Diabetic Live

Using A Diabetic Cookbook: Those who have been diagnosed with diabetes, whether recently or who have been living with diabetes for a while, often have trouble coming up with good meal items which not only are healthy but taste good as well. An easy way to solve your menu issues is to use a diabetic-friendly cookbook to prepare meals. As the number of individuals living with diabetes continues to increase, more and more cookbooks of this type are being published which provides quite a bit of options from which individuals can choose the best meal planner.

Reasons To Use A Diabetic Cookbook
There are quite a few good reasons to use a diabetic cookbook when preparing meals. First, doing so will allow you to prepare meals which keep you within your dietary guidelines. As these meal planners are often prepared by diabetics themselves or dieticians, you can rest assured that the items listed within will be in keeping with the proper diabetic meal guidelines and restrictions.

Another reason to use a diabetic cookbook in your cooking endeavors is that it will provide wonderful menu options. This is beneficial for those who know what they can and cannot eat yet are stumped when it comes to different meal ideas. Diabetic or not, there is nothing worse than boring meals week after week. Using a cookbook of this type will add flair and flavor to your daily dining.

Lastly, diabetic cookbooks provide meal options which are good for the entire family. Since diabetic recipes often focus on low fat, low salt menu items, the whole family will benefit in that they will be eating better. This does not mean that they have to sacrifice taste as many recipes will provide flavorful meal options which add various seasonings and spices allowed to be consumed by diabetics.

Where To Find Diabetic Cookbooks
As the supply is being increased to meet the demand of diabetics, you are sure to find a wide array of options with regard to diabetic cookbooks. There are a few places to locate cookbooks of this type. The first is in the cooking section of your local bookstore. Many bookstores have specialty cooking sections where not only diabetics but those with heart conditions, the cholesterol-wary individuals and vegetarians can read up on specialty menus to suit their specific diets.

Another place to look for diabetic cookbooks is online. The Internet provides a convenient way to not only locate diabetic cookbooks but to order them as well and have them delivered directly to your front door. By using a search engine and typing in phrases such as “diabetic cookbook” or “meal planning for diabetics”, you will find a wealth of results right at your fingertips.

If you wish to peruse a variety of cookbooks with meal plans that directly target diabetics, visiting the local library is another option. The larger libraries may offer more options with regard to this specialty type of cookbook as opposed to smaller book venues so if you have a local library with a wide array of books and sections this might be the place to start when searching for cookbooks of this type.

Some Diabetic Cookbooks To Try
Since there are so many options with regard to diabetic cookbooks these days, it may help to narrow down the items and the following will list some of the favorite cookbooks which diabetics are sweeping off the shelves:

Betty Crocker’s Diabetes Cookbook: Everyday Meals, Easy as 1-2-3 is a great starter diabetes cookbook. For those who want a cookbook with easy to prepare meals catered towards their special diet, this is a wonderful one to try. Recipes ranging anywhere from simple fish dishes to tasty chicken fare fill this 256-page cookbook.

Another popular diabetes cookbook is The Diabetes & Heart Healthy Cookbook produced by the American Diabetes Association. Since this organization is well versed in the area of diabetes, it is no wonder that this is a popular choice with diabetics who are hoping to find new, delicious recipes to make on a daily basis.

Cooking For Diabetics: When you are diabetic, or when you have a friend or family member that is, your cooking style is going to have to change in a few ways. The diabetic lifestyle doesn’t have to be that different from other lifestyles, as long as you can make the right accommodations in your cooking. It is often easy to make sure that you provide your friends or family members with great food, as long as you follow a few steps.

First of all, don’t just assume that all diabetics are the same. If you are cooking for yourself, talk to your doctor about your sugar intake and what it should be. Depending on the type of diabetes that you have and the severity of it, you might be managing it with only insulin, or with a combination of diet and insulin. Some diabetics manage it only with diet, so it is important to talk to your doctor about what your sugar intake should be. If you are cooking for someone else, talk to them about it. Don’t’ just assume they can’t have any sugar, and don’t’ assume they can have sugar at all. Talk to them about what they need to eat and drink and then be sure that you stick to their recommendations when cooking.

Secondly, if you think carefully about the way that you cook, and then you  make some changes, you can easily slip into a habit of cooking for diabetics. Often, this can end up being a much healthier way to cook overall, so you  might want to stick to these habits even when there isn’t’ going to be a diabetic at the table.

