#1649 Bolus 4 - Potatoes

Summary

Juicebox Podcast: Type 1 Diabetes

Episode #1649 “Bolus 4 - Potatoes”

Date: October 10, 2025
Host: Scott Benner
Guest: Jenny Smith

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Bolus 4, Scott Benner and certified diabetes educator Jenny Smith break down practical strategies for bolusing insulin for one of America’s most consumed vegetables: potatoes. Using their “Meal Bolt” framework, they discuss how to assess, estimate, and execute insulin doses for different potato preparations, with a conversational focus on realities people face in daily diabetes management. The conversation emphasizes understanding carbs, portion sizes, glycemic index, meal composition, and the art of tweaking your bolus for better results.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

America's Potato Consumption (02:00–03:30)

• Scott and Jenny are surprised by stats showing Americans eat around 50 lbs of potatoes per year, much of it as French fries.
• Shared personal anecdotes about their own relationships with fries and potatoes.

Estimating Carbs in Potatoes (03:30–05:50)

• Scott: Finds that a “medium potato” is listed as 18–22 grams of carbs, raising concerns about the reliability and accuracy of such measurements.
• Jenny: Recommends estimating by volume (cup measurement) rather than potato size, using a “woman’s fist” as a rough guide for 1 cup.
• Carb Estimate: 1 cup of mashed potatoes ≈ 30 grams carbs.
  • ([05:06]) “That fist-size portion of like mashed potatoes, for example, 30 grams. It’s a good estimate—30 a cup of potatoes.” — Jenny

The Challenge of Portion Size (04:36–05:36)

• Jenny: Explains how measuring by cup mitigates confusion, as “medium potato” can vary greatly. Mashed vs. chunked impacts carb count per cup.

Building the Bolus: Meal Bolt Framework (06:28–06:55)

• Scott: Recaps the steps of Meal Bolt: Measure, Evaluate, Add base, Layer correction, Build bolus shape, Offset timing, Look at CGM, Tweak.

Glycemic Index: Potatoes Hit Fast! (07:16–08:13)

• Jenny: Points out that white potatoes are high glycemic (GI ~85–90 for baked; GI ~70 for fries because of fat).
  • ([07:53]) “When we talk about fries, the glycemic index goes down into like 70ish.” — Jenny
  • ([08:09]) “Because of the fat. The fat slows down the glycemic hit.” — Jenny
• Scott: Curious if added fat (butter, sour cream) makes a baked potato behave more like a fry in terms of glycemic impact.

Bolusing Approach: Potatoes Alone vs. In a Meal (08:44–09:52)

• A plain baked potato calls for a strong pre-bolus; all insulin up front.
  • ([09:31]) “In a single food environment, just eating this potato, pre-bolus is the huge focus. And you’re gonna need the whole bolus upfront. Absolutely.” — Jenny
• If eaten as part of a larger meal with fats/proteins, the rise may be slower, and an extended or combo bolus may work better.

Adapting Bolus for Add-ons and Meal Context (10:06–12:15)

• Scott: Describes his real-life strategy when eating a meal with potatoes, chicken, and veggies—major focus is the potato, then add smaller amounts for protein and any carbs in green vegetables.
• Jenny: Affirms this approach and further discusses “loaded” or “twice-baked” potatoes, which often come with fat and protein, requiring a split/extended bolus.
  • ([11:49]) “Does that change the idea of your bolus strategy? How much upfront, how much over a period of time? Maybe an extended bolus…you do have to think about those added pieces.” — Jenny

Practical Takeaways (12:15–12:34)

• If the potato dish contains significant fat/protein (e.g., cheese, bacon, butter), consider an extended bolus or split approach rather than dosing all insulin at once.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Portion Estimation:
  ([04:36]) “Starchy foods in general, like the potatoes, the corn, the peas…cups are easy to eyeball. A woman’s fist is like the size of a 1 cup portion.” — Jenny

• On Timing Your Bolus:
  ([09:31]) “In a single food environment, just eating this potato, pre bolus is the huge focus. And you’re gonna need the whole bolus upfront. Absolutely.” — Jenny

• On Meal Complexity:
  ([10:44]) “You find people miss that, like, so, though sometimes they see green and they don’t bolus. Right.” — Scott

• On ‘Loaded’ Potatoes:
  ([11:45]) “If it was from a restaurant, it probably had butter added to it while it was baking or after. All of these pieces are fat.” — Jenny

• On Adjusting for Added Fat:
  ([12:15]) “How much fat on that potato leads to not needing the entire amount upfront because it’s going to slow it down so much. So there’s a little bit of a science experiment in there for you.” — Scott

