Happy food, sad food.

We had a birthday in the family last week, so I took the opportunity to enjoy a piece of my Cake Simulator, this time as a spice cake with peach butter cream frosting (recipes to follow shortly). I veered off my happy carnivore trail for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I wanted to make sure it tastes good, because I haven’t had this version of the Simulation.

Secondly, I accidently bought another round of Nutrisense CGM monitoring, so I had a chance to make absolutely sure this cake doesn’t spike the glucose. I did it for you. I did it for science. I did it because I’m an idiot. Don’t forget to pause your subscription, guys. It auto-renews. Since I didn’t get to do any experimenting at all during the weeks I was intending to, due to an illness, I’m not terribly sorry I have another month to play around with my sugars, though I can’t say I feel good about the expense.

And thirdly, I wanted to see if the oxalate content of tiger-nut flour is enough to trigger my bladder problems. I hadn’t had any in a while, so I couldn’t remember if that was an effect I thought I’d observed or not.

Well, the results are in.

Taste: The thing you’re most concerned with, I’m sure, since that was what I was most concerned with, is how does it taste? I’m pleased to report that it was very, very tasty. A little bit of a bitterness in the mouth afterwards due to the stevia, but while eating it, it’s the best thing ever. Just don’t drink coffee with it, because it increases that aftertaste to a disgusting degree. I can’t understand how anybody “sweetens” coffee with stevia. Blech.

Glucose acceptability:

The farthest red dot to the left is the point at which I ate the cake. I’d been fasting until that point. You can see no spike from this, so I’m pretty confident in saying you can probably have at least one (1/16 of the cake) serving without losing your keto badge for the day. The little “spike” after it was exercise-induced. Your mileage may vary, of course. I’ve seen my glucose spike from “low-carb” foods that didn’t affect Get Along Husband in the slightest, so you want to do your own testing to be sure.

And thirdly, the oxalates. Because I have a lot of scar-tissue around my bladder after all the c-sections (I think this is why, anyway), foods high in oxalate cause me to have a hard time emptying my bladder, usually first thing in the morning. I can’t drink teas or eat spinach (like anybody would want to eat spinach anyway), and many other things cause these problems. And, sadly, tiger-nut flour must have enough oxalate to trigger this dysfunction for me. I was very uncomfortable when I woke up this morning, and took a few hours to finally be back to normal. If you have oxalate troubles, skip this food.

Better be laying in them beans and rice, ammiright? Besides the cake discovery, I’ve also found a very unexpected problem for my children. Over the last few years, I’ve heavily restricted grains and seeds from my children’s diets. We will very occasionally allow organic corn products. I believe grains are detrimental when taken with any regularity. But, because prepping has been on my mind, and rice is shelf-stable for a long time, I thought I’d try re-introducing some rice to my children’s diets, to see if they tolerate it. They enjoyed it, to be sure. Very tasty stuff.

But there was a detriment. Three times I gave them rice, each time a couple of weeks to a month apart. Three times, two of my smaller children got nosebleeds that same night. Nosebleeds? Rice?

So I guess we’ll be relying on some other starchy food for calories in the event we can’t get enough animal-based foods.

One final discovery that I’m sure you’ll be interested in:

Berries are keto food, right? And apple sauce is a no-no, right? Isn’t that what the gurus all say? Well, here you go:

There are a couple of things going on here that confounded this result that you ought to be aware of before you just write off blueberries forever and start eating apple sauce. First of all, obviously, apple sauce is not conducive to ketosis. But it is a 7 on the nutrisense scale, which is better than the blueberries’ 4. These were not particularly sweet blueberries, either. Some of them were still faintly green, and I didn’t enjoy them very much. I hadn’t fasted for very long before either of these tests, but I did throw some protein in with the apple sauce, and I’m sure that blunted the spike quite a bit. I’d have probably gotten closer to the blueberries’ score without the meat sticks. (I love Nick’s Sticks, btw. Not an affiliate link. Just wanted to share.)

The point is, blueberries might not be a great keto food after all. Of course, if you’re not primarily a fat-burner for the last several years, you’re likely going to have different results. Better or worse, I cannot say.

Again, test for yourself. You can get $25 off your first month by using my referral link. I’m not giving you any medical advice, ever. I’m just showing you what happens to a 5-year keto/carnivore when she does this stuff. I’ll have a bunch of exercise-related graphs to show you soon. I may even try a few more plant foods, but the longer I’m carnivore, the less I really care to even find out. I might not bother.

And now, I have a date with my butcher to pick up another whole beef. I can’t believe how much meat these children go through, and if there are going to be food shortages, rice is clearly not an option.

Can I feed this rice to the chickens? Will they explode?

Want to discuss? Meet me on MeWe, Gab, or SG.