Although, it is quite reasonable that people with chronic diabetes have quite different nutritional needs; due to which, many times, diabetic recipes can be acknowledged to be bland and tasteless.
However, today, different healthy ingredients can be obtained from different parts of the world; and hence with a smart planning of your meal to allow you to manage your diabetes with the same taste and nutritional requirement.
Vipul Jain, Chief Executive Officer at Advancells gives few food tips to explore with better understanding of diabetes and body's nutritional requirement.
Better understanding of carb requirement
Knowing about, how much carbohydrates are needed and what are the different kinds that are required; would be your first step towards, planning your diabetic recipes. In this regard, it is interesting to understand that there are about three different kinds of carbohydrates in the food, such as starches, sugars and fibres.
Starchy food may include vegetables like peas, corn, lime beans, potato beans and more. Whole grains such as oats, barley and rice can as well be categorised under starch. Although, it is important to understand that grains can be divided into whole grain, containing all the three germ layers and with all the necessary nutrients it has to offer; whereas refined grain is mainly connected with middle endosperm layer, which doesn't contain any vitamins and nutrients, except for the starchy material.
Sugars, are classified as direct sugar, obtained from sugar cane, nectar, confectionaries, and other raw sources as well as indirect sugar that is being obtained from milk, fruits and other sources. Fibre is the plant source and is required for healthy digestive system; it can contribute your nutritional requirement by making you feel full and satisfied.
Thus, it would be wise to optimise your carbohydrate requirement by opting for the most nutrient dense choices, with smaller portion size. For that matter, you need to avoid sugary drinks, including soda, sweet tea and fruit punch. Whole fruit should be preferred instead of juice. Sweet potatoes can be better alternative for white potato and whole grain oat meals, brown rice and/or barley should always be welcome.
More indulgence towards diabetic superfoods
Thus, your healthy diabetic recipes should contain diabetic super food as listed below with a known low glycemic index and key nutrients such as, calcium, potassium, fibre, magnesium as well as vitamins mainly A, C and E. These superfoods can be:
Beans
Dark green leafy vegetables
Citrus varieties
Sweet Potatoes
Berries and tomatoes
Fish with high content of omega-3-fatty acids
Whole grains, nuts as well as fat free milk and yogurt
The combination of these super-ingredients with counted amount of carbohydrates can come up with the most nutritious yet tasty meal which can be consumed without any fear of sugar shoot up; but off course meal size should be smaller.
Conventional treatment pattern for diabetes is having higher emphasis on inflammatory drugs and good nutritional supplements; however, they lack effective management of the said disease, along with some additional challenges of preventing their damaging effects. On the contrary, recently launched stem cells therapy can be considered as the better alternative to effectively reduce disease progression and restore lost cellular function.
(Puja Gupta can be contacted at puja.g@.in)
( With inputs from IANS )