Is Sweet Potato Better Than Potato for Blood Sugar? (A Blood Sugar Experiment!) 

I have been a person with type two diabetes for 25 years, and two years ago I started a whole food plant base diet, now my A1C is in a normal range. I think if I had done the WFPB diet when I was first diagnosed, I might have been able to get off my medication all together, but I was able to cut it in half. The other habit I have is to not sit after eating, I try and move for at least 15 minutes after my meal. That really helps with the blood sugar spike. You are very smart to keep your blood sugars under control. The best to you.

i've been diabetic for over 30 years and diabetes has been in my family 3 generations. I can tell you with certainty that your ideas on what to eat and limiting the spike size is absolutely correct. having said all that i enjoyed watching your experiment. my advice is throw that book in garbage.

What’s interesting to note is that spikes occur even in those with normal insulin , but after the two hour mark truly counts. I truly appreciate videos!

What's important is not the spike. A lot of people misconceive that the spike causes insulin resistance but studies show that it doesn't What causes insulin resistance is prolonged elevated blood sugar level. So if your blood sugar level comes back down to its fasted level, you're good.

I like that you question everything and don't just accept what someone tells you. Thank you for these videos, I am getting a glucose meter to do my own experiments now 😃

Often overlooked, the bottom line is that there's no such thing as essential carbohydrates, only essential amino and fatty acids. Nobody needs to ingest simple carbs. The liver can generate glucose from dietary protein through gluconeogenesis. Anyway, the big issue in most developed countries, up front by far the USA, is obesity and overweight in general. It is a well-known physiological fact that the human body will not metabolise its stored fat in the presence of a high insulin level. This becomes even more relevant with increasing age and decreasing metabolic health. Someone with a high insulin resistance eating high glycemic foods will have an extremely hard time to lose body fat. This has been tested millions of times. The "no limit carbs" diets might be ok for young, metabolically healthy people but if I was a health professional or a nutrionist I would never recommend it for people over 50 who are struggling with sustainable weight loss. Keep in mind that insulin resistance is mainly caused by excess visceral and abdominal fat. It's a vicious circle since this fat was stored there through insulin, hence by insulin-spiking foods. Foods which spike insulin levels are high glycemic foods. That's not even controversial in the underlying science. Dietary fat is not the culprit, it's the net carbs.

Hi I am so glad I found your channel. As Korean, I was wondering how Korean foods affect glucose. I learned that it also depends on the ways of you cook the sweet potatoes. For example, when you roast/airfry them, the sugar level goes up versus when you steam them, lower sugar level. Love your videos!

Thanks for the work you're doing. I recently learned that one contributing factor to insulin resistance isn't just spiking glucose but frequently spiking it (snaking every hour for example). Avoiding snaking might be helpful to avoiding developing insulting resistance in the long-term.

My serving of meat is 200g 😂 but potatoe with butter, salt and cheese is indeed magic 🎉 I don't think that occasional blood sugar spikes are bad. It is more important to let it stay down at baseline for hours after the meal and not stay elevated by snacking again after 2 hours.

In summer, steam and mash some sweet potatoes, let them cool. Then pour a little unsweetened kefir into the mashed sweet potatoes, mix well, and let it sit on the countertop and ferment for 24 hours. The probiotics will eat up a lot of sugar in the sweet potato, and leave you a great tasting mixture. The longer you let it ferment the more sugar will turn into lactic acid. Personally I find 24 hours is a sweet spot

I am new to diabetes and trying to learn everything I can. This video was very helpful. Thank you

Have you ever done a comparison of herbal remedies for blood sugar? I would be so interested. thank you for doing what you are doing.

So interesting ..the potato result. I had to stop eating rice at dinner as it perked me up so much , was bad for my sleep. I also think potatoes do the same but not quite as bad. I am now not eating too many carbs for dinner . .I was pre diabetic but got my numbers down by not eating sugar for the last 3 months.. First time in my life I have ever been able to give up sugar also avoid honey, maple syrup, malt rice syrup - it all raise my BS plus processed sugary foods etc..I still eat fruit. I am still working out how much carbs I can eat. If I go too low my BS goes way too low and I crash and have no energy at all. . Tough finding sweet spot. Love your experiments and sharing :)

Not really helpful BUT you are a mother that is doing what you can to stay healthy and that is wonderful, may you have a long life with LOVE and HAPPINESS

*I had very high blood sugar I only managed to improve my health⭐ when I found a WONDERFUL treatment,❤❤ if you want to know about it, I left the video in the comment reply*

I would love to see you do an experiment on how/if adding high fiber foods to meals before eating high carbohydrate foods affects the insulin surge. Thanks for these videos. I find them very helpful.

