#1688 Bolus 4 - Quaker Chewy Chocolate Chip Granola Bar
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Jenny and Scott talk about bolusing for Quaker Chewy Chocolate Chip Granola Bar.
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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.
Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of 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. All right, Jenny, you get to pick the food this time. What's a food you want to talk about? How to Bolus for?
Speaker 1 1:30
Oh, my God, what do people struggle with? Um, we did cereal. We did the silly like muffin bite,
Scott Benner 1:41
the chocolate chip muffin bites. Yeah, right, yeah.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:46
We did those. I think one that I get a lot of questions about are, let's call them granola bars. But there's a very large group of things that I think would fit into that you go, you've got power bars, you've got, like, you know what I mean, but that, that grouping of bars, let's just call it
Scott Benner 2:07
all right, so give me one name brand that I can look up so I can get some baseline numbers.
Speaker 1 2:11
Short what's an easy one, Kind bars.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:18
Kind bars are a weird one we could do. Kind bars. The other one I'm trying to think of, though, is more of a squishy like it's a typical granola bar, okay, not NutriGrain, because those are a little bit different too. What's the most common?
Scott Benner 2:32
Nature Valley, oh, Nature Valley. They're the Quaker chewy ones. Is that the one you're thinking of, that's the one I'm thinking of, I bet you this is the one that people give to their kids. Yes. All right, you want to do Quaker chewy chocolate chip? All right, yeah, all right, Quaker chewy chocolate chip.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:48
I mean, the amount of bars that are available out in the world today, it really is astounding. They they're almost an entire aisle at the grocery store.
Scott Benner 2:57
No kidding, right? Absolutely. And they come in
Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:01
assorted like, this is a bar, and this is like, a fiber full bar, and this is like, this is a protein full bar, like you like, stand in the aisle for 45 minutes and then you never get one,
Scott Benner 3:13
trying to figure out which is which. All right, I've got the nutrition information here, awesome, or it, or the, let me be clear. The Quaker, chewy granola bars, chocolate chip, there you go. All right, I have total fat, three and a half grams. So not high fat, not not high fat. Oh, carbs, 17,
Speaker 1 3:35
total sugar, seven, protein, one gram.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:39
So pretty much we're looking at what just a carbohydrate based effect, right, right, pretty low fat and virtually no protein. And you're really looking at about half of the total carbs coming from sugar,
Scott Benner 3:57
approximately, yeah, I was gonna say, like even the fat might be mostly from the chocolate, right?
Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:02
I would assume. So I don't know what else, if there's like palm oil or something in them. I don't even know
Scott Benner 4:09
whole grain oats, brown sugar, brown rice crisp, which seems to be whole grain brown rice flour, sugar and salt, whole grain wheat, soybean oil, coconut whole wheat flour, baking soda, soy lecithin, non fat, dry milk, semi sweet. Chocolate chips, which are sugar, chocolate liqueur, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla extract, and then there's corn syrup, wow. Then the brown rice crisps, whole grain, brown rice, flour, sugar, salt, invert sugar, sugar, corn syrup, solids, glycerin, soybean oil, holy crap.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:49
Like, how many sugar? So you can see, you know this, this is going to be a hard hit, quick hit, yeah, because, like you said, it's, it's almost 50% sugar. By the amount of total carb and how many sources of sugar in that carbohydrate grain, as well as added sugar, can you count a
Scott Benner 5:10
lot? Yeah, yeah. Also, I'm sorry I got a little lost for a second, because I don't eat the I don't eat. I just thought, like, what could be in this? Like, some nuts and like
Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:21
some oats and chocolate chips and maybe some honey,
Scott Benner 5:27
sorbitol, molasses, natural flavor. I love that. They call something natural flavor.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:34
Yeah, natural flavor is a host of The Who knows, and sometimes even for those who have a lot of allergy based things. When you call the company to ask about it, many times, the company won't even tell you what is in their natural flavor, because it's either proprietary or it's a host of things that are just chemical based.
Scott Benner 5:54
Well, here they say, natural flavors are obtained from essences or extracts of sources found in nature. Found in nature, by the way, everything's found in nature, such as spice, fruit, vegetable, yeast, Herb, plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:13
There could be chicken extract in these Quaker kernels.
