A meal without wine is called breakfast
One of the real pleasures in life for me is wine. I love wine, collect it, and have a real passion for it. You can imagine therefore that I was very concerned about whether diabetes would curtail this pleasure. I was fine giving up bread, pasta and many other foods, but wine was an entirely different matter. We have all heard that wine has high sugar content and the assumption is therefore that is not good for diabetics, as it will raise blood sugar. You can imagine therefore my trepidation on drinking wine and looking at my blood sugar meter shortly after having been diagnosed. I was expecting bad things.
The result was not what I expected at all. Red wine had not increased my blood sugar a bit; it just didn’t cause the meter to shift one jot. I tried this repeatedly, not hard a hard task for me, and the results were the same each time. I researched this and found many interesting facts about wine (red in particular) and diabetes.
The most important and perhaps least known fact is that red and white wine contain surprisingly low amounts of carbohydrate. On average there is 1g of carbohydrate in white wine, and 2g in red wine in a normal sized glass. Compare that to beer – which typically contains 10g – 20g per serving. I was not shocked to find therefore that beer quickly raises my blood sugar, so that an average pint requires 3 units of insulin. With wine, by contrast, I take no insulin at all. Some studies have gone further and suggested that red wine can prevent diabetes and help to regulate blood sugar
There is little evidence at present to support this theory, although moderate wine drinking almost certainly will not cause any harm. It is, of course, sensible to regulate drinking whether diabetic, or not. Plus, diabetics should also be wary of low blood sugar that can result from alcohol consumption.
However, it is certainly great news that wine is not off limits for the vast majority of diabetics. Again, I would encourage regular testing of your blood sugar to see your own body’s reaction to different types of alcohol.
My own testing of my blood sugar has shown me that I can regularly drink wine – both white and red. I rarely drink beer, owing to the impact it has on my blood sugar (although some low carb beers are very good). I also am careful with drinks with mixers, for obvious reasons that the mix will contain carbohydrate (tonic, coke, etc.). I am also wary of cocktails, for the same reasons.