A good way to start is making a variety of foods. Diabetics do need a variety of foods, just like everyone else. Get some cook books for foods that are naturally low in sugars, and for foods that can be cooked using a sugar substitute. You will find that no matter what type of meal you would like to make, or no matter what type of food you want to eat, there are ways to eat them without sugar or with less sugar.

First, you can cook meals using alternative ingredients. Foods that are naturally low in sugar but taste similar to other foods can be used in place of the foods that are high in sugar. Sugar substitutes can be used in place of sugar. Just about everything comes in sugar free varieties – sugar free candy, sugar free cake and brownie mixes, sugar free drinks and drink mixes. If you cook for diabetics often ,you can simply change what you do to include these sugar free options.

Another thing that you can do while you are cooking for diabetics is to make several choices. If you have a large family or group that you are cooking for, you can make two different bowls of Jello – one with sugar and one without. You can make two pies – one with sugar and one without sugar. Having a couple of choices can be good for everyone, not only for those with diabetics.

Look into a sugar-free lifestyle for yourself, even if you aren’t dealing with diabetes. If you can change the way that you cook for your friends and family members, you might find that it is actually a great benefit to you as well.

Every Day Deserts For Diabetics: Cooking for diabetics might seem daunting because of the decisions that need to be made regarding what diabetics can eat and what they can’t eat. If you want to be able to make cooking decisions for yourself or the diabetic in your family – or even for any of your friends that might be diabetic, there are a few things to think about. Desert is a great meal for the day. Many times, people love to have deserts with each meal, but it is important to think about the implications of this for diabetic people. People with diabetes have different dietary needs, but most of the time, eating sugared foods just isn’t great for them. Diabetics either need to adjust their levels of insulin if they do eat sugared foods, or they need to stay away from these types of foods all together. Therefore, finding every day deserts for diabetics can be one of the best ways to help yourself as a cook. If you have someone with diabetes in your family, or in your circle of friends, finding great ways to have desert shouldn’t be something that takes up your entire day or takes up your cooking time. There are several things that you can do to make sure that the diabetics in your life have great deserts that aren’t going to harm their diets.

Try Fruit
First and foremost, there are plenty of great deserts that you can eat each day with natural sugars and without sugar. Fruits are these kinds of foods, because they are foods with  natural sugars. There are lots of deserts that you can make with fruit. Just having peaches or pears on the table with the cakes and cookies will make a great substitute for the people who don’t want to have sugar, as well as the diabetics who shouldn’t be eating sugared foods. Making fruit salad is easy, and doesn’t take up much time, but even easier still is opening up a can of fruit or getting some fresh at the grocery store. Fruit is a good desert for everyone – diabetics included.

Nuts and Raisins
Instead of having an elaborate cake or pudding for your desert, trying passing around a bowl of nuts and raisins. You can add some sugar-free chocolate chips into the mixture as well. Often desert time is the time when people enjoy having coffee and chatting, and bowls of finger snacks like nuts or raisins can make a great desert idea. They are healthy too, not just sugar free alternatives to cake or cookies or ice cream. You can make sure that your whole family is enjoying a small snack after dinner that can work as a great desert.

Go Sugar Free
Of course, you can also go sugar free when it comes to fast and easy deserts. It isn’t hard any longer to make your regular deserts with sugar substitutes. There are plenty of them out there on the market today, and if you aren’t sure what is the best for the diabetic in your life, just ask them and they can let you know.

Remember that each person with diabetes has a different sugar-level that they are comfortable with and that is best for them medically speaking. Not all diabetics avoid all sugar, but some of them cannot have any type of sugar at all. Therefore, before you make great and easy deserts, just talk a little bit about it with our family so you know what is going to be best.

Dealing With Holiday Desserts For Diabetics: Every year, when the holidays roll around, it seems that many diabetics simply miss out on some of the most delicious meals and treats of the year!  It doesn’t have to be like that.  Today, there are many ways for diabetics to enjoy eating during the holidays, especially desserts.  Before anyone can fully understand how to make holiday desserts for diabetics, they need to understand what the disease is all about.

Diabetes mellitus, more commonly referred simply as diabetes, is a metabolic disorder that is characterized by high levels of blood sugar, or glucose.  These elevated levels occur when the body produces very little or no insulin but can also happen when the body doesn’t respond correctly to the insulin that is produced.  Diabetes is usually an incurable disease and can result in blindness, amputation, kidney failure, heart disease, stroke, or even death when neglected or mismanaged.

