Diabetes Recipes: Cooking Tips for a Diabetic-Friendly Meal

What makes a recipe OK for someone with diabetes? No sugar? No fat? And what about your family's favorite recipes? Do you need to toss them out and find new cookbooks just because someone has diabetes?

Keep those favorite recipes on hand! If you remember the basics of diabetes meal planning, you can turn almost any recipe into diabetic-friendly food.

Here's how to get started.

Remember the Diabetes Meal-Planning Basics

The first step in preparing diabetes-friendly recipes is to remember meal-planning guidelines. People with diabetes manage meal planning in a variety of ways. The three most recommended approaches include:

Exchange lists. These lists provide detailed information about the carbohydrate, protein, and fat content of foods you eat every day. A dietitian works with you to develop a meal plan listing how many exchanges from each food group you should eat each day. Exchange lists are designed to ensure you get all the nutrients you need for good health along with a controlled amount of carbohydrates to control your diabetes. For example, your meal plan may have 3 bread exchanges, 2 fruit exchanges, 1 meat exchange, and 1 fat exchange for breakfast.
Carbohydrate counting. Counting carbohydrates helps you understand how each type of carbohydrate you eat affects your blood glucose. You work with a dietitian to develop the number of and kinds of carbohydrates you should eat each day. Then you monitor your blood glucose level to determine the effect of these various carbs and adjust insulin injections accordingly. You also adjust the amount and type of carbohydrates you eat as needed.
Diabetes food pyramid guide. This pyramid is similar to the USDA MyPyramid system. Foods are divided into six groups, and then the groups are ordered in the form of a pyramid. The groups, starting from the base of the pyramid and going up, are:
- Breads, grains, and other starches
- Vegetables
- Fruits
- Meat, meat substitutes, and other protein
- Dairy
- Fats, oils, and sweets

Your goal is to eat more from the bottom of the pyramid (breads, grains, and other starches) and less from the top of the pyramid (fats, oils, and sweets).A dietitian can work with you to develop the appropriate number of servings you should get from each group.

Whatever method you use, the goals are the same: to eat a balanced diet that helps keep blood glucose levels close to normal. But what does "balanced" mean? And how can you make sure recipes reflect this balance?

Here are some general guidelines:

Choose a variety of foods from all the food groups.
Choose foods that are richest in fiber, vitamins, and other nutrients. These choices tend to include more fresh and less processed foods - for example, whole grains and fresh vegetables.
Choose fatty ingredients wisely. Low-fat and "good" fats are your best bets.
Watch your portions. Even the best foods can be harmful to your health if you eat too much.

Whatever meal plan approach you follow, you can use these guidelines to make recipes diabetes-friendly.

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