Great work. Could you please do a comparison between what you have just done and a totally cooled down sweet potato from the fridge that has been pre-boiled please? There is a lot of literature out there saying to eat the starches as cold as possible so that their structure has reformed.

The spike is what we are trying to avoid. Thanks for testing.

Your efforts are appreciated ,stay healthy.

Thank you so much for sharing your results with us! Interesting that the sweet potato spiked higher. I love potatoes so this is a little good news! Loved your rice video too! I guess I will be switching to brown rice! 🍚🥔😊

Try cooking the potatoes/rice the day before and reheat. Apparently increases the amount of the starch that becomes resistant which in turn slows down glucose digestion and blunts spikes.

I’m not sure how you feel about lentils, but if they’re something you like, I’d love to see you do a video about them…many people pair them with rice (NO BUENO!) but I like to make a broth based lentil soup with an onion, garlic & some chopped spinach. Delicious, filling, healthy (supposedly). If the effect on blood sugar is safe, I’d like to incorporate lentils as one of my staples.

The spike is very fast but it came back to normal after 2hrs. Very informative

Very nice video again, keep up the good work. The new research suggests that hyperinsulinemia is the root cause of of the metabolic syndrome.We still dont know how long it will take insulin levels come back to normal levels after eating carb rich meal. I think the longer the glucose levels elevated in the blood the damage it will do in the blood vessels, the sooner it goes to the tissues , the better it is.I think carb rich meal with fatty food will result in blood sugar elevated for longer time ,but intially it wont spike your blood glucose much.I think avoid process food and eat whole food and check your portion size.And golden rule, when 70% full, stop eating and walk 30 mins after each meal , you will dump your sugar in tissues without spiking the insulin.

I noticed walking for 15 to 20 minutes about 20-25 minutes after eating burns the sugar up and starts to level out a spike. Burning up the sugar prevents damage to the body lowering peaks. If you want to splurge on food you normally wouldn't. Get to stepping. I've walked off 80 points in 25 minutes before.

There are just so many differing opinions out there that I decided years ago to listen to my body. Since then, I have been able to manage my blood sugar better.

Another good video ! I wonder how a salad with fiber and some fat/protein ( cheese/nuts ) and then HALF a baked potato with sour cream and butter would do ? and a FULL one ? ( Portion Size Matters ! ). Thanks for your helpful videos !

Great job !! Just a thought for future projects, if you had a girlfriend w/o diabetes and she ate the same things to see how a healthy blood sugar reacts I’m just curious and want you to do the work sorry . I really do appreciate your methods ,processes and time . Be well and thank you !

I ate a baked sweet potato and my glucose shot up to 180, the sweet potato was baked in a regular oven until soft. Eating Oatmeal cooked from raw oats caused my glucose to surge to 167. Eating teriyaki beef from a Japanese grocery store and glucose shot up to 162. I love Asian food but I stay away from Hunan and Thai food restaurants because the food has too much sugar and who knows what kind oil they use in preparing food.

Great information! I didn’t notice if you kept the skin on but supposedly that helps with the spike. I do believe it comes down to portion size! Thanks again!

You’d be able to do this much better with a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM). You could see what’s going on on a minute by minute basis as opposed to making assumptions over the course of hours. Your spikes might be much higher at different times. As a lifelong type-1 diabetic moving to a CGM really opened my eyes as to how different my blood sugar readings were in both short term & long term after eating certain foods. It’s not near as linear & predictable as you might think.

Don't forget, physical activity also has an impact. Thanks for your efforts!

I had my worst blood sugar on high protein, medium fat, low carb. Now I’m medium-low protein, medium high fat, medium high carb…. A Mediterranean type diet. White rice, white/sweet potatoes, white wheat, cooked veggies/soup/stew are the base with butter or olive oil, than smaller amounts, eggs meat and seafood, although I do eat lots of eggs which are higher fat. Cheers🎉

Are you getting some sort of exercise after you ate? I’m a diabetic and my nutritionist told me that walking around after you eat lowers your blood sugar and helps to take the sugar out of the blood stream and into the cells. Btw, my endocrinologist warned me off potatoes and corn.

Thank you for all your videos...very informative. Wondering why you don't only eat the food that you are testing rather than adding other foods? Seems like additional foods may have different effects on the food you're testing?