Maintaining a healthy diet conducive to the diabetic condition is essential to treating the disease.  Depending on what type of diabetes you have (Type I or II), you will need to manage your diet accordingly.  With Type I diabetes, you will need to understand just how different foods will affect your blood sugar levels.  With Type II, you will need to cut calories, as it is often a result of overeating.  Regardless of which type you have, you will always need to eat the proper balance of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates to maintain healthy and safe blood sugar levels.

Traditionally, many diabetics have struggled during the holiday season maintaining healthy blood sugar levels.  It seems that once the holiday season rolls around there is a candy cane on every corner, batches of freshly baked cookies, and plenty of pumpkin pie!  Inevitably, every holiday meal has a great big sweet finale, no matter which holiday you are celebrating.  This can be quite a dilemma for diabetics.

With modern medical knowledge, we have learned that it is all about balance rather than cutting sugar and desserts out of a diet completely.  So, if you want that piece of apple pie after the big turkey dinner, just remember to skip the mashed potatoes and stuffing at dinner.  Remember, you can have dessert, just think about what you choose during the meal.

You can also modify many dessert recipes without making them taste like they are sugar- or fat-free.  A simple way to do this is to cut the sugar by one-third (or even up to one-half) while increasing the amount of cinnamon, vanilla, or nutmeg so often found in holiday desserts.  By boosting the sweet spices and cutting the sugar, you are improving the recipe for a diabetic diet.

Cutting the fat out of holiday desserts is also a good way to play it safe.  Replace the fat (butter or shortening) with pureed fruit like applesauce or baby-food prunes in cakes, cookies, and chocolate brownies.  When you add fruit, you also can easily reduce the sugar since the fruit is naturally sweet!  And there are always sugar substitutes.  Many on the market taste just like real sugar.

The guide to having a happy and healthy holiday season is to think ahead.  Just because you are a diabetic does not mean that you cannot look forward to all the fun that this festive season has to offer.  Advanced planning, daily exercise, and emphasizing healthy choices when it comes to each meal are key elements to being able to have your cake and eating it, too.

Incorporating Sugar Free Food Into Every Meal: It is often a daunting task when you are faced with cooking for diabetics or dealing with the needs of diabetics. You might think that you need to change everything about the way that you cook or about the way that you eat food. However, things don’t always need to change when it comes to the way that things taste. You can easily incorporate sugar free foods into each meal that you have, making it easy for you to continue to enjoy the same foods, whether you’re cooking for yourself or a family member, or even for friends.

Sugar free foods can be great for you even if you aren’t a diabetic. Too much sugar leads to tooth decay and all sorts of other problems, and can even lead to diabetes in the future for yourself. So, incorporating sugar free foods into each meal that you eat can actually make you healthier.

First of all, you want to look into natural sugar substitutes and sugar that is found naturally in the world. Depending on what your doctor tells you about the type of diabetes, some of this sugar might still be off limits to you. However, there are plenty of sweet foods that don’t have sugar, and these foods can be used in all sorts of recipes to insure that you can have a sugar free lifestyle without losing the taste.

Secondly, you can use sugar substitutes, or sugar free versions of the same types of foods. These are versions that taste the same and even smell the same, but simply don’t have the sugar in them that causes problems with diabetics. Therefore, you can easily deal with the same tasting and smelling foods, without the same level of sugar. Everything comes in sugar free varieties now a days. You can get sugar free chocolate chips to put into the cookies, or sugar free sweeteners to make your cakes or pies. You can get fruit that comes with no extra sugar added, and you can get drinks that have artificial sweeteners in them. No matter what it is that you would like to cook, you can do so with sugar free substitutes.

The first thing to think about when you are going to make the shift to incorporating sugar free foods into every meal is where your sugar is coming from currently. What are the things that you eat in your diet that have sugar. Start by making a list. If you have sugary cereal and juices high in sugar in the morning, and then have cookies or cakes for desert, you need to add these things to your list. Go through a list where you find all of the sugars in your daily meals. Then, you can systematically begin to cut them out. Find the cereals that don’t have sugar, and find sugar-free substitutes to put on the cereals. Buy the juices that have no sugar added, and do the same for the cookies or cakes that you eat later on in the day. Find a good sugar substitute and swap your actual sugar at home for it. Sugar shouldn’t be something that accidentally falls into your diet. It is a choice that you make, and if you think things through and plan accordingly, you can make your diet completely sugar free each and every day.

