Is Eba Good for Diabetes? What the Numbers Say, and How Much Is Safe

The short answer:

Yes, a person living with diabetes can eat eba. You do not have to throw it away and you do not have to feel guilty every time you see it.

But eba is not a carbohydrate-free food.

It turns into sugar in your body quickly, so it only stays safe when you keep it to a small ball, eat it with the right soup, and keep it to about two times in a week. Eat it any other way and it will push your sugar up fast.

That is the honest answer.

Now let me show you the numbers behind it, because you deserve to see them and not just be told what to do.

Does eba contain sugar?

This is the part that confuses almost everybody, and it is a fair thing to be confused about.

Eba does not taste sweet. You do not add sugar to it. So it feels like it should be safe.

Here is the truth. Eba is made from cassava, and cassava is starch. Starch is simply sugar that is holding hands with itself. The moment you swallow it, your body starts breaking those hands apart, and what is left is sugar in your blood.

The taste in your mouth tells you nothing at all about what will happen in your blood twenty minutes later.

So the question was never "does eba contain sugar". The question is how fast eba becomes sugar. And for that, we have a glycemic index number.

What is the glycaemic index of eba?

The glycaemic index is a score from 0 to 100 that tells you how fast a food turns into sugar in your blood.

Anything under 55 is slow, and that is the good end.

Anything from 70 upwards is fast, and that is the end you have to be careful with.

The NHS explains it here in plain English:

Eba scores 84.

That number is not a guess and it is not borrowed from a foreign country.

Researchers in Makurdi fed pounded yam, amala, fufu and garri to Nigerians, including people who are living with diabetes, and measured what happened to their blood afterwards.

In the group living with diabetes, eba came out at 84.08

Here is how the four of them landed, from the fastest to the slowest.

• Fufu, also called akpu, scored 97.

• Eba, made from garri, scored 84.

• Pounded yam scored 81.

• Amala, made from yam flour, scored 69.

A wider review of Nigerian foods found the same story across the whole table, with most of our everyday foods sitting between 75 and 97

An international collection of these scores puts our swallows in the 82 to 99 range.

So eba is a fast food for your sugar. It is not the worst one on the table, and that surprises a lot of people, but 84 is still well inside the danger end.

Does eba spike blood sugar?

Does eba push your sugar up fast? Yes, it does. That is exactly what a score of 84 means.

But here is the part that almost nobody tells you, and it is the part that changes everything.

A high score does not decide what happens to you. The size of the food decides, and also the type of soup.

The score only tells you how careful you have to be. It does not stop you from eating it.

How much eba can a diabetic eat?

One ball, the size of your closed fist. That is about half a cup of the cooked swallow, roughly 100g. About two times in a week.

Look at your fist right now. That is honestly it. Not the mould they hand you at the buka, not the size you grew up eating, and not one and a half balls because the soup was sweet today.

The second ball is where almost all the trouble happens. The first ball, eaten with a good soup, is something most people can carry.

The second one arrives when your sugar is already climbing from the first, and it lands on top of a rise that has not finished yet.

Nobody enjoys hearing this. But knowing the size means you get to keep eba in your life instead of banning it, and that is a much better trade than most people are offered.

Eba has a size like this. So does rice, so does yam, and so does every other thing on your table, and the size is different for each one.

If you want the size for a food that is not on this page, you can look it up on GluFloat.

What should you eat eba with?

Vegetable soup, and fish, chicken, or an egg. Every single time.

This is not just a nice idea, it has been measured.

In a study of 80 adults in south-west Nigeria, boiled yam on its own scored 94, but the same yam eaten with a fried egg dropped to 84

The same study found that beans and small pap both behaved much better inside a full meal than when pap was eaten alone.

The reason is simple. Vegetables carry the rough part of food, and fish, chicken and egg are body-building food. Both of them slow your stomach down, so the sugar from the swallow trickles into your blood instead of rushing in all at once.

But I have to be straight with you, because this is where a lot of advice online lies to people. The soup helps, and it helps a lot.

The soup does not rescue you. A big ball of eba in a good soup is still a big ball of eba. Size first, soup second, and both together is where you actually want to be.

