Diet and nutrition | What to avoid
Diabetes does not mean that you urgently need to give up everything tasty and eat only broccoli for the rest of your life. Useful does not mean tasteless: we analyze what you can eat with diabetes, what you should avoid, and how to build a menu so that the contents of the plate will delight you every time without raising your sugar level.
Diabetes mellitus is a hormone-related disease in which the body either does not produce enough insulin, or the insulin does not cope with its main task of processing glucose. There are two types of diabetes, type 1 — insulin-dependent, type 2 — non insulin-independent. The difference between them is that in the first case, insulin in the body is physically produced less than needed, and in the second — it may be enough, but there are problems with its “functionality”, that is, it does not work as it should. As a result, not all glucose that enters the body is broken down, the cells do not receive enough nutrition, and excess sugar remains in the blood and goes into urine.
With type 1 diabetes you need to limit the amount of sugar entering the body, and with type 2 you need to refrain from carbohydrates that are absorbed too quickly.
Both types of diabetes involve dietary control. Proper nutrition in diabetes mellitus is critical, because with type 1 diabetes you need to limit the amount of sugar entering the body, and with type 2 you need to refrain from carbohydrates that are absorbed too quickly. In general, diet therapy for any type of this disease is “what the doctor ordered”.
Diabetes mellitus: diet and nutrition
The good news: strict diets are a thing of the past. It is enough to adhere to the general recommendations: eat regularly, in moderation and choose a healthy diet. Your diet should be nutrient-dense and not too high in fat and calories. In fact, a diabetic diet is suitable for any person who would like to eat healthy, and it does not matter at all whether they have a disease or not. Simply if it is, then the priority of the diet increases, and if not, adhering to the diet described below will be useful in any case.
Nutrition for Diabetes: what to avoid?
Let’s start with what is not worth eating. You probably know that diabetes increases your predisposition to cardiovascular disease, and this is no joke, because heart and vascular disease is the leading cause of death in the world. So, in order to reduce the risks, do not consume the following foods:
- Saturated Fat. Do not buy fatty dairy products or eat fatty meat. This means that you need to remove oil, red meat (beef, pork, especially bacon), and various semi-finished products (for example, sausages) from the diet. Choose foods without palm oil in the composition, and do not eat coconuts yet (you hardly do this every day, but who knows). Here we will mention fast food, that is, say a hard “no” to it.
- Trans fats. They can be in ready-made food or baked goods — be careful with that!
- “Bad” cholesterol. Try to have no more than 200 mg of cholesterol in your diet per day. It is abundant in fatty dairy products, meat, egg yolks, liver and other by-products, respectively, all this should be limited.
- Salt. There is also a daily dose here — preferably no more than 2.3 g per day (this is about a third of a flat teaspoon) or even less if you have high blood pressure.
- Foods high in sugar. This is understood, all sorts of sweets, instant cereals (it’s hard to track how much sugar is added there), desserts … By the way, low-fat yogurts often contain a ton of sugar, so read the ingredients carefully. Bottled juices, not to mention soda, contain even more sugar.
If you are or are planning to follow a diabetes diet, try replacing some of the ingredients in your diet as follows:
- Regular rice — for brown or wild rice, can be added to regular cauliflower rice.
- Mashed potatoes — for vegetable puree from the same cauliflower or other vegetables rich in fiber.
- Pasta — for whole grain or vegetable pasta.
- White bread — for whole grain bread.
- Instant oatmeal — for oatmeal with bran.
- Cornflakes — for unsweetened bran flakes.
- Corn — for peas or salad greens.