Changing the eating habit overnight is hard! To begin with small changes and stick with it.
List of right and wrong diabetes food helps you to know how to maintain your blood glucose level within the target range without any unwanted spikes. Learn, what are the good and bad foods for diabetes?
Healthy Right Diabetes Foods
Healthy right foods for diabetes are foods that help stabilizes your blood sugar level.
Healthy diabetes foods are just nutritious foods that help stabiles the blood glucose level without many spikes.
- Choose foods that are rich in nutrients. People with diabetes find it difficult to manage blood sugar with limited food choices, so they need to choose nutrient-rich food whenever possible.
- Eat always fresh, natural, and unprocessed foods. Nature design foods as per our body’s requirements; on the other hand, human-made foods are still based on the economy and not health.
- Try including natural colorful foods in every meal. The plate should fill with many colors, such as greens, yellows, reds, oranges, etc. Ayurveda advises to include colorful foods to fulfill all body’s nutrient requirements.
- Whole grains, fresh fruits, and vegetables are the optimum choices for carbohydrate needs. These foods tend to be high in fiber, which help keeps blood-glucose in reasonable control. Fresh raw vegetables are diabetic friendly, so enrich your diet with broccoli, cabbage, greens, carrots, squash, cucumbers, peppers, and onions.
- Always include a balanced meal contain everything carbohydrate, fats, and proteins. Fat and protein will not affect the blood glucose level as compared with carbohydrate, which affects your blood-glucose almost immediately. “Carb count” is the only best way to control blood glucose levels for people with diabetes who prefer a variety of meal plans.
- Natural, unprocessed fats are avocados, olive & coconut oil, and nuts & seeds. Also, dairy (butter & ghee), organic eggs, and fatty fish are healthy fats. It can help benefit your health. Fats don't have much of a direct effect on blood sugar, but they can be useful in slowing the absorption of carbohydrates.
- Protein has minimal effect on blood sugar, improves sugar cravings, and fasten satiety feeling. Protein-rich foods are beans, legumes, eggs, seafood, dairy, peas, tofu, meats, and poultry.
- Diabetes superfoods are chocolate, Broccoli, Blueberries, Steel-cut oats, Fish, Olive oil, Psyllium husk, Cannellini beans, Spinach, Sweet potatoes, Walnuts, Quinoa, Cinnamon, Collard greens, and Turmeric.
Unhealthy Wrong Diabetes Foods
Unhealthy wrong foods for diabetes are foods that disturb your blood sugar level.
Unhealthy diabetes foods are foods that cause diabetes control difficult or worsen diabetes complications. These foods disturb the blood glucose level by producing spikes followed by drops.
- Refined vegetable oils, processed meats, and snack foods are chips, crackers, and baked goods. These foods are generally high in disease-causing, artery-clogging ingredients, so they should avoid it at all costs.
- Avoid simple carbohydrates such as processed/refined sugars, white bread, pastries, chips, cookies, and pasta. These refined carbohydrates have negligible nutritional benefits and dump glucose and cause blood sugar spikes.
- Stop filling your plate with one or two colors only, usually white & brown such as bread and cookies. Mostly, these colored foodstuffs are simple sugar that dumps glucose in the bloodstream and causes blood-glucose spikes.
- Avoid garnishing the food with unwanted, unhealthy items. Stop garnishing bread with butter or cream cheese on bagels. It will add extra calories not needed. Question yourself and convince to use low carb alternatives such as mustard and balsamic vinegar.
- Processed high calories packed food items are called junk food. It is an enemy to people with diabetes, stop consuming it.
- Filling the most area of the plate with carbohydrates for diabetes is an outdated method, stop filling the plate with carbs; instead, use only 20 to 100 grams per meal?
- Eliminate or limit sweet-tasting foods such as sugar, sweet fruits, sugar-containing foods, and sugar substitutes.
- Tran’s fats raise unhealthy cholesterol and increase the risk of heart disease.
