Diet for diabetics

When I was first diagnosed with diabetes I went to a two day class on food for diabetics. Pretty much they spend two days saying "look at the label and see how much carbohydrates is in a serving. If it's more that 15 then that's a lot of carbohydrates, if it's less than 15 then that's low. Low is good, high is bad".

It turns out that's not actually so helpful. It's a nice place to start when menu planning for a diabetic, but it's a long way from getting the job done.

The truth is that we don't really know what an optimal diet is. We learn something new about what might be relevant almost everyday. At least we might learn if we're paying attention closely enough.

Some of the recent news comes from a couple of articles in Journal of the American Medical Association.

Chowing down on lentil soup and pasta seems to be the way to go if you have type 2 diabetes.

A new study found that a diet of "low-glycemic foods" -- such as beans, nuts, peas, lentils and pasta -- was superior to a high-cereal-fiber diet when it comes to lowering blood sugar

Pasta is ext4remeely high in carbs and I'd been taught that I shoulld stay away from foods with very high carb counts. But I guess that's not all there is to is and that some high carb counts are better than others.

Carbohydrates in a low-glycemic-index diet are absorbed through the small intestine and converted to blood sugar at a slower rate than higher glycemic foods, meaning blood sugar is more stable, the researchers said.

Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels, a longer-term measure of blood sugar levels, decreased by 0.5 percent in people on the low-glycemic-index diet, compared with a decrease of 0.18 percent in the alternate group.

The VA has recently moved away from suggesting testing your blood sugar seve3ral times a day to the use of A1c two or three times a year to check blood sugar control. But they hav e done a horrible job of explaining to p0atients why they're doing that.

Coffee for diabetics

Is coffee good for diabetics?

It has no carbs. That's sure a good thing. Diabetes is about the body not being able to process carbs. If you have no carbs, then no problem.

But, interestingly enough, coffee does have fiber.

Already recognized as a source of healthful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds, coffee also contains significantly higher levels of soluble dietary fiber than other commonly consumed beverages, scientists in Spain report.

I'm guessing that no carb fiber content has something to do with the reason coffee appears to be a good diabetes preventive.

And although popular medical beleif is that caffaine raises blood pressure, recent research creates some doubt about that.

American Cheese

I looked at the package nutrition information on some packs of sliced American Cheese at the store today.

Three different packs, all off-brand, stuff, had 3 different carb contents. The slice size was the same for each, 19g, one had 6g of carbs, one 3g, and one 0g.

The difference seemed to be the use of soybean oil. The zero carb package used skim milk and didn't have soybean oil on the list of ingredients, the 6g one had it listed first.

The zero gram package was also the most expensive. It appears that soybean oil is a cheap ingredient of fake cheese, but it's also full of carbs.