Making The Holidays Fun With Great Food For Diabetics: The holidays can be wonderful times for your friends and family. There is always so much to eat, and so many wonderful times to get together. If you are diabetic, or someone in your family is, it is important to be sure that you have selections of food that diabetics can eat without worrying about their diets.

First of all, it is important to remember that each person who is a diabetic has different dietary needs. There are different forms of diabetes. Some people eat a regular diet and then use insulin to counteract the sugar that they have eaten. For these people regular holiday foods are going to be fine. However, some diabetics prefer to stay away from sugar, and some can’t have it at all. Therefore, if you are having guests to your home it is a good idea to have lots of different foods for the holidays and many different choices as well so no matter what a person’s needs are, they can pick and choose what is best for them.

First of all, plan meals with plenty of choices. During the holiday season you are always going to have people dropping in and out and will most likely always be needing to serve meals. However, it isn’t always easy to keep everyone’s choices in mind, so have lots of options. When you make food, make a few different main courses  ,and a lot of side dishes and salads. It might be a little bit of work, but it can make the holidays better for all.

When you make main courses that you know everyone is going to be eating, make them diabetic friendly. Don’t put in refined sugar – use a non-sugar substitute if you do need sugar. If you absolutely can’t get away from using sugar, be sure to make a second main course without any sugar in it so diabetics can enjoy the food as well.

When you are cooking side dishes, be sure that you are cooking a wide variety of them. Make some with the regular amounts of sugar, make some with sugar substitutes, and then make some without any sugar at all. If you have diabetics who are coming to your home, or you have some in your family, you can even make little cards to put near the dishes of food. Simply labeling items as “Sugar Free!” can be a great and easy way to let diabetics know what is okay for them to eat and what should be avoided. It will also save anyone who isn’t comfortable about talking about their food choices with others the embarrassment of having to ask what is okay for them and what isn’t okay.

Don’t’ forget the drinks when you are looking at your menus for the holidays. Often drinks are overlooked and only regular sodas and fancy fruit punches are included. Remember that you should have a selection of diet or sugar free sodas, and punches made without sugar. Also, remember that some diabetics are instructed to stay away from alcohol or from certain types of alcohol. Make sure that you have a decent selection including all sorts of things for your friends and family members to eat and drink while they are visiting for the holidays.

With a little bit of planning ahead, your holiday celebrations can be great experiences for everyone – diabetics included!

Snacking With Diabetes: Living with diabetes isn’t always easy, but there are a number of diabetes diets which can help you to maintain your blood insulin levels and keep your blood sugar under control.  The problem with these diabetes diets is that many of them fail to incorporate snacking in any way, and many diabetics who had grown up accustomed to having the occasional snack have to learn rather quickly how to adjust their life and diet to completely ignore their snack cravings.  It doesn’t have to be this way, however; snacking can still be a part of the diabetic’s healthy lifestyle, and for those who incorporate regular exercise into their diabetes regulation it can even help to prevent dangerous blood sugar lows that can occur after exercise.

The key to snacking with diabetes is moderation and portion control.  Make sure that you don’t snack too often or in too large of amounts and most snacks aren’t going to cause problems with your blood sugar.  The manner by which you choose your snacks should be consistent with how you choose other foods that you eat, so if you know that a snack food will potentially cause problems then it should be avoided.  Provided you don’t go overboard with your portions, however, a number of favorite snacks can still be had at least from time to time even when living with diabetes.

Snacks high in sugar should obviously still be avoided, just as you would any high-sugar food that could cause problems with your blood sugar.  Many popular snacks now come in a reduced-sugar or no-sugar alternative version as well, so even some of your favorite sweet snacks can still be enjoyed without guilt or worry.  A number of healthy alternative snacks can still be enjoyed as well, since they have a significantly lower sugar content and can provide vitamins and minerals which will help you to regulate your diabetes as well.

If you are prone to fluctuations in blood sugar during certain parts of the day, snacks might actually help you to keep your diabetes under control.  Try to remember to have a small snack during any part of the day when your blood sugar usually drops, monitoring your blood sugar closely when you first add a snack to your regular diabetes diet regimen.  It’s important that you keep an eye on your blood sugar for at least the first few weeks, since this will let you know how much of an increase you have from the snacks that you eat and whether or not your portions should be lowered or increased.  Even after the first few weeks you should still check your blood sugar after eating snacks from time to time, to make sure that your blood sugar remains within an acceptable range.

