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Looking in the wrong place for nutrition information can cause you to make unnecessary or harmful diet changes, give up foods you don’t need to, and waste money on special supplements and products.
How do you know what information you can trust, whether online, from friends, or in the news?
Join me in the Diabetes Smart Online Symposium to learn how to determine whether a source is credible, and get ideas for where to turn for accurate nutrition information.
Click to see the infographic on The American Recall Center’s website
Diabetes can be a scary-sounding disease, full of questions and myths. I was contacted by Dr. Mario Trucillo from The American Recall Center to help raise awareness about diabetes in the last few days of National Diabetes Month.
Almost 19 million people in the USA have a diabetes diagnosis, and another 7 million people have it and don’t know (Source).
Some of those 19 million people who know they have diabetes shared “one thing they would like the world to know about this condition.” The responses were used to make this infographic.
Want to learn more?
Click through the Diabetes Myths slideshow to educate yourself on the truth about diabetes and the people it affects.
You can also take the free Diabetes Risk Test to learn more about your risk and what you can do to prevent diabetes.
November is American Diabetes Month. It is also the month of Thanksgiving, which is known for food in abundance, especially food full of starchy carbohydrates.
What Thanksgiving foods have fewer carbohydrates? What recipes can be changed or substituted so people with diabetes don’t feel like they can only eat one bite of the rest of the family’s food?
The American Diabetes Association has a large list of free diabetes-friendly recipes for holidays and throughout the year. Another good sources of recipes is the USDA SNAP-Ed recipe finder (although these vary in carbohydrate content), and they even give information on cost (per recipe and per serving). I’ve pulled out a few examples here, with carbohydrates (in grams per serving). You can go to each recipe to find the rest of the nutrition information.
general homemade pumpkin pie (average is about 40 g carb in 1/8 of pie, click to see source)
What foods have carbohydrates?
In general, carbohydrates are found in sweets and desserts; grains and grain-based foods (pastas, rice, bread, crackers, etc); beans, peas, and legumes; milk and yogurt; and fruits. Carbohydrates are not bad. We need them to survive. However, eating too many can be harmful, especially for a person with diabetes. The amount of carbohydrates we should eat depends on what we are doing and our own bodies. A dietitian (or other members of your diabetes healthcare team) can help you figure out how many carbohydrates you should eat.
Other tips for a healthy Thanksgiving
In addition to new recipes, people with diabetes (and everyone at the table) can practice moderation and mindful eating to help reduce the amount of carbohydrates (and calories and fat, etc) that they eat during the holidays.
Moderation means being aware of how much we eat, thinking about portion sizes, and eating slowly to allow our bodies to realize that we’re actually eating.
Mindful eating is being aware of and enjoying whatever we’re eating by thinking about how the food tastes, smells, and feels as we eat it.
It may also be helpful to eat a small snack an hour or two before you sit down for the Thanksgiving meal, to avoid excessive hunger and filling your plate with more food than you need. Snacks like cut vegetables, a small handful of nuts, or a piece of cheese are good choices.
One more tip to keep in mind: you can’t save up your carbohydrates and eat them all at once on Thanksgiving. Rollover minutes may work for cell phone plans, but there is no such thing as a rollover carbohydrates meal plan. You diabetes medical team should have told you an estimate of grams of carbohydrates per meal, or given you a number of carbohydrate exchanges per meal. Stick with this plan, even during Thanksgiving and other holiday meals.
If you need help figuring out how many carbohydrates you should eat each meal or want help with eating well with diabetes, including tips on portion sizes, meal planning, and eating out, you can use this Find a Registered Dietitian tool to find an RD near you.
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Shelly Najjar, MPH, RDN 