 |
 |
Send to a Friend |
Food and diabetes: Healthy eating
You can make a difference in your blood glucose control through your food choices.
When you have diabetes, your body may have problems using the energy from the food you eat. This can cause high blood glucose levels. Balancing what, when and how much you eat will help manage your blood glucose levels.
How food affects your body
All food affects blood glucose levels. There are no good or bad foods. Eating a variety of foods can improve your health and keep mealtimes interesting.
The foods you eat fall into three main groups:
- Protein: Protein helps build body cells for growth and healing.
- Fat: Fat helps the body absorb certain vitamins, lubricate joints and muscles, and adds flavor to food.
- Carbohydrate: Carbohydrates are your best energy source.
Carbohydrate foods
All carbohydrate foods turn into glucose. Carbohydrate foods are breads, crackers, cereals, rice, pasta, fruit and fruit juice, milk, vegetables and sweets.
Do not avoid carbohydrate foods. They should make up 50 to 60 percent of your food plan.
Carbohydrate counting is a way to help you manage the amount of carbohydrate you eat during the day.
A carbohydrate choice is a serving that contains about 15 grams of carbohydrate. For most people with diabetes, a healthy meal plan has three to five (45 to 75 grams) carbohydrate choices at a meal and one to two (15 to 30 grams) carbohydrate choices for snacks.
Eat your meals and snacks every 4 to 6 hours to help even out your blood glucose level. Do not skip meals or snacks. If you do, your body will make up for the lack of glucose by "asking" your liver to make extra glucose. This can make controlling your blood glucose even harder.
Examples of one carbohydrate choice (15 grams)
Using food labels
Many foods contain labels that tell you the number of grams of carbohydrate in one serving.
Labels also give you information about the fat in the product.
1. Serving size: All of the information on the label is based on this serving size. If you eat double the serving size, the nutrients will be doubled as well.
2. Servings per package: The number of servings contained in the package.
3. Total carbohydrates: The total grams of carbohydrate in one serving. This includes carbohydrate from sugar.
4. Dietary fiber If a serving has 5 or more grams of fiber, the grams of fiber can be subtracted from the total carbohydrate grams.
Grams of carbohydrate | Carbohydrate choices |
0 to 5 | 0 |
6 to 10 | 1/2 |
11 to 20 | 1 |
21 to 25 | 1 1/2 |
26 to 35 | 2 |
36 to 40 | 2 1/2 |
41 to 50 | 3 |
51 to 55 | 3 1/2 |
56 to 65 | 4 |
66 to 70 | 4 1/2 |
71 to 80 | 5 |
Related Links
Food and diabetes: Sample meal plans
Heart-healthy eating with diabetes: Making good protein and fat choices
Source: Allina Patient Education, Basic Skills for Living with Diabetes, fourth edition, ISBN 1-931876-16-9
First published: 12/01/2006
Last updated: 12/01/2006
Reviewed by: Allina Patient Education experts