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Library of Congress Control Number: 2023946157
ISBN 978-1-394-20686-5 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-394-20688-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-394-20689-6 (ebk)
Part 2: Nutrition with Purpose
Part 3: Eating
Better
Part 4: Ready, Set, Plan
Staying
4: READY, SET,
Estimating
Preferring
Poached Egg and Avocado Toast with Warm Cherry Tomatoes and Sea Salt
Blueberry-Almond Yogurt Bowls with Honey, Cinnamon, and Chia Seeds
Fresh Fruit Salad with Homemade Vanilla and Flaxseed Granola
Warm Raspberry and Cocoa Quinoa with Almond Milk and Sesame Seeds
Middle Eastern–Style Breakfast Platter
Egyptian Fuul Medammes with Extra-Virgin Olive Oil, Tomato, and Eggs
Cardamom-Scented Kefir, Pineapple, and Kiwi Smoothie
Looking Forward to Lunch
Homemade Hummus and Whole Wheat Pita with Fresh Vegetables
Moroccan Rice, Lamb, Vegetable, and Lentil Soup
Roasted Sweet Potato, Avocado, and Quinoa Bowls with Honey-Lime Dressing and Cashews
Lebanese Fattoush Salad with Citrus-Infused Chicken
Asian Noodle and Seven-Vegetable Salad with Sweet and Tangy Ginger Sauce
Broccoli and Pecorino Cheese Soup with Stuffed Baby Portobello Mushrooms
Hearty Farro and Five-Vegetable Minestrone
Cucumber and Smoked Salmon Pinwheels with Mixed Green Salad
Baba Ghanouj with Crudités and Roasted Chickpeas
Delicious Dinners
Citrus-Marinated Salmon with Fiery Potatoes and Kale
Red Lentil Croquettes over Baby Spinach with Tzatziki Sauce
Chicken Simmered in Tomatoes, Olives, and Capers with Sautéed Dandelion Greens and Salad
Turkish-Style Eggplant and Chickpea Stew with Brown Basmati Rice Pilaf
Fresh Herb and Parmigiano Crusted Fish with Apple, Beet, and Carrot Salad with Citrus Vinaigrette
Pasta with Pistachio Pesto, Fresh Tuna, and Yellow Tomato Sauce
Sizzling Rosemary Shrimp over Cannellini Bean Puree and Sautéed Greens with Mixed Peppers
Assorted Seafood Tartines with Microgreen, Red Cabbage, Carrot, and Corn Slaw
Asparagus, Red Pepper, and Tempeh Stir-Fry with Soba Noodles and Sesame Seeds
Choose Fresh or Frozen over Canned and Jarred
Opt For Nutrient-Dense Foods over Processed and Packaged Foods
APPENDIX A: DIABETES EXCHANGE LISTS
APPENDIX B: GLYCEMIC INDEX AND GLYCEMIC LOAD VALUES
APPENDIX C: EXAMPLES OF BIOACTIVE COMPOUNDS IN FOODS
Introduction
This book was written to give you the nutritional and culinary knowledge necessary to prevent, treat, and even reverse diabetes. Armed with simple strategies and sound advice, Diabetes Meal Planning & Nutrition For Dummies enables you to take control of diabetes. Whether you purchased this book for yourself or for a loved one and use it to prevent, treat, or reverse a diabetes diagnosis, you will find the answers you need all in one place.
There should be no such thing as a “diabetic diet.” A person with diabetes should not need to choose from a different restaurant menu or be limited to looking for specifically labeled products that have sugar substituted by an artificial sweetener. With the number of people worldwide estimated to have diabetes projected to rise to 642 million by 2040, there is a compelling case for looking at nutrition for managing type 2 diabetes not only when it occurs but also as a strategy to prevent it from developing.
More than half of the population of many countries is now defined as being overweight and at risk of having established type 2 diabetes, undiagnosed type 2 diabetes, or its precursor, prediabetes. The reasons for the dramatic rise in type 2 diabetes and prediabetes are almost certainly related to the move away from traditional healthy lifestyles to our current so-called “Western” processed diets with refined sugars and additives and sedentary patterns of behavior. It is also clear that the complications of poorly controlled diabetes such as heart disease, stroke, dementia, and kidney disease are conditions that can also cause chronic illnesses in people, especially those with poor diets who do not have diabetes.