I have went to butternut squash no more potatoes in long time

You must eat cold potatoes and sweet potatoes after cooking, they must be cooled in order to create resistant starch that does not break down in the colon, these are broken down by probiotic bacteria

High fibre greens are the common ingredients why both Keto low carbs and Plant based diet work. High fibre vegetables have very slow insulin requirements. Plant based influencers mask their bias by saying eating bulky whole food i e high fibre low carb ultimately

Very interesting, and totally contradicts every chart I've read out there! I wonder how much difference there is between different varieties of potatoes and sweet potatoes. I've found some delicious Okinawan sweet potatoes and refuse to give them up but I'm still curious lol!

The problem most people have is that they do not simply eat one potato or other high carb food in isolation but instead indulge in sugar or high carb snacks every few hours. therefore this spike you see never really goes away as it is accompanied by other spikes all during the day, keeping your insulin levels high and possibly leading to insulin resistance. Obviously, having a spike with one food that disappears in two hours looks great, but not when combined with food intake every couple of hours.

Have you ever tried adding Chia see, or ground Flax seed to your tests - Both seem to smooth out and lessen spikes for me.

Thank you for this video! And for mentioning that book which I added to my Amazon cart just now. Excited to read it!

It's a good experiment you are doing here, but then you must not squeeze the puncture site to prevent diluting the sample with fluids from tissues which can lead to inaccurate readings. And also, ribs do not contain carbohydrates unless it's processed with something else.

Yes, Master Diabetes is a must read if you're diabetic, pre-diabetic, or not diabetic at all. When I was researching pros and cons to whole food plant based (WFPB) diet because I was taking 6 medications and it just didn't sit right with me. Cyrus and Robby was one of the first videos that I hit on RU-vid. I wasn't diabetic or pre-diebetic but this is where I first learned about whole food plant based as well as their best selling book, Master Diabetes. Thus, I started my whole food plant based journey on August 7, 2020 and by the end of 2020 was only taking 1 asthma medication. Furthermore, I was eating just fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, no sugar, minimal oil and salt. I'm still working to removing salt and oil from my cooking but I'm using way less of these items today. For example, I use a tsp of oil when I do stir frys and no more than 1 - 2 teaspoons of salt for cooking anything that makes 6 - 8 servings. Next, my doctors were shocked to see a massive improvement in my overall health after seeing my labs. These days I'm getting into hyper-nourishment based on Dr. Brooke Goldner's protocol in order to take another leap forward in my overall health journey. Finally, butter can definitely help spike your blood sugar here. Next, sugar from whole foods isn't the same as non-whole food sugar. Try swapping out the butter for a homemade plant based dressing the you can make here. plantstrong.com/blogs/plant-strong-recipes/oil-free-salad-dressing-guide

I love experimenting with my body and trying to get it healthier too. I have been intermented fasting the last couple of years doing keto, carnivore & now KETOVORE as my ketones got to high 8.0 so as a lean mean hyper responder I knew if i added a little carb my ketones would come down and they did. My blood sugar before half a white sweet potato and my ribeye was 92 and spiked in an hour to 134, thats up 42. It dropped to 95 in two hours. As a non diabetic who was on the way to being diabetic my insulin resistance is healed after 2 years and I don't like my blood sugar over 100 per Dr Eric Berg. I am going to try a purple sweet potato too and see what happens. Ty again for sharing ❤

It might be worth considering that harder new potatoes spike lower than old potatoes, and mashed potatoes spike even higher. In simple terms, the newer and harder potato takes longer to digest, while the mashed potato is in effect processed and therefore is digested quicker.

No potato is good if you don't want to raise your glucose. Diabetics should drastically lower their carb intake. I did and lowered my A1C back to normal.

Depends on how the sweet potato is cooked, at least it does for me. Major difference in the amount of sugar it releases, which is why I stopped eating baked sweet potato. Although, it still tastes the best to me of course.

how long did you cook the sweet potato? Longer means releases more sugar. . . I heard that from somewhere.

Really love these experiments!

Just stumbled on your page. Thanks for sharing. Trying to bring my A1C back below pre diabetic. Please can you share the glucose monitor you use?

I am a type 1 diabetic and have been searching for solutions to blood sugar control. I have read and have followed the Mastering Diabetes lifestyle. My thought process was similar to your’s in regard to eating potatoes. I said to myself there is no way this is going to work. I ate the potatoes (sweet and others) and I did not have blood sugar spikes. The key is to limit the fat intake from the animal products as well as dairy. I included potatoes in huge salads that included beans many vegetables with oil free dressing. Try it that way if you are able to eliminate animal products or oil. It works!