As with all aspects of your diet and your diabetes management, make sure that you discuss the possible benefits of adding snacks to your diet schedule with your doctor.  Not only will they be able to help you determine proper snack portions and the types of snack foods that will be best for you, but they will also likely be able to suggest good times of the day for you to have your snacks.  They may even be able to advise you of specific exercises or other activities that you can add to your daily routine if you were wanting to add both snacks and exercise in an effort to better control your diabetes.

Importance Of Having Diabetic Friendly Treats Available: There are many things that you want to think about as you are planning meals for yourself as a diabetic, or for someone else who is a diabetic. First of all, you’ve probably put a lot of time into thinking about the various ways that you can incorporate sugar free foods into the meals that you cook. This might take up a lot of your planning time, and be a big part of your life for awhile. Once you’ve figured it out, it will be easy, but to start with, it is going to be difficult. However, you might be overlooking something else that is important when you are planning your life as a diabetic, or when you are running a household that contains a diabetic.

Sugar is an important part of the problem when it comes to diabetics, but there is another side to the equation, and that is the side of having enough of it. There are different kinds of sugars – bad sugars and good sugars – and usually a person is able to regulate these on their own, by the insulin that their body makes. However, diabetics don’t’ make insulin, and it is often hard for them to regulate the levels of sugar in their bodies. While it is important to cut out the instances of bad sugar, it is also important to makes sure that the levels of good sugar are right for people who have diabetes.

Therefore, it is important for you to have diabetic friendly treats that are available around the clock in your house. Often, a diabetic will need to eat a snack at certain times each day, and will need to make sure that their meals are set up like clock work as well. Regulating when you eat and how often you eat is a big part of managing your diabetes, so you will need to focus on having snacks and meals that are available to the diabetic in your life.

A good way to start is to regulate the times for each meal of the day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner should all be at certain times, and you should not deviate from this. In order to make sure that you stay healthy, eat at the same time each day for all three meals and make sure that the meals you are eating are what your doctor considers balanced meals for you and for your type of diabetes. Then, be sure that you also schedule regular snacks. You will need to eat small snacks between meals as part of your general health, so be sure that you have diabetic-friendly snacks that are available.

Lastly, you will need to keep several things handy. Diabetics often have changes in their diet that cause them to need certain things. Some diabetics might need a stash of sugary snacks or foods in order to help them regulate their blood sugar in an emergency. Therefore, it might not be wise to get rid of all of the sugar in your home. You will also need to have some food on hand that a diabetic can snack on regularly, in order to keep their blood sugar up on normal days. Be sure that you have plenty of healthy snacks that they can eat. Lastly, pay attention to the snacks and what a diabetic person is eating. Too much or too little can often be a sign of problems ahead.

Chef Brings Personal Experience to Diabetic Meals: He swears like a sailor, wears his hair long and dons an apron daily. Tom Valenti is a chef’s chef. He is well known in New York for his inspired way with food and he’s not shy about trying new things. Oh, did I mention he’s diabetic?

Valenti was informed back in the 1990’s he had Type 2 diabetes. This can have a very negative effect on a chef. After all they make their living with food and much of their success depends on experimentation. They need to taste their creations to know if they have succeeded. Could he continue his life’s passion with diabetes? Valenti found a way.

The News and Observer reports, “When Valenti got his diagnosis, he changed his diet, but he didn’t change his cooking. And he didn’t talk much about it.”

Besides making the recipes that made him famous Valenti also began slowly experimenting in foods that were both pleasing to his palate and acceptable to his diabetic dietary goals.

WABC says, “This gourmet superstar chef is a healthy eater now and keeps his diabetes in check. And while he still craves food he shouldn’t have, his cooking is satisfying for him and he hopes for others.”

At some point Valenti decided that others might enjoy dishes he specifically created to trick his tastebuds into finding renewed zest for mealtime. This began his journey into writing a very accessible cookbook entitled, “You Don’t Have to Be Diabetic To Love This Cookbook”.

CBS quoted Valenti in a portion of his book. “Beyond discovering how useful my standard operating procedures were for my new scenario, I found that very often honoring the limits of diabetes simply meant rejiggering the proportions in a dish, emphasizing proteins and vegetables over pastas, legumes, and so on.”

Many who have tried his dishes believe Valenti has succeeded in quality ‘rejiggering’.