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00–01:32 — Episode intro, outline of the Meal Bolt approach
• 03:30–05:15 — Carb estimation and portioning potatoes
• 07:16–08:13 — Glycemic index of potatoes and fries
• 08:44–09:52 — Bolusing for potatoes solo vs. as part of a meal
• 10:06–12:15 — Adjusting bolus for meal complexity and “loaded” potatoes
• 12:34–12:48 — Closing remarks

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Summary Table: Bolusing for Potatoes (per Jenny & Scott)

| Preparation | Carb Estimate | Bolus Tip | GI/Absorption | |--------------------------|-----------------|-----------------------------------------|-----------------| | 1 cup mashed potatoes | ~30 grams | Full bolus up front, prebolus needed | High / Fast | | Baked potato (+ fat) | ~30 grams (+) | Prebolus + consider extended bolus | Fast → Slower | | French fries | Varies (20–37g) | Fat slows absorption, may need combo | Lower than baked|

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a grounded, real-world guide to mastering bolus timing and dosing for potatoes—one of the trickier, high-impact foods for people with type 1 diabetes. By relying on practical visual cues (like cup/fist size), understanding food composition, and tweaking insulin strategy based on meal complexity, listeners gain actionable strategies that apply well beyond just potatoes.

For more info or to dive deeper into the Meal Bolt method, visit juiceboxpodcast.com/meal-bolt.

Transcript

[A]

Hello, friends, and welcome back to another episode of the Juice Box Podcast. In every episode of Bolus 4, Jenny Smith and I are going to take a few minutes to talk through how to bolus for a single item of food. Jenny and I are going to follow a little bit of a roadmap called Meal Bolt. Measure the meal, evaluate yourself, add the base units, layer a correction, build the bolus shape, offset the timing, look at the CGM tweak for next time. Having said that, these episodes are going to be very conversational and not incredibly technical. We want you to hear how we think about it, but we also would like you to know that this is kind of the pathway we're considering while we're talking about it. So while you might not hear us say every letter of Meal Bolt in every episode, we we will be thinking about it while we're talking. If you want to learn more, go to juiceboxpodcast.com Meal Bolt but for now, we'll find out how to bolus. For today's subject, nothing you hear on the Juice Box Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. Jenny, we haven't done this in a couple of weeks because I've been off traveling, but we're back to do some more Bolas4. Yay. Today we're gonna do vegetables.

[B]

Oh, vegetables. I love vegetables.

[A]

I know you do, but you're not gonna love how this list looks in the beginning. So hold on a second. So what I did was I looked up the top 10 most consumed vegetables in the US and I got it back by weight, interestingly enough. So the number one thing on the list is the thing we're going to start with. On average, a person consumes 49.4 pounds of this, including frozen forms like french fries. So we're talking about potatoes, but 50 pounds of potatoes a year, which.

[B]

A year.

[A]

That's what it says. Average American eats 50 pounds of.

[B]

Did it break it down into how much of that poundage comes from French fries versus just a potato?

[A]

No, it doesn't. Let's just hope it's not as much as you are worried about. You know, French fries are one of those things. As I got older, I'm not. I don't care about as much.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I have a couple and I'm like, those are awesome. And then when I get to the fourth one, I'm like, this is greasy. And then I get done pretty quickly.

[B]

I think it's also the salty part of French fries. The Salty. The whole flavor component, you know. I'll tell you when my most, I guess when I'm most interested in something like a french fry is after we've been at the pool in the summer, like for hours. And then I want something salty, crunchy, something like that sounds really, really good to me.

[A]

It's funny you said that. I want to, I want a crunchier fry too. I don't want soft, like I don't want a mashed potato in a shell. No, no. You know what I'm saying?

[B]

It's got to have a nice crispy outside. And thankfully my got a new oven that's got an air fryer in it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Which is super exciting. It takes care of one thing on my counter that I very happily gave away.

[A]

The giant air fryer.

[B]

The giant air fryer. Right. But then you know, you can make healthier option while still having that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In your diet.

[A]

So it's a good idea. I will tell you, when I was growing up in the malls, there was a french fry place, they only made french fries. Surfside fry, I don't remember. But they came off very much like you were at a fair, like in a paper cone. Very salty, like you're talking about crispy. Those felt right to me. But we'll see. But let's just say you just eat a potato. So. Okay, I have here a medium potato is between 18 and 22 grams of carbs. Do you think that's pretty accurate? That hard to even know.

[B]

That's kind of. That is the hard one. And that's why I, I don't love some of the food lists for looking up items because it gives it to you as a medium. Well, a medium to a child might look very different to an adult who is a 6 foot 6 man who's 210 pounds. You know what I mean? So I think those size guides are really.

[A]

You want to do it by cup.

