Hi everyone,
I’ve done some measuring as well. Whether it’s confirmation bias or acquiring more experience in correctly measuring blood sugar but this time my results look much more conclusive than at my first try.
My purpose was to calculate Huel’s and Joylent’s GI. For that I measured blood sugar after 1) consuming sugar 2) consuming Joylent 3) consuming Huel.
All three measurements happened on 3 different days after >12 hours of fasting. In all three I ingested 100g of available carbohydrate (that’s total CH minus the fiber). Usually when calculating GI 50g of CH is used, however I find that since my blood glucose meter’s accuracy isn’t that great measuring higher values should yield better accuracy overall.
I haven’t had tea or coffee or anything else during the experiment, just a glass of water during the sugar one. I have to say that 1) 100g of sugar in a glass of water is almost unbearably sweet; 2) 100g of CH in Joylent is 222g of powder, which makes for ~500ml of thick shake; 3) 100g of CH in Huel is unmixable with ~600ml of water, even with a blender. I had to dilute that in 2 shakers totalling ~900ml of mixed product which is a lot, that’s more than two full meals for me and it’s DAMN HARD to drink in the prescribed 10 minutes since the start of the measurements.
Some samplings were definitely skewed because of my darned sweaty palms. Even a tiny amount of sweat will lower the measured blood sugar because the amount of blood is also very small. Had to redo some samplings because of that.
Since the fasting blood sugar level hugely affects the calculated AUC (area under curve), when measuring the blood glucose level before eating I’ve taken at least 3 samples and filtered out / averaged what I got.
I have a proposal: what if we gather some volunteers and crowd-source the GI calculation of Huel?
Until then, here are my calculated values for the GI of the powdered foods in question:
Sugar AUC = 213
Joylent AUC = 176, GI = 81 (High)
Huel AUC = 96, GI = 44 (Low)
Bear in mind that there’s a reason why when a lab calculates a GI they do that on at least 10 volunteers, so take the above values with a pinch of salt.