Scott Benner 6:16
Enjoy your chewy chocolate chip bar. I'm really stunned by them. I know maybe I shouldn't be at this point, but like, this was a fun one to bring up. Yeah, I just thought, like, Wait, hold on a second. What if I said to the internet, I'm just gonna go to Google. How do I make homemade consulate chip? What do I want to call it granola bar. Granola bar. Okay, hold on one second, granola bar. Oh, okay, so here's a recipe that just pops up. I'm just gonna click on the first one that pops up because I'm not really making them. These look nice. Butter, honey, brown sugar, quick cooking. Oats, crispy rice cereal, vanilla, mini chocolate chips.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:59
Okay, right? And where are all of those fancy ingredients that you really tried hard reading
Scott Benner 7:05
lost lecithin is, I'm not even saying that, right? Forget. I don't even care. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so how do we Bolus? Do you think you would Bolus differently for this handmade one than you would for the one in the store? Or maybe I would think
Jennifer Smith, CDE 7:21
that they're both fairly high glycemic, okay, right? I mean, the ingredients, even in the homemade one, are pretty much all carbohydrate, okay? And so in terms of, like building your Bolus idea, yeah, you know the nutrition facts, even if you were trying to be more choosy about ingredients, and you were going to go to the more homemade route, you can easily break a recipe down, add up all the carbs, how many bars did it make? Divide that into, how many grams of carb went into the recipe? There you've got the nutrition facts. It's pretty easy breakdown, right? But you would build the Bolus idea the same way. You know how much CARB is in it. We've already talked about. It doesn't have a heck of a lot of fat to consider. There's virtually no protein in it. Glycemic impact or glycemic, you know, even the load, if you're eating three of them at a time versus just one of them at a time. But most people have one, right? So the impact is probably pretty high, glycemic, I would assume, somewhere over 70 on the index. And then what do we do? We evaluate, where are we, what's our setting? What are we going to do after this? What have we been doing to do you
Scott Benner 8:28
think people eat these in the morning, or maybe even, like is coming in from the running around snacks too? Maybe they
Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:33
may, they may be bringing them around. You know, along, it's something easy to pop into a backpack or a purse or a bag as a sort of an in between. I don't think anybody's really using this as a meal replacement, because it truly is not. It's not mixed enough nutrient, but these are definitely heavily used as
Scott Benner 8:51
snacks. Yeah, I just think so my imagination is, is that people were like, Oh no, I thought it's good, like, it's, it's granola, but with, like, a little chocolate in it, so that it's, well, it's not like that at all. Jesus, okay, like that at all. Okay, so we evaluate where we are. We've measured the meal. We evaluate where we are, blood sugar, activity, stress, etc. Do the math, yep. Does this need an extended Bolus? No, right? No, just up front. We're gonna give some insulin for this. You like a 1015, minute Pre-Bolus. If you could,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:22
I would say, given the fact that this is almost 50% sugar or carbohydrate, again, knowing where you are, blood sugar wise, where you're headed, could be, I'd say, a minimum of a 15 minute Pre-Bolus, if you're starting in a place that's a, you know, a blood sugar that's your target, or even dropping, even if you're dropping, unless you're truly low, you're definitely still going to need a Pre-Bolus, probably five or 10 minutes for this to get that insulin moving. Longer. If you're high, it's going to be
Scott Benner 9:53
fast, yeah, and then to look at your CGM to kind of check the curve of what's going on later. Maybe it's not even an hour. Right, like, oh, right, yeah, you want to know pretty soon you're going to know in the first, I would think 20 minutes, if you missed on getting ahead of this or not,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:09
on Pre-Bolus timing exactly. And then the the watch time period, the evaluation time period is okay. I can see I'm rising 20 minutes later. But where is my Bolus gonna kick in to hit along with now the digesting carbs, yeah, so you really do have to be patient and say, Okay, it's an hour now, I went up a little higher than I want, but gosh, at hour 90 minutes, I'm not rising anymore. I'm pretty flat, and now my blood sugar is coming back down, so it just gives you details about my timing might need to be better later. Do
Scott Benner 10:45
you think this is a quick hitter that goes away, or does it have a tail?
Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:48
It shouldn't really have a tail again. I mean, I can't imagine that there's more than what, two or three grams of fiber in one of these bars.
Scott Benner 10:58
Maybe three grams dietary fiber, one.