List of low carb foods
Carbs are the main problematic macronutrient, you are well aware of! So low carb is the best solution for better blood sugar control.
Low carb vegetables for better blood sugar control –
- Broccoli (0.15 g/100g),
- Watercress (0.79 g/100g),
- Celery (1.37 g/100g),
- Spinach (1.43 g/100g),
- Mustard Greens (1.47 g/100g),
- Asparagus (1.78 g/100g),
- Radish (1.8 g/100g),
- Avocado (1.84 g/100g),
- Zucchini (2.11g/100g),
- Mushrooms (2.26g/100g),
- Tomato (2.69g/100g),
- Olives (2.8g/100g),
- Eggplant (2.88g/100g),
- Bell Pepper (2.9g/100g),
- Cauliflower (2.97g/100g),
- Cabbage (3g/100g),
- Spinach (3g/cup),
- Cucumber (3.13g/100g),
- Artichoke (3.88g/100g),
- Broccoli (4.04g/100g),
- Okra (4.25g/100g),
- Green Beans (4.27g/100g),
- Turnips (4.63g/100g),
- Brussels Sprouts (5.15g/100g),
- Kale (5.15g/100g),
- Pumpkin (6g/100g),
- Carrots (6.78g/100g),
- Celeriac (7.4g/100g),
- Onion (7.64g/100g), etc.
Best low carb fruits to manage blood sugar control are:
- Raspberries (5g/100g),
- Blackberries (5.7g/100g),
- Strawberries (6g/100g),
- Blueberries (12g/1-0 grams),
- Plum medium-sized (80 g) contains 6 g of carbs,
- Mandarin medium size (75 g) contains 7 g of carbs,
- Kiwi medium size (70 g), contains 8 g of carbs,
- Cherries (10g/100g),
- Cantaloupe (6.9g/100g), and
- Peach medium size (150 g) contains 13 g of carbs.
- Applesauce (24.8g/cup),
- Apricot (3.1g one whole),
- Coconut (5.2g/cup), Grapes ( 26.8g),
- Grapefruit (0g one whole),
- Honeydew (14.4g/cup),
- Lemon (3.8 one whole),
- Mango (25.2g/cup),
- Orange (13g one whole),
- Passion fruit (2g one whole),
- Peach (8.9g one whole),
- Pineapple (17.2g/cup), and
- Watermelon (10.4g/cup).
Low carb grains -
- Oatmeal (24.1g/cup),
- Buckwheat (29g/cup),
- Whole Wheat (30.7g/cup),
- Wild Rice (32g/cup),
- Quinoa (34.2g/cup),
- Barley (38.3g/cup),
- Brown Rice (42.3g/cup).
Still, going for grain-free is the best option.
Best & Worst diabetes foods
Increase foods good for diabetes and limit foods bad for diabetes to help improve the blood glucose level.
Best diabetes foods are Asparagus, Avocados, Beans, Blueberries, Broccoli, Carrots, Cranberries, Fish, Flaxseed, Garlic, Kale, Melon, Nuts, Raspberries, Red Grapefruit, Red Onions, Red Peppers, Soy, Spinach, Tea, Tomatoes, and Yogurt.
Worst diabetes foods are White rice, Bananas, Chinese food, Breakfast pastries, Fruit smoothies, Trail mix, Refined cereal, Fruit juice, Energy bars, Pasta Alfredo, french-fries, and Tran’s fat-containing foods.
Stop ingesting sugar called by different names
Sugar is associated with the risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes complications. So eliminate it! Whatever the name is?
Some of the names for sugar that you may find in the ingredients include:
- table sugar,
- brown sugar,
- molasses,
- honey,
- beet sugar,
- cane sugar,
- confectioner's sugar,
- powdered sugar,
- raw sugar,
- turbinado,
- maple syrup,
- high-fructose corn syrup,
- agave nectar,
- sugar cane syrup,
- fructose,
- lactose,
- sorbitol,
- xylitol,
- glycol,
- glycerol,
- mannitol,
- isomalt and
- other sugar alcohols.