably know correct. And then just don't forget your don't forget the tomato next time you have a salad, or, you know, there's a big slice on a burger. I mean, I'm sure that sounds crazy to people, but a big, thick slice on a burger could be two carbs, and not that that's gonna, like, throw the whole thing off. But when you swagging to begin with. And you look and you go, Whoa, the roll 25 but the roll is actually 30. And then you ignore the tomato, and it's two. We're now seven down. And then you don't think about Ketchup. Ketchup has got a lot of sugar, and now it's five, six more carbs. That's the way people miss on their meals all the time. Like, a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there, you know what I
mean.
And as we're talking about the number of grams of carb in things that sound like they're really low carb, right? You also have to say, Well, for me, let's say my insulin to carb ratio is one to 20. If I eat a two gram slice of tomato, and I don't actually Bolus for it, I'm not going to see a major dent in my blood sugar. I'm not going to see a problem for missing that two grams. If you're at a ratio of one to four, that's a half a unit of insulin that you miss.
No kidding, all the time. Like I would say, What about the ketchup you just put on? And people, it's ketchup. And I'm like, that could some of that ketchup is crazy, how much sugar it is, right? So, all right, thank you. I appreciate you doing this. No, this was great, awesome. In each episode of The Bolus four series, Jenny Smith and I are going to pick one food and talk through the Bolus thing for that food. We hope you find it valuable. Generally speaking, we're going to follow a bit of a formula, the meal bolt. Formula, M, E, A, l, B, O, L, T. You can learn more about it at Juicebox podcast.com, forward slash, meal, dash, bolt. But here's what it is. Step 1m. Measure the meal. E, evaluate yourself. A, add the base units, l, layer, a, correction, B, build the Bolus shape, O, offset the timing, l, look at the CGM and T, tweak for next time. In a nutshell, we measure our meal, total, carbohydrates, protein, fat, consider the glycemic index and the glycemic load, and then we evaluate yourself. What's your current blood sugar? How much insulin is on board, and what kind of activity are you going to be involved in or not involved in? You have any stress hormones, illness, what's going on with you? Then a we add the base units your carbs divided by insulin to carb ratio, just a simple Bolus l layer of correction, right? Do you have to add or subtract insulin based on your current blood sugar? Build the Bolus shape? Are we going to give it all up front, 100% for a fast digesting meal, or is there going to be like a combo or a square? Wave Bolus. Does it have to be extended? I'll set the timing. This is about pre bolusing. Does it take a couple of minutes this meal, or maybe 20 minutes? Are we going to have to, again, consider combo square wave boluses and meals, figure out the timing of that meal, and then l look at the CGM. An hour later, was there a fast spike? Three hours later, was there a delayed rise? Five hours later, is there any lingering effect from fat and protein? Tweak, tweak for next time, tea, what did you eat? How much insulin and when? What did your blood sugar curve look like? What would you do next time? This is what we're going to talk about in every episode of Bolus for measure the meal, evaluate yourself, add the base units, layer a correction, build the Bolus shape, offset the timing. Look at the CGM tweak for next time. But it's not going to be that confusing, and we're not going to ask you to remember all of that stuff, but that's the pathway that Jenny and I are going to use to speak about each Bolus. Hey, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate your loyalty and listenership. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongway recording.com,
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