The dietary advice we give in this book aims to help you achieve excellent blood glucose control, optimum weight maintenance, and better overall health — things that can benefit the majority of people with or without diabetes. The best nutritional advice for people with or without diabetes is to enjoy a diet of foods and nutrients that reduce the likelihood of many of these chronic illnesses. This makes diabetes, its prevention, possible reversal and management, and reduction in its complications everybody’s business.
Best of all, this book exemplifies how you don’t need to give up good-tasting food in order to maintain a diabetes-friendly lifestyle! On the contrary, it shows how to pair ingredients together for maximum flavor and nutritional benefits. You’ll fall in love with culinary therapy techniques that have the power to transform your
life. Food is the simplest, least expensive, most available, and most immediate treatment option for diabetes health and overall wellbeing.
Luckily, the foods used in this book are readily available and offer options for a wide variety of tastes. Many of the simple foods that we take for granted are the most beneficial to our diets, and this book shows you how to unleash their power, all while keeping an eye on the clock and the budget. Many people with diabetes struggle to adopt healthier eating habits, many to the point of giving up. This book, however, was built to inspire with enjoyable practices that will enrich your life as well as your meals.
If the word planning in the title seems like the least important (even least interesting) subject in the pages ahead, you are in for an amazing surprise — maybe even an epiphany. See, the struggle with healthy eating doesn’t come from your stomach, your pancreas, or an uncontrollable hand that sneaks unhealthy food into your mouth when you’re not looking. Your struggle with healthy eating is a struggle between your incredible brain and your primitive survival chemistry, and when it comes to food, chemistry often wins. You’re about to learn how planning can tip the balance, and make healthier eating your newest accomplishment. Adopting the advice in this book can provide a way to establish a balanced, satisfying, and truly enjoyable relationship with food.
About This Book
Diabetes Meal Planning & Nutrition For Dummies zeroes in on the important relationship between diabetes and food, and helps you make choices that benefit your long-term health and satisfy your eating preferences. The book’s focus is on which foods you can, and should, eat to improve your health with diabetes, and not on what you shouldn’t eat. There is no doubt, by the way, that how you choose to eat when you have diabetes can have a remarkable effect on your health — this book helps ensure that effect is a positive one. And it is not just about considering the nutrients we eat in the greatest quantity — for diabetes the all-important carbohydrates, fats, and proteins — but also to understand the vital role of micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals, as well as the new science of our gut microbiome and food constituents called bioactive compounds that can have profound antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.
The book acknowledges and explains some of the barriers you may have experienced to adopting healthier eating habits, and how your best intentions can be sabotaged. And, you see how the power of making eating decisions in advance — planning — can get you beyond those barriers and keep you there. More than 80 percent of people with type 2 diabetes are overweight or obese, and many have
made attempts to change eating habits without success. This discussion on planning may be just the advice you need.
The target audience is people already diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, but the concepts and practical advice for managing diabetes with diet apply to gestational diabetes, to those with prediabetes, and even to people who feel they may be at risk of diabetes. This book doesn’t substitute for medical nutrition therapy from a registered dietitian, but should help you put your personalized diabetes meal plan into action.
Diabetes Meal Planning & Nutrition For Dummies does discuss diabetes as a disease, but if you’re new to diabetes you may want to grab one of Dr. Poole’s and Amy Riolo’s other books, such as Diabetes For Dummies, for a more detailed discussion. Food is an important part of managing diabetes over the long term, but there’s a lot more you need to know.
Diabetes often occurs with medical conditions, like celiac disease or lactose intolerance, that limit food choices. And, diabetes can promote health conditions, like kidney failure, that trigger very specific dietary requirements that are significantly different than general recommendations for a diabetes meal plan. Your doctor and a registered dietitian can advise you in these cases, but advice in this book may not always apply.
You should know that you don’t have to read this book from front to back. All For Dummies books are written so that each chapter will make sense on its own. It’s not necessary that you remember anything either — a detailed table of contents helps you find what you need whenever you need it. This book is meant to be a reference; there will be no final exam to test your memorization skills.
Here are a few other tidbits that may answer your questions before you have to ask:
» Blood glucose is often casually called blood sugar. Blood glucose is the correct terminology and is used exclusively in the book. In common usage, the terms mean the same.
» Blood glucose is measured in milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl) in the United States, but many countries use the International System of Units measure of millimoles per liter (mmol/l). The same is true for cholesterol and triglycerides.