Is garri good for diabetes? Soaked garri is a different story

This is the mistake that worries me most, because it is so common and it feels so innocent.

Eba and soaked garri are the same powder, but they are not the same food for your sugar.

When you soak garri and drink it, especially with sugar, groundnut and cold water on a hot afternoon, you are not eating a swallow anymore.

You are drinking a sweet drink, and a sweet drink goes into your blood faster than almost anything else you can put in your mouth.

Eba, kept small and eaten with soup, is something you can manage.

Soaked garri with sugar is one of the fastest ways to lose control of your sugar for the rest of the day. If you take one thing away from this page, please let it be this one.

Which swallow is best for a diabetic in Nigeria?

By the measured numbers, amala made from yam flour comes out best of the four at 69, and fufu comes out worst at 97.

Eba sits in between at 84, which means eba is a better choice than fufu and a slightly worse one than pounded yam.

Amala made from plantain flour is another one worth knowing about, because the flour behaves very differently from the boiled plantain most people assume it is the same as.

Still, please do not walk away thinking you have found a swallow you can eat freely. Every one of them is a fast food for your sugar.

Swapping fufu for amala is a small win. Cutting the ball down to your fist and putting proper soup and fish beside it is a big one.

Is eba good for kidney patients or people with high cholesterol?

Plenty of people are not only managing diabetes. They are managing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or their kidneys at the same time, and they are searching for this too.

Eba itself is plain. The trouble is usually not the swallow, it is what is sitting next to it.

Heavy palm oil, plenty of red meat, stockfish, salt and seasoning cubes can all be a problem for your heart, your pressure and your kidneys even on a day when your sugar behaves perfectly well.

So a food that is fine for your sugar is not automatically fine for the rest of you.

If you are carrying more than one condition, take this page to your doctor or dietitian and ask them about your own case, because your case has details that no page on the internet can see.

This is also why we put a warning on the foods that are hard on your pressure, your heart or your kidneys even when their sugar is fine.

It shows up on the food itself when you check it, so you are not left to work it out alone.

The four mistakes we see the most

1. Judging a food by its taste. Eba is not sweet, and it still scores 84. Your tongue is not a glucose meter.

2. Believing that local food is automatically safe food. Cassava grew here, but your blood does not care where it grew.

3. Using the soup as permission. The soup earns you a better meal, not a bigger ball.

4. Eating with no size in mind at all. This is the big one, and it is the one that is easiest to fix today.

How to stop guessing

Every food you eat has a number like eba's 84, a size that keeps it safe, and a partner on the plate that slows it down.

The problem is that nobody can carry all of that in their head for the hundreds of foods on a Nigerian table, and the answer changes the moment you put two foods together.

Eba on its own is one question. Eba with white rice beside it, and a bottle of malt, is a completely different one.

That is the gap we built GluFloat to close.

You type in the food, you get a straight colour, the size, and what to eat it with, and then you put your whole plate together and watch it move from red to green while you change it.

It is free for the first three days and it does not ask for a card, so you can try it on tonight's dinner before you decide anything.

One honest note before you go

This page is guidance and it is not treatment. It cannot see your medicine, your last reading, or anything else you are managing.

Your doctor and your dietitian can, so use this to have a better conversation with them, not to replace them.

The World Health Organization has a plain overview of diabetes here if you want to read more about the condition itself.

Quick answers

Can a diabetic eat eba?

Yes. Keep it to one ball the size of your fist, eat it with vegetable soup and fish, chicken or an egg, and keep it to about two times in a week.

What is the glycaemic index of eba?

It is 84, measured in Nigerians living with diabetes. Anything from 70 upwards is a fast food for your sugar.

Is eba better than fufu?

Yes. Fufu scores 97 and eba scores 84. Amala from yam flour is better than both at 69.

Is soaked garri safe for a diabetic?

No. Once you soak it and drink it, especially with sugar, it behaves like a sweet drink and it is one of the fastest ways to send your sugar up.

Can I eat eba every day if the ball is small?

No. Even a small ball is a fast starch, so about two times a week is where it belongs. Beans, vegetables and vegetable soups are the foods you can lean on more often.