Thank you for doing this experiment. I love potatoes but quit eating them when I started doing low carb. Still afraid to add them back in my diet but this experiment has me wondering if I should try them again.

Awesome I'm learning a lot...

I am following a wfpb diet with alternation between carbs and fats. Which means when I eat carbs I do not consume any fat

I have a few ideas to make your channel more popular get all the bullet points from your expirement and make 60 second shorts that way when we are watching your vids it’s easier to get people to come to your channel with shorter vids great content!

Please re-examine country crock... Seed oils have been found to be even more detrimental than high fructose corn syrup - although both eventually lead to metabolic sydrome ( given the latest research )

Some people tell me that unripped plantain is good for diabetics and has a low glycemic index.Could you talk about it please. Thanks

I’ve read that spaghetti squash has a very low GI and the other squashes like butternut and acorn are higher GI. Maybe you could do a test on those?

It depends what kind of activities you're doing between, 1st test and after 1 hour for 2nd test, if you have lots of movement done for 1 hour, it really fast to lower your blood glucose rather than you're only resting for an hour it may slow to lower your blood glucose..

Have you read the Oatmeal research on Dr Gregor's channel? I wonder if it would change your insulin requirements? As far as potatoes go, have you tried to cook the potato then chill it and see if the effects on your blood sugar is different eating hot potatoes vs the chilled potato?

I think it's not fair to do the test on consecutive days because when we push the pancreas (by eating high glycemic foods) the result is that the blood sugar readings will most likely be a little higher on the following day compared to the previous blood sugar readings.

I recommend trying a while food plant based diet. It is the only thing that keeps me in check. If I go off of it, my numbers spike.

Well portion size do matter of course. But like me living in Finland where we eat alot of potatoes and bread typicly in every meal, that might to problem over the years. And the amount of potatoes what basic man would eat is 2-6 whole boiled potatoes for one meal and at least two slices of bread. So you can think how much of carbs there is in total... Even that we eat whole foods and makes things from the scratch instead of processed foods, it isn´t healthiest possible way to eat. You sure can lower the amount of starch from the potatoes if you peel and dice your potatoes and rince those potatoes. Much of the starch gets rid off this way. Also when you boil the potatos it removes starch as well. Starch comes to the surface of the boiling water while you cook and you can just peel of it. So by doing these you sure can lower the carbs quite alot with these tips. Also that sould lower that sugar spike you had if compaired doing potato in air fryer. I were all ready cutted down my carb consuption earlier but still i gained weight every year about 4,5 lbs (2kg). My blood sugars at the mornin after 10 hour fast were too high (quite sure that i were insuline resistant at that point), i become obese and my blood preasure had raised little over the point that it would still be ok. So i tought what the heck could i do becouse i didn´t had time to start exercise. I didn´t had even energy to do that. Long hours in work and i have to rest too. After long (three months) studies i took big leep to forward and made the biggest turn in my lifestyle. I started ketogenic lifestyle and dropped carbs under to 20 grams a day (recommendation in Finland is 300 carbs a day for man and that is absolutely insane). I got fat adabted in three days and started to burn my body fat. Now i´ve been on keto for 10 months and i lost over 50 lbs of weight (23kg). I dropped to blood sugars for idealic levels at three months and don´t have insuline resistance for sure and my blood preassure is in great. Also tons of health improvements came as bonus that i didn´t even imagine. If you struggle in life and you have tried everything that there is with carb based life and those things doesn´t effect. Make the bigger jump and and try keto or carnivore at least three months. After you have seen and felt what people have experienced. I´m quite sure you want to keep it up and stay other three to see what six months have done and after that you just don´t want to change back to carbs anymore. I sure don´t and will. I rather choose to keep healthy life and don´t want to get sick with carbs again.

Have you ever tried cooking then cooling potatoes? They have more resistant starch. You can even heat them up after they are cooled and they will have the same effect and result in a lower glucose spike.

I want to have a lower spike as much as possible. I had a beery smoothie, 1 cup berries mixed with kale and 1 cup almond milk. 97 starting, 1 hour 123 2 hour 1wa 130 2.5 hours back to 96

Have you tried cooling the potatos to turn some of the starch into resistant starch?

Good video dear. I have a question though. Let's say if I were to do a low carb diet and even for the entire day I didn't really have any carbs, but just decided to have like 1/4 of a doughnut. So Would that still be okay to do so?

