People with diabetes do not got to purchase or prepare special foods. The foods that are best for somebody with diabetes are best options for everyone: foods that are low in fat, salt, and sugar, and high in fiber, like beans, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. These foods assist you reach and reside a weight that is perfect for your body, keep your blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol in your level, and stop or delay heart and vessel illness.
- Eat 3 meals on a daily basis. Avoid skipping meals and morning breakfast, lunch and evening meal out over the day.
- At every meal include starchy carbohydrate foods – eg, bread, pasta, chapatis, potatoes, yam, noodles, rice and cereals. Eat a lot of slowly absorbed (low glycaemic index) foods – eg, pasta, basmati or simple cook rice, coarse-grained breads, new potatoes, sweet potato and yam, porridge oats, and natural breakfast food.
- Reduce the fat within the diet, particularly saturated fats. Use unsaturated fats or oils, particularly mono-unsaturated fats – eg, olive oil and rapeseed oil.
- Eat a lot of fruit and vegetables. Aim for a minimum of 5 parts on a daily basis.
- Eat a lot of beans and lentils – eg, kidney beans, butter beans, chickpeas or red and green lentils.
- Eat a minimum of 2 parts of oily fish per week – eg, mackerel, sardines, salmon and pilchards. Limit sugar and sugared foods.
- Reduce salt within the diet to six g or less per day.
- Drink alcohol only moderately.
- Don’t use diabetic foods or drinks (they are costly and of no benefit).
The goals of dietary recommendation are:
- To maintain or improve health through the utilization of acceptable and healthy food options.
- To accomplish and maintain best metabolic and physiological outcomes, including:
- Reduction of risk for microvascular disease by achieving close to normal glycaemia while not undue risk of hypoglycaemia.
- Reduction of risk of macrovascular disease, including management of weight, dyslipidaemia and cardiovascular disease.
- To optimise outcomes in diabetic uropathy and in the other associated disorder.