DIABETES DIET

Healthy Eating Plans For Diabetic Patients

If you’ve happened to know what all the hospitals served people with diabetes, you’d probably can get a short list of what to get in the supermarket for those who are with diabetic in your family because, it’s true that diabetic patients has not much of food variation to begin with.

When talking about healthy eating plans for people with diabetes, it is important to know what food element is namely ‘bad’ for them. Until very recently, diabetics were routinely counseled to reduce carbohydrates, or in certain serious cases are abstained thoroughly from carbohydrates. Food source are depending on much on vegetable food source, and as for energy, much are derived from animal fat and proteins. But this kind of diet has a huge downside. Saturated fat from animal fats and certain proteins aggravated dangerous cardiovascular diseases, which most diabetics also suffered from, like heart diseases and high blood pressure.

 Physicians and dietician recently has found a new favor – rather than depending on low carbohydrate diet, a diet of high unrefined carbohydrate is by far most beneficial. However, the amount of carbohydrate intake should still be monitored to be no more than 70% of the total dietary intake. This is because by eating unrefined carbohydrate, diabetics are able to digest the carbohydrate to get energy in a much slower pace, making them feel fuller for a much longer period and at the same time, significantly reduce the average insulin requirement. The key is to supply the body with slow-burning fuel that will not cause a sudden increase of sugar in the blood, which can lead to excess insulin production.

Avoid saturated fats altogether and go for unsaturated instead. The best source of fat and protein is through vegetarian. These two categories should actually made up most of the dietary content of a diabetic. In serious cases of diabetes, no red meats are allowed, and even chicken and fish should be limited to once or twice per week. But that doesn’t mean that if your diabetes is not in a serious level, you can eat all of these food groups as you want to. It is advisable to stay away entirely from red meat and choose fish and poultry more often. The best protein of the vegetarian group is soy protein which is loaded with lecithin. Lecithin is a type of fat emulsifier and contains quite a big amount of choline, which is found to be useful in preventing and treating neurological complication of diabetes.

Anything that is highly sweet like cakes, biscuits, pastries as well as fruits and fruit juices should be strictly avoided in the initial state of treatment. But it is best to maintain on its restriction at all time possible. Nonetheless, acid fruits and sub-acid fruits can be taken into consideration but still have to be eaten with moderation.

Diabetes Food Pyramid listing according to food group:-

Sources of carbohydrate for diabetics:

All kinds of unrefined carbohydrate products. For example – Brown rice; wholemeal bread and other food products made from unrefined grain flour; wheat bran; oat bran; oat flour products; flaxmeal, wholegrain cereals; wheatgerm; brewer’s yeast; and buckwheat noodles.

Vegetables sources:

Jerusalem artichokes; Brussels sprouts; Spirulina; Green beans; garlic; cucumber; raw green vegetables; broccoli; and peppers. Since most fruit juice is not advisable for consumption, perhaps you can choose to have vegetable juice instead. For diabetics, vegetables are best eaten raw and opt for organic ones to reap most benefits.

Fruits:

After awhile, you may be allowed by your physician to eat some fruits, but there’s a limit and only certain fruits are allowed to eat like oranges, grapefruit or tangerines. Only homemade juice with no added sugar can be consumed. Servings should be restricted to small portions and half cup max.

Meats and meat substitutes:

Red meat is not advisable to take, even after the initial phase. As an alternative, you can have lean chicken and fish. Cooking method should not include excessive oil usage or better yet, none at all. Try steaming, grilling or roasting. Your best daily protein supply should be from vegetable and foremost -soybeans and tofu.

Dairy:

Milk can be consumed occasionally too but choose low-fat or nonfat milk or yogurt. You can have eggs once in a week but keep it to boiled or poached eggs.

Fats:

When it comes to fats for diabetics, choose mainly vegetable fats which have high amount of unsaturated fats in spite of saturated ones, such as from avocado, olive and corn oil.

Foods to avoid: Sweets, food high in saturated fats, alcohol and caffeine should be avoided at all times if possible. But in case of cravings, it can be consumed in a very small amount as possible – just for the sake to satisfy those cravings.