Here is a real question from a real vegan diabetic. How would you answer this person? I would like to hear from both low-carb high-fat and high-carb low-fat vegans readers and anything in between.

“My sugar levels are going up and don’t know what I am doing wrong. This is what I have eaten so far and my sugar has never been this high.

“11: 20 a.m. – I ate a peanut butter sandwich. After that my sugar was 10.4 mmol/l [166mg/dL].

“12:30 p.m. – I ate a vegan burrito. It had veggies, spinach, lentils, and avocado; and my sugar was 7.6 mmol/l [126mg/dL]

“But at 2:32 p.m., I had a headache so I checked my sugar level and it was 21 mmol/l [326mg/dL].

“What am I doing wrong? Should I go low-carb?”

Typical peanut butter sandwich (without jelly) = 29g carbs.

Random vegan burrito = 84g carbs.

Unfortunately, the other members of the public vegan diabetic group this was posted in did not seem to think that reducing carbohydrate consumption was a viable option. They suggested consulting with the doctor to adjust their insulin/medication. They bragged about just taking insulin to “cover” their carbs and not worrying about what they eat other than “obvious” refined sugar.

Perhaps this is one reason why I’m not having much luck in finding “success stories” of vegan diabetics!

I posed this dilemma to the members of the Facebook group and got only one response, who said:

I would have five hours between meals. Also, did the peanut butter have any sweetener? Was the bread 100% whole wheat? If the tortilla was flour, was it all whole wheat? White flour is almost as bad as sugar. Exercise every day is also important.

All I could offer to this person was to suggest that the next time they get a craving for a vegan burrito they should try these Raw Vegan Collard Wraps. And, yes, my personal answer would be to “go low-carb.”