[B]

Then kind of want to do it by cup. Almost makes it a little bit easier for especially I mean starchy foods in general, like the potatoes, the corn, the peas. They're similar enough in terms of portion by cup. And cups are easy to eyeball. A woman's fist is like the size of a 1 cup portion.

[A]

Okay. All right.

[B]

So that's an easy eyeball.

[A]

So cooked potatoes at about a cup, I'm seeing a range here between 20 and 37. Do you have like a go to number for carbs?

[B]

Actually for carbs that fist size portion of like mashed potatoes, for example, 30 grams. It's a good estimate 30 a cup of potatoes.

[A]

We'll call it 30 grams.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

I don't think anybody boils a potato, but the same idea. If you were going to boil a potato and then kind of fork mash it. Are you talking about a cup mashed or a cup prior to mashing it?

[B]

That's a great question. Because if you mash it. Yeah, right. You could really, really mash it and.

[A]

Jam a lot more into the cup.

[B]

And jam potentially a lot more in the cup than little chunks that maybe you have three chunks compared to the mashed in, which is 10 chunks. When I'm talking mashed, I mean a one cup mashed portion is about 30 grams. Yes.

[A]

Let's say we're just going to sit down and eat mashed potatoes in a cup, which I think we've all done after Thanksgiving once or twice. So don't you think somebody's. Does not everybody pull out the mashed potatoes, a tiny bit of gravy, a little bit of turkey, mix it up in a bowl and heat it back up again and eat it?

[B]

You might.

[A]

I mean, I do, Scott. Might. That's how I do my leftovers after Thanksgiving. It's like a thick turkey. Mashed potato soup is how I handle it.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So with port. So we've got portion.

[A]

Yep, we got the portion.

[B]

When we're talking about bolusing for your typical baked potato, white baked potato kind of thing.

[A]

Right.

[B]

What impacts how you plan tabolis for it? Like if you go through your list of your acronym. Right.

[A]

Measure first. Measure first, evaluate. So where's my blood sugar at? Which way is it moving? Do I have any planned activity coming up, like those kinds of ideas? So we've been generally just putting ourselves at like a hundred blood sugar. It's pretty stable.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

I'd prefer it to be a little lower than that, but. Okay, so we're gonna bolus now for the potato and you know, maybe a little bit to get that blood sugar down to 80. That'd be nice too. Go ahead, do it for me. How would you bolus for it?

[B]

In that evaluation and even in the measuring. What's the hit factor? When we talk about carbohydrates. Right. We talk about glycemic index.

[A]

Yeah. A potato is not gonna hit that quickly.

[B]

Well, if you eat it alone.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What's the glycemic index of like baked mashed potatoes? Do you know, Scott?

[A]

No, but we could figure it out together. By that, I mean, you could tell me or I can find out, it's up to you.

[B]

It's actually fairly high glycemic.

[A]

Is it? There's a lot of sugar in a baked potato.

[B]

Baked potato is all carbohydrate. A fiber, too. If you eat the skin and all of that kind of stuff, sure, there's definitely fiber in it, but it is pretty high glycemic.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So the glycemic nature goes down when you start to add in the other pieces. Like we talked about fries to begin with.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You might talk about baked potato being glycemic index around 85 to 90 ish if you look at most lists. But when we talk about fries, the glycemic index goes down into like 70ish.

[A]

Okay. Why does it drop?

[B]

Because of the fat. The fat slows down the glycemic hit.

[A]

So if I take that same baked potato and I slop some sour cream on top of it, is it more like a French fry then?

[B]

Or butter. Or butter, Exactly. Yep. Stuffed baked potatoes, cheese, sour cream, all those kind of addeds in, they will slow it down.

[A]

Now you're making me think. I'm sorry, no, you're making me think about a twice baked potato. That's a nice. Yeah, they're not bad. It's a very handy vegetable for something that's not really all that nutritious or good for you. Huh.

[B]

It's a handy vegetable. I mean, you could use it in a lot of different ways.

[A]

Yeah, you can julienne your fries. Yeah. I'm expecting. You're expecting the potato to hit pretty quickly. So we want a nice little pre bolus on there.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Okay, then is it going to hit long too? Or does it depend on what we put on top of it?

[B]

Well, it kind of goes into, you know, our. What is it? B. Building. We build the bowl is one of them. Right, Right. So we decide is the. Am I just sitting down and eating a potato mostly? Like, you're not gonna just have a potato as a snack. Right. So we build the bolus around the shape of the rest of the meal. If you were, however, in a single food environment, just eating this potato pre bolus is the huge focus. And you're gonna need the whole bolus upfront. Absolutely.

[A]

Right in.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

You think you'll see a rise later.