Unknown Speaker 11:01
Oh, I was even
Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:03
overestimating, giving them more credit than
Scott Benner 11:05
he's, like, maybe put some fiber in food once, hoping for more
Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:09
fiber. But no. And I asked that because it might be a lingering effect if it was more of a high fiber kind of like, you know, another bar that's commonly used, or used to be, at least, was like the fiber one product. They've got Fiber One bars, their fiber content is actually pretty considerable, and so the stretch out effect of those could be a slow down in initial hit, but a lingering impact. Whereas this bar, it's going to be an in and out your typical bell curve, up, down. And if you know your Bolus ratio and you've timed it, it should get you back to target pretty well. You want to
Scott Benner 11:43
hear something interesting. The Yeah, the handmade one that I clicked on for the recipe has a nutritional breakdown. It says it gives calories and as 176 kcal, carbohydrates, 29 I don't know how big they're saying the bar is though, protein, three grams fat, six. Saturated fat, four sodium. Actually, it's funny, like on paper,
Speaker 2 12:10
this thing, the Quaker, looks better because it's probably a much smaller bar. I'm
Scott Benner 12:13
gonna guess that's what's happening too here, because this one also has two grams of fiber. But what's the serving size? Let me see if I can figure out serving size.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:21
Yeah, you'd have to compare gram weight, because most labels have the gram weight next to the serving size for the product on labels. Yeah, in recipes, it's harder to find,
Scott Benner 12:31
so it says that the recipe makes 10 bars, but yeah, it doesn't give me it's not going to tell me how big the serving size
Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:39
is. Yeah, my guess is that this bar is like, twice the size of the grocery store.
Scott Benner 12:44
Well, yeah. And nutritionally, if it's saying the calories are 176 versus the calories in the Quaker one, which is listed as 100 maybe that's a little Yeah, oh, 8.84
Speaker 3 12:57
ounce bars. That's a big bar.
Scott Benner 13:02
No, the Quaker one, you get eight in a box, point eight, four ounces is that? Right? It's not even an ounce.
Unknown Speaker 13:08
What are you paying for? These are
Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:11
pretty tiny bar again. And as a snack component, I think that it brings a bigger, a bigger piece of discussion now that people know how to expect to Bolus for it, right? It's, I'm choosing this for a snack. It's got a really quick hit in and out. And is it going to hold me until my next meal? Very likely not. In fact, we know that eating higher carb things alone, often their in and out effect, means you're going to be hungry sooner than you want to be, yep. So planning something that's a little bit higher in protein content or a little bit more even in overall nutrients, right? You know, things like an example would be like an RX bar. It's got somewhere between 20 and 24 grams of carb per bar. It's got three to five simple ingredients that are all food. They're real food. They tend to have somewhere between eight and 12 grams of protein and similar for fat. So they really are a good mix of those macronutrients. They're not going to leave you hungry an hour from now.
Scott Benner 14:19
This Quaker chewy bar is a sweet treat masquerading as a health food. Oh, 100%
Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:23
it's like it's a candy bar, essentially, right? Okay? And many, many of the granola bars that are on the market today are entirely a candy bar in disguise.
Scott Benner 14:33
Yeah, no, okay, it's not a thing we eat here. So I didn't really know much about them until I was looking at them. But wow, you get almost eight. I don't know how much these cost, but you're gonna, you're not even gonna get eight ounces of bars. I wonder how much they do cost. Give me a half a second, because I'm completely enamored with this idea. Wow, I'm on Amazon. There's a box of six. Is that the typical size? That one said eight, but, like, oh, eight. I'm looking here for the. Oh, here it is the this one has 16 bars in it for five bucks. Oh, there's the other side of it. It's cheap, huh? It feels, feels inexpensive. Oh, that is real, 16 bars for $5 Oh, yeah, actually, it's calling it a value pack. I guess they give you two extra ones in there too. Wow. That is inexpensive. What is it saying on the front? 25% less sugar than regular chocolate chip or peanut butter, chocolate chip flavor. What? I don't know, what everybody's saying. Please try to make your own food if you can. I know it's hard and it's expensive and everything, but like these episodes are really just taking the they're taking all my hope away, taking
Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:39
your hope away for what
Scott Benner 15:41
look at these nutritional like, what is happening? I'm down to three things I can eat, all right, Jenny, thank you so much. Thank you.
In each episode of The Bolus for 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. T, 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, wrong way recording.com, you.
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