In Reply to: low carb/sugar in bali posted by tanglewood on Sunday, 20. January 2008 at 18:35 Bali Time:
because I was diagnosed shortly before my last trip to Bali, with type 2 that is. I notice you are on a low carb diet while I am on low GI diet so am eating some carbs. Now I can only speak for my experience I too am controlling with diet and exercise but the diet was prescribed by a dietitian. If you haven't seen a dietitian, and you probably have, maybe it would help if you went before going to Bali. It certainly helped me a lot to sort through the mountain of info about diet that you are inundated with after diagnosis.
Anyway what I found in Bali was that it was much easier than expected. The rice there is not Jasmine which I cannot tolerate too well and didn't seem to be basmati either but certainly very near to Basmati in result. I use Basmati at home. It was nowhere near as quick release as Jasmine and I was having half a portion with cap-cay or similar with good results. Satays are a bit hit or miss unless you use the same cafe each time! I tolerated them OK but never ate all the sauce as I would have done in the past, just enough to get the taste.
The big surprise for me was that I could have 2 Bintangs with no noticeable rise in glucose levels 2 hours after. That was with meals (mostly, did slip a couple of times). Because I was new to the whole thing and feeling a bit pissed off and hard done by (over it now!) being able to have a couple of Bintangs seemed like a big treat and assumed gigantic proportions in my mind! I think it is because Bintang is pretty low alcohol because wine seems to be a bit of a no no for me.
I didn't find wholegrain bread but the convenience stores sell wholemeal so I took my own to breakfast but could only tolerate 1 slice with poached egg and tomato. Papaya and mango were both fine and the little bananas but I had to use them as a mid morning or arvo snack as they proved to much with breakfast.
I hope you are as pleasantly surprised as I was and if you come across any wholegrain bread please let me know where you find it.
Everyone seems to be very familiar with "kencing manis" that is, diabetes because it is very common among Indonesians too. I also just about wore out "tanpa gula" without sugar with good results in cafes small and big. One lady with a little coffee stall in Sanur only had the pre-mix ready sweetened coffee which my husband had but she sent her daughter down the street a few stalls to get me my Kopi, tanpa gula.
Regards, Hillary