[B]

Again, just eating alone, maybe with a little bit of salt and seasoning on it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're gonna see a rise sooner than later. And if your bolus ratio is correct and your bolus timing is pretty good, you're gonna see that typical. What we Call a bell curve. Right up, comes down, lands you really nice.

[A]

Okay. All right. And so we don't really do this usually in this series, but if I take this baked potato and I have it with a steak or I have it with chicken or, you know, something else.

[B]

Mm.

[A]

I'm. I. The way I think about it, like, let's say there was a plate that had, I don't know, chicken tenders on it that I made. So it's chicken breast and it's breaded. It's a baked potato and. Or mashed potatoes and, I don't know, green beans or broccoli. Like, we had broccoli the other night. So when I'm bolusing that plate, I personally think most about the potato. And then. So I hit the potato just the way you just said to. And then I do a little bit in my mind for the protein in the. In the chicken. And the carbs, I believe, are in the broccoli. And broccoli's pretty. I mean, what, six, eight grams? Maybe for.

[B]

In a cooked cup, it's maybe six to eight grams of carb. Yeah.

[A]

But you find people miss that, like, so, though sometimes they see green and they don't bolus. Right. So I would look at that plate that I just made up and think, okay, here's the bolus for the potato with the pre bolus. And then, you know, like, sometimes for nuggets, I just kind of go, 3, 6, 9, 12. Like, or, like, you know, I think there's four or five carbs in this.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Maybe the breading, et cetera. Knock it on top. I put the whole thing in at once for that plate. Is that what you would handle? Yeah.

[B]

And if you're talking about. That's the way I would handle that particular meal. Yes.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

If we were talking about the loaded baked potato or the twice baked, as you're thinking about now, what do we add on top of it that would change the way that you build your bolus plan? It would really be, gosh, I'm having a loaded baked potato. It probably has bacon on it and sour cream and probably cheese of some kind. I guarantee, if it was from a restaurant, it probably had butter added to it while it was baking or after. All of these pieces are fat.

[A]

Yeah. You could be talking about 40 or 50 grams of fat by the time you're done.

[B]

You could be. And so does that change the idea of your bolus strategy? How much upfront, how much over a period of time? Maybe an extended bolus if you're Using multiple daily injections, you might actually do some upfront and some at the end of the meal. Again, there are a lot of strategies that you can use, but you do have to think about those added pieces. When we're just looking at bolusing for.

[A]

Carbohydrate, how much fat on that potato leads to not needing the entire amount upfront because it's going to slow it down so much. So there's a little bit of a science experiment in there for you. So if there's some fat, maybe adjust your pre bolus and work on an extended bolus or a secondary infusion.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. All right. Well, thank you. This was awesome. Good.

[B]

Yay.

[A]

In each episode of the Bolus four series, Jenny Smith and I are going to pick one food and talk through the bolusing for that food. We hope you find it valuable. Generally speaking, we're going to follow a bit of a formula, the Meal Bolt formula. M, E, A, L, B, O, L, T. You can learn more about [e-mail] meal-bolt but here's what it is. Step 1. M Measure the meal. E evaluate yourself A, add the base units. L layer A correction. B, build the bolus shape. O offset the timing. L look at the CGM&T tweak for next time. In a nutshell, we measure our meal total carbohydrates, protein, fat. Consider the glycemic index and the glycemic load. And then we evaluate yourself. What's your current blood sugar, how much insulin's on board, and what kind of activity are you going to be involved in or not involved in? Do you have any stress hormones, illness, what's going on with you? Then a, we add the base units, your carbs divided by insulin to carb ratio. Just a simple bolus. L layer a correction. Right? Do you have to add or subtract insulin based on your current blood sugar? Build the bolus shape. Are we going to give it all up front 100% for a fast digesting meal, or is there going to be like a combo or a square wave bolus? Does it have to be extended? I'll set the timing. This is about pre bolusing. Does it take a couple of minutes this meal, or maybe 20 minutes? Are we going to have to again consider combo, square wave boluses and meals? Figure out the timing of that meal and then l look at the CGM. An hour later, was there a fast spike? Three hours later, was there a delayed rise? Five hours later, is there any lingering effect from fat and protein. Tweak, tweak for next time. T what did you eat? How much insulin and when? What did your blood sugar curve look like? What would you do next time? This is what we're going to talk about in every episode of Bolus 4. Measure the meal, evaluate yourself, add the base units, layer a correction, build the bolus shape, offset the timing, look at the cgm, tweak for next time. But it's not going to be that confusing and we're not going to ask you to remember all of that stuff. But that's the pathway that Jenny and I are going to use to speak about each bolus. And hey, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate your loyalty and listenership. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of the Juice Box Podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording wrongwayrecording.com.