Top Power Foods for Diabetes : Diabetes Diet

Diabetes is on the rise, yet most cases are preventable with healthy lifestyle changes.
Living with diabetes doesn't have to mean feeling deprived . We'll help you learn to balance your meals and make the healthiest food choices.

To help manage your diabetes, your meals need to be:

• Regular and spread evenly throughout the day
• Lower in fat, particularly saturated fat
• If you take insulin or diabetes tablets, you may need to have between meal snacks

Fat

Fats have the highest energy (kilojoule or calorie) content of all foods. Eating too much fat can make you put on weight, which may make it more difficult to manage blood glucose levels. While it is important to try and reduce fat in your diet, especially if you are trying to lose weight, some fat is good for health.

Beans

Beans have more to boast about than being high in fiber (plant compounds that help you feel full, steady blood sugar, and even lower cholesterol; a half cup of black beans delivers more than 7 grams). They're a not-too-shabby source of calcium, a mineral that research shows can help burn body fat. In ½ cup of white beans, you'll get almost 100 mg of calcium—about 10% of your daily intake. Beans also make an excellent protein source; unlike other proteins Americans commonly eat (such as red meat), beans are low in saturated fat—the kind that gunks up arteries and can lead to heart disease.

Herbs, condiments & drinks

You can use these following foods to add flavour and variety to your meals.
Herbs, spices, garlic, chilli, lemon juice, vinegar and other seasonings.
Products labelled ‘low joule’ (e.g. low joule/diet soft drinks, low joule jelly).
Tea, coffee, herbal tea, water, soda water, plain mineral water.
Limit your alcohol intake if you choose to drink

Apples

An apple a day keeps the doctor away -- specifically the cardiologist. A 2012 study at Ohio State University published in the Journal of Functional Foods found that eating just one apple a day for four weeks lowered LDL (bad) cholesterol by 40 percent. The professor leading the study explained that not all antioxidants are created equal, and that a particular type of antioxidant in apples had a profound effect on lowering LDLs, a contributor to heart disease. The study was funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Apple Association, among other supporters.

Sugar

A healthy eating plan for diabetes can include some sugar. However, it is important to consider the nutritional value of the foods you eat. In general, foods with added sugars should be consumed sparingly (manufacturers sometimes use fruit juice or other sources of sugar to avoid using table sugar). In particular, high energy foods such as sweets, lollies and standard soft drinks should not be consumed on a regular basis.

Some sugar may also be used in cooking and many recipes can be modified to use less than the amount stated or substituted with an alternative sweetener. Select recipes that are low in fat (particularly saturated fat) and contain some fibre.
Alternative sweeteners

The use of intense sweeteners by people with diabetes is preferable to use of natural sugars.

Tuna

Another amazingly healthy fish, a 3-ounce piece of tuna contains 1,300 mg of omega-3s and a respectable amount of vitamin D to boot. But tuna can be high in mercury, a compound that may cause neurological problems in huge doses. To be safe, buy canned light tuna instead of albacore and limit your tuna intake to 12 ounces a week.

Asparagus

Based on taste alone, asparagus is a favorite food for many. But you'll really love that it's a nonstarchy vegetable with only 5 grams of carb, 20 calories, and almost 2 grams of dietary fiber per serving. It's especially high in an antioxidant called glutathione, which plays a key role in easing the effects of aging and many diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Oats

Like barley and beans, oats are a diabetes power food because of their fiber content—a half cup of instant oats provides 4 g. Research shows that oat lovers can also lower total and "bad" LDL cholesterol and improve insulin resistance. All the soluble fiber oats contain slows the rate at which your body can break down and absorb carbohydrates, which means your blood sugar levels stay stable.