Once or twice a week I partake in a Tim Horton’s breakfast meals consisting of steeped tea, with 2 creams and a sausage and egg wrap. Tim Ho’s is a a well know Canadian purveyor of sugar hidden beguilingly in breakfast or lunch meals. To their credit (a little), the “Timmies” web site has a very good nutrition page where you can find out exactly how many carbs you are consuming based on their default ingredients or by adding or subtracting specific ingredients.
https://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/menu/nutrition-and-wellness.php
The only days I eat at Timmies are when I am going fishing, which most often involves at least 5-10 km of river bank pounding and bush whacking through wild forests and no further sustenance until diner. That has been my excuse for this little indulgence or some would say cheat.
I have often wondered how much of a cheat it was, so I decided to measure my blood sugar and ketone response to a typical breakfast meal. Based on their web site the 2 creams in my tea contribute 6 g of sugar and the wrap 35 g (33g of which is from the tortilla wrap), for a grand total of 41 g of carbs.
These are my results:
While my ketones do drop and my BG goes up, the total glucose increase was approximately 2.2 mmol/dl, which may not be perfect, but also does not seam to be tooooo bad. Certainly, the meal does not come close to knocking me out of ketosis.
I have seen research that suggests that a cheat meal may increase damage to blood vessel endothelial cells, however, I am wonder if this research is in fact correct, it remains true if ketones remain elevated in the blood.