The following Valenti recipe is courtesy of ABC news.

Fish en Papillote

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 lemon, divided into sections, sections peeled
4 white fish fillets, such as cod (4 ounces each)
4 plum tomatoes, seeded and thickly sliced crosswise
¼ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
8 fresh tarragon leaves (optional)
2 small shallots, minced
½ teaspoon coarse salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
2. Cut 4 pieces of aluminum foil (or parchment paper), each about 18 inches square. Smear butter on each piece and top each with a fish fillet. Neatly pile the tomatoes, lemon sections, parsley, tarragon, if using, and shallots on top of each fillet and season them with the salt and pepper. Sprinkle each fillet with ¹/8 cup of the wine and 1½ teaspoons of the olive oil.
3. Fold the foil up over each fillet and crimp the edges together to create a packet. Put the fish packets on a baking sheet and set the baking sheet over medium heat on a stovetop burner until you hear a sizzling sound, about 45 seconds. Transfer the baking sheet to the oven and bake the fish until cooked through, about 7 minutes.
4. Carefully put a foil packet on each of 4 plates and serve. Remind diners to cut the packets open cautiously.

“You Don’t Have to Be Diabetic To Love This Cookbook” by Tom Valenti retails for $32.95 hardcover, $19.95 paperback and contains 250 recipes specifically for diabetics and those who love them.

Diabetics Going Vegan: An expo recently held in New York City was sponsored by the American Diabetes Association (ADA). The expo had a variety of educational stations designed to help people understand and manage diabetes. A vegan diet was part of the discussion.

One of the guests was referred to in the New York Times blog, Well. Chef Jason Wyrick was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes eight years ago. At age 28, Wyrick struggled with his eyesight and his blood sugar was extremely high. As a personal choice he gravitated to a vegan diet and indicates his condition was completely turned around by making this choice.

The New York Times blog indicates, “A 2006 study published in Diabetes Care compared a low-fat vegan diet to a standard diet following the traditional American Diabetes Association guidelines. Both diets improved glycemic and lipid control in patients with diabetes, but the low-fat vegan diet produced the best results.”

Chef Wyrick used the avocado as his main vegetable in his cooking demonstrations. What follows is one of his recipes.

Roasted Red Pepper Avocado Dip

1 avocado
2 roasted red peppers
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
1 clove of garlic
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground salt
1 teaspoon fresh oregano leaves (optional)

Combine all of the ingredients in a blender or food processor and puree. Serve with sliced cucumber.

For more clarity on a vegan diet in relation to Type 2 diabetes we checked in with the Mayo Clinic. They indicated, “Changing to a vegetarian diet probably won’t cure your diabetes. But it may offer some benefits over a nonvegetarian diet — such as helping to better control your weight, reducing your risk of some diabetes-associated complications, and possibly even making your body more responsive to insulin. This, of course, depends on the type of vegetarian diet you choose and the particular food choices you make when following the diet.”

Weight gain is the most common link to the development of Type 2 diabetes. The Mayo Clinic further notes, “Significant weight loss resulting from a vegetarian diet can improve type 2 diabetes in people who are obese. But this is also true of similar weight loss from a nonvegetarian diet. Some research indicates that a vegetarian diet makes your body more responsive to insulin — which is a very good thing if you have diabetes. In fact, in a 2006 study published in the journal Diabetes Care (the same report listed above), 43 percent of people with type 2 diabetes who ate a low-fat vegan diet reduced their need for diabetes medications.”

As far as what plan might be best the May Clinic suggests, “There’s no single vegetarian eating plan. A vegan diet is the strictest of all vegetarian diets. Vegans eat no animal meat and no foods that come from animals, such as dairy products and eggs. Other types of vegetarian diets may allow dairy products and eggs.”

In the Vegan Food Guide (think food pyramid) the most common item that should be consumed are 6-11 servings of grains followed by at least 3 servings of vegetables and 2 servings of fruit. As you move higher on the pyramid there are 6-11 servings of soymilk or alternatives as well as 2-3 servings beans or alternatives. At the top of the vegan pyramid are vitamin supplements including Omega 3, vitamin D and vitamin B-12.

A vegan diet may not be for everyone, but for those who have tried it as part of a diabetic management plan they have been very pleased with the results. If nothing else perhaps this can provide some encouragement to try to vegetable-based meal ideas to help lower cholesterol, fat and calories.