The insulin in my pump can only change my blood glucose in one direction. Insulin lowers it. The tricky thing with treating diabetes with insulin is that too much insulin requires a correction. This correction is done by eating (or drinking) something with sugar in it.

Grapes are a fun choice, and being able to have fun in regard to eating food is one of the amazing things in life, and something that’s sometimes a struggle when dealing with diabetes.

Grapes are also supposed to be pretty food for you nutritionally because they have some helpful vitamins and fiber, plus they have Resveratrol, which may have anti-inflammatory effects and protect against cancer and cardiovascular disease – See Web MD’s article, “Health Benefits of Resveratrol.“

How many carbs are in grapes?

According to the USDA website, 10 red or green grapes have 8.87 grams of carbohydrates and 0.441 grams of fiber. The net carb count are calculated by subtracting fiber from carbohydrates, so for 10 grapes, the carb count would be 8.429 grams.

Because diabetes math is imperfect*, I just round this up to 10 carbs and I think about 1 grape = 1 gram of carbohydrate.

If the grapes are a bit larger than average, this may even be a pretty accurate deduction.

If the grapes are average or a bit on the small size, then this may be an overestimation.

However, it’s an easy way to roughly carb count grapes.

* Fore more on diabetes math, I recommend Graham’s post on The Unreasonable Math of Type 1 Diabetes

I was heading down…. So, I ate some grapes…

And I avoided hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).

This particular CGM trace on my insulin pump is looking pretty ideal — I was having a great day. Some days it’s smooth sailing and snacking on grapes and other fruit help.

Other days, it’s super rocky. But I’ll save those stressful up and downs for another post.

If you’re interested in this topic, check out the book Sugar Surfing, as it discusses the idea of making these kinds of adjustments in depth.