» Healthy eating is no less important for people with type 1 diabetes, but insulin does provide a more direct way to control blood glucose. Some discussion about managing food amount and timing may be less relevant to people with type 1 diabetes when rapid acting insulin is used.
» The term diabetic is not used to refer to a person with diabetes. Diabetes is not who you are; it’s a condition you have.
» This book does not spend much time addressing the particulars of insulin dosing, insulin-carbohydrate ratios, or insulin correction factors. These are very individualized and must be worked out with your doctor or diabetes educator.
Foolish Assumptions
Your authors have some preconceived notions about you, and thought you might be interested in knowing what those are. This book assumes the following:
» You have diabetes, or have an interest in someone who has diabetes. It’s okay if neither is true, by the way.
» You realize that effectively managing diabetes for better health includes managing what and how you eat. Maybe you’ve been advised about the importance of diet, or maybe you learned from previous experience with diabetes.
» You are not expecting a miracle answer that requires no further thinking or effort from you.
» Even though you are not expecting a miracle, you appreciate advice that makes healthy eating for diabetes easier.
Icons Used in This Book
Throughout For Dummies books you find icons that call your attention to something especially important, or something technical. This book includes the following icons:
A Tip icon often suggests you try something or check something out, and it usually points to something surprising about food or nutrition.
A Warning icon does exactly what it sounds like. It warns against potential problems.
The Remember icon might re-emphasize something discussed earlier in the section, or it may be a reminder to follow specific advice when you put what you’ve learned in practice.
The Technical Stuff icon highlights information that is beyond what’s key to the book’s message, but something some curious readers might find interesting.
This icon points out where Dr. Simon Poole added special insight from his medical expertise and practice.
This icon designates instances where Dr. Simon Poole and Chef Amy Riolo describe anecdotes and special tips from their experience.
Beyond the Book
There is much more information available from your authors and from the For Dummies brand for your learning pleasure. Check out these resources to learn more about diabetes and nutrition or to find some great recipes:
» Check out this book’s online Cheat Sheet for more help and information. Just go to www.dummies.com and search for “Diabetes Meal Planning & Nutrition For Dummies Cheat Sheet.”
» You can meet your authors face to face, literally, on their respective websites so that you can get an idea of who’s giving you the wonderful advice in this book. You can find Dr. Poole at www.drsimonpoole.com and Amy Riolo at www.amyriolo.com.
» And, although this book includes 25 diabetes-friendly complete meal recipes so that you don’t have to worry about covering nutritional requirements and glucose managing in your meals, you can use what you learn about choosing diabetes-friendly dishes from other resources, too. An excellent place to start is Diabetes For Dummies, 6th Edition, published by Wiley.
Where to Go from Here
You can start anywhere with For Dummies books, but there’s a logic to beginning at the beginning. If that’s not in your personality, consider starting with Chapter 10 to see why healthy eating — diabetes or not — is so difficult in this society. Chapter 14 reviews how some popular diet plans will fit with effective diabetes self-management, and if you’re not sure what diabetes self-management means, try Chapter 3.
Chapter 11 addresses how you can stay motivated and offers simple tricks that usually bring big rewards. If you’re heading straight to the buffet or restaurant, check Chapter 15; the grocery can be found in Chapter 12.
Some final advice is don’t get in such a rush. Diabetes will still be there, and changes often come slowly. Take your time, try different approaches to eating healthier, and be patient about seeing real improvements in your lab work. We find that lasting change is best achieved when done gradually. Little changes add up and are more easily sustained than drastic life changes. Start wherever you are with good intentions, knowing that you will eventually reach your objectives. In addition, if you have been living an unhealthy lifestyle or suffering from diabetes symptoms without any treatment at all, once you start making positive changes you will begin feeling better than before, and that is the best motivator of all.
Don’t forget the famous speech Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered at Spelman College in 1960: “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
1 Diabetes and Food: Culinary Therapy
IN THIS PART . . .
Find out how to eat well with diabetes so that you can enjoy food while improving your health and balancing blood glucose levels.
Understand how the concept of culinary therapy can help you look and feel your best while enjoying yourself in the process.
Understand the difference between prediabetes, type 1, and type 2.
Know how to test your blood glucose levels at home, especially with type 1 diabetes. With so many different ways to test, you no longer have to guess your blood glucose level.
Be inspired to incorporate easy lifestyle hacks to take charge of your health and happiness.