I feel so much better now for listening to my gut instinct about sweet potatoes. They are way too sweet to be better than white potatoes. And even if post prandial blood sugar returns to baseline at the two hour mark with the sweet potatoes, it’s better to keep spikes low as possible in the first place.

thanks for the video. Were you doing the same type of activity while the 2 hours wait ? So why not take a walk after the potatoess and see what that does ? You look very healthy so keep up the good work

Can you do red potatoes too? They're supposed to be the lowest carb/sugar potato and have extra nutrients

People talk about eating cold potatoes cooked the day before, for less glucose. Can u try one of those to compare?

I see somebody peeking over the counter.I am glad you did this,we eat both and my wife is type 2 this is really helpful.

@5:03 You have to balance the meal and cover it with insulin. If you have food with a high glycemic index, it makes sense to balance it.

You had more carbs with the sweet pit. In thus case, Probably should have equalized the carb amount rather than the weight?

I just watched a video on RU-vid of a professional saying that if you are going to eat a starchy food, you should eat a salad or some type of vegetable like broccoli, green beans, asparagus, as well as your protein and fat then eat your potato or starchy food. It’s supposed to help lower the glucose spikes.

I wonder if frozen potatoes also spike blood sugar. The trick is to freeze the potato (whole or cut up) first, then put in oven or boiling water. The potato tasted different and I liked the taste. But didn't measure blood sugar. My experience is that how you prepare foods makes a huge difference. I follow food combining rules, eg never eat starches with meat as two different digestive enzymes are needed. Rarely have gas or indigestion issues.

I heard if you eat a potato raw you don't get all the carbs like cooked potato's, but don't know if that is true. I used to like eating raw potato with some salt on it.

The question is, was there a big temperature difference before eating the potatoes? Eating them cold or giving them time to cool can make a difference in blood sugar spike. Perhaps, you can try another experiment with potatoes cooled in the fridge and some cooled to room temperature.

In Mastering Diabetes you can eat a high carb diet as long as you keep your fat intake down to 15%! It brought my A1C from 5.7 to 5.3 eating this way!!

The biggest issues i see is not how hownor low yournspike is or was. Its the fact that in 2 hours you hungry after a bigger meal.

Everyone should do this type of test on themselves instead of relying on GI ratings!

Best thing for blood sugar. Cut out refined sugar, ultra processed food, all meat and dairy for 3 months. Reverse the diabetes, reactivate insulin control. Then It won’t matter which potatoes you eat.

I’d have really liked to see you eat the potato by itself (aside from some butter) to isolate the results. Many people eat potatoes by themselves 🙂. Then maybe compare those results when paired with meat/veggies/etc.

love these vids girl!!

Yes I love to see the rib recipe

Hi, I enjoy excellent videos. I live in Australia and I'm a type 2 diabetic. Is it possible to convert the mg/dl to mmol/l glucose and show it side by side? I keep having to stop your video and go to a converter website 🙂

I've heard the same thing but can only lose weight on Keto / I'm also wondering about the lower glycemic index if you refrigerate potatoes overnight then eat them

Hello, another great video. :) 1st and 2nd hours after the first bite? Or after the meal? Also, may I know in which program you created the graphics? :)

The carbs in sweet potatoes break down into simple sugars more readily than white potatoes when baked. Steaming them is the healthier cooking method.

I don't know why this is confusing. We have to eat..eating will spike your blood sugar. That in itself is not a problem. That is your body doing what it does. The question truly is whether you see the spike go down and how long it takes for that to happen.

Your body's exposure to glucose is actually defined by 'the area under the curve' so both the height of the spike and itsduration are relevant

I was told that wating a potato alone isn't good for us. If it was in a stew or something like that.

How you cook it effects it to right? Steamed is the best way?

Intense strength exercise and training is literally a necessity for pre Diabetic or diabetic person. If you incorporate this into your lifestyle potatoes is not a problem at all

Hi, I am a Type 1 diabetic and I do not eat sweet potatoes or yams as they raise my blood sugars way too fast and take a long time to come back down.

From what you said about the book MASTERING DIABETES, it reminds me that Dr. John McDougall, author of THE STARCH SOLUTION and other books, has for many years promoted eating a LOT of potatoes, but NO oils, fats or animal foods and has been doing this for decades and he has had people's type II diabetes REVERSED on this diet. I personally hope I can find another way, because I do not want to give up the fats.

Nice analysis

I have an aunt who eats potato by itself, because she's so white that she finds salt too spicy.

Dear, it means you can eat those foods. Your assesmemt eas correct.