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Cooking for Diabetics
Anyone who lives with the lifestyle changes required by a
diabetes diagnosis knows that "diabetic cooking" is much more
than just substituting artificial sweeteners for sugar in your
diet. (In fact, as you'll soon discover, I don't even use
artificial sweeteners anywhere on this site!)
If you have been used to using that cooking by
instinct method of throwing in a little of this and a little of
that (what I used to call my "psychic method of cooking"),
you'll need to step back and rethink each little bit of what you
add. Once you do learn the differences, you'll find that it's
been a transition that is not only less intimidating than what
you expected, but one that is beneficial to your heart, your
waistline and hips, and your blood glucose levels as well.
Each recipe in this section has been analyzed
using the
NutriBase
software program; you'll find a "Nutritional Analysis" and the
"Exchange Approximations" for each serving. Whenever
appropriate, that nutritional analysis also includes saturated
fat (Sat. Fat) information with the Nutritional Analysis for
each recipe. As a bonus, whenever a recipe includes appreciable
fiber amounts, those Fiber grams are included in the Nutritional
Analysis information as well. The Nutritional Analysis for each
recipe includes the sodium amounts, too.
Debates among nutritionists and the
ADA about whether or not there are benefits to the
Glycemic Index (GI) will surely continue for some time.
Known facts, however, include the benefits of more fiber and
less fat in one's diet. Studies done by the
American
Heart Association on the lowering of blood cholesterol and
recommendations made by
American
Institute for Cancer Research's The New American Plate® program
confirm this. Therefore, the foods usually recommended by the GI
proponents as those to avoid -- ready-to-eat breakfast cereals,
instant mashed potatoes, and polished rice -- aren't foods you'd
want in your diet on a frequent basis anyhow, not if you're
aiming for a more healthy diet.
Some carbohydrates are simply healthier than
others. That much is a fact, not speculation.
With that in mind, remember that just because
granulated sugar is used in some of these recipes instead of
artificial sweeteners isn't an indication that any "carb
counting" on your part should consist entirely of sugar as your
carb-counted choice. Sugar is in essence an "empty" calorie; it
has no measurable nutritional value. Its only purpose in a
recipe is to make it more palatable -- make it taste better.
Such taste is also open to interpretation. Some like foods
sweeter than do others. Some prefer artificial sweeteners -- or
their dieticians recommend them, while others do not -- be it
because of taste, chemical sensitivities, or any number of other
reasons. (Besides, once you begin to cut some of the sugar from
your diet, you'll find that you'll benefit in other ways, too,
such as noticing the natural sweetness of foods that you may
have missed before; even something you'd normally not equate
with being sweet. Cauliflower, for example, has a savory
sweetness all its own that's missed when it's laden with all of
those fat calories from a cheese sauce.)
Then there's the factor that the application of
one artificial sweetener (how much to use in a recipe) varies
from one to another; they aren't all created equal, no pun
intended. You may not be familiar with how one teaspoon of
sucralose (Splenda®)
or one of aspartame (Equal®)
will taste. Chances are that you have had sugar at some point in
your life, so you can use that acquired knowledge -- and the
knowledge of which artificial sweeteners are appropriate for use
in which recipes -- to make educated decisions about which
sweetener to substitute if calorie restrictions or other factors
in your diet requires a complete avoidance of sugar. (Note that
if your dietician does recommend that you avoid sugar in all
instances, when a recipe calls for sugar, you can substitute the
all natural, low-GI sweetener
Whey Low
and achieve the same taste.)
Therefore, regardless of whether or not there is
any validity to the GI, recipes in this section will include the
low-GI diet-recommended (and proven heart-healthier and
New American Plate®-recommended) foods like whole grain
breads and pasta, beans, peas, lentils, bulgur, unrefined and
less-refined rice, and oat bran as often as possible.
You know better than any cookbook author/Web
site guru ever could whether or not ingesting a specific food
produces an unexpected or undesirable result of either a high or
low blood glucose level. When in doubt about any of the recipes
on this site, please take note of such food intolerances and
discuss them with your dietician, taking his or her advice
regarding those foods and how incorporate that advice into your
meal planning.
Copyright © 2002 Pamela Rice
Hahn
(Some of the information on this page has been adapted from
The Everything Diabetes Cookbook, available now from
Adams Media.)
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