I’m not sure if this should be here, but I figured, hey, it’s about food. About a month ago, my husband was hospitalized with a health scare. While he was in the hospital, we found out he has diabetes, his blood sugar was very high.
So, he’s on a med and we are trying to make dietary changes. I do the cooking. I need help. Give me some delicious recipes. I made a tomato based soup with veggies and ground beef that we enjoyed. It was so much better the next day, I think it would be better with chicken. I want to do a simple homemade pasta sauce.
I made chicken cacciatore which I haven’t made in ages, it was delicious.
He’s been eating a lot of egg salad for lunch, our daughter has mixed it with part mayo, part Greek yogurt.
I’ve got a snack recipe with chickpeas I want to try. I’ve been doing more sweet potatoes, but damn we miss my homemade mashed potatoes.
Ok, we don’t enjoy seafood, but beyond that, I’m open to suggestions for breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts and snacks. What’ve you got?
Have you guys seen a nutrishionist yet? First line in the dietary wars.
Once he figures out how his pancreas is working and what he needs to keep a balance in his body it will be easier.
What works for me would probably not work for him.
Have him keep checking his glucose at different times of the day and getting used to feeling the highs and lows.
Adjusting to a balance is trial and error.
Good luck.
Oh there’s 100s of recipes and cook books for diabetics. I normally eat what we’ve cooked(within reason, alas no ice cream sundaes) I adjust my portions, fill in with kale or greens of some kind.
As @Beckdawrek says, there are a lot of different specifics under the broad label “diabetes”. Once the initial crisis is under control, the severity of his disease will become obvious. Left untreated, everybody eventually gets into bad shape. But once under treatment and the backlog of inattention is cleared out, the nature of the real ongoing problem becomes clear. As you’ll learn.
But as a general matter just leave all the simple carbs out of every meal. Skip the flour, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and sugar and you’ll be fine.
A meal that used to be a pork chop, green beans, mashed potatoes, and maybe some mac and cheese turns into a pork chop, more green beans, no mashed potatoes, and some cheese hunks, not cheese sauce and certainly not mac. If you want a hamburger, throw away the bun and eat the rest with a knife and fork. etc.
One pot meals are a bit harder, almost all of them throw rice, potatoes, or flour in there. Leave that stuff out of the pot and make a smaller portion on the side for you to add to your bowl at the table, not his.
There are lots and lots of sources for “diabetic” recipes, including the ADA website. Many of them are loaded with simple carbs. The thinking being that most people can’t make themselves eat actually diabetic-healthy, so instead we’ll offer them the sop of eating less badly than they used to and thereby only kill them slowly, not quickly. IMO YMMV.
Most meats and vegetables are fine. Steak has almost no carbs. Pork chop, pulled pork, roast beef, lamb chops, hamburger, roast chicken, grilled chicken, marinated chicken thighs… Spinach, asparagus, cabbage, broccoli, chard, cauliflower, radishes, okra, cucumbers, mushrooms, tomatoes, zucchini (some vegetables i can’t eat, like green pepper and eggplant) even some of the ones that feel richer like butternut squash are okay.
Thank you all for some great advice here. It’s certainly a learning curve. He’s very good about testing regularly. I have found some recipes I want to try with beans, and as was mentioned portion control is so important . I’ve been doing sweet potatoes more often and, I’ve cut back on other potatoes. The other night I roasted some red potatoes and gave him a smaller portion. I read that waxy potatoes are better than starchy ones and that the preparation makes a difference (roasted rather than mashed) for example.
A little trick: Cooking potatoes or rice, then reheating them, lowers their glycemic load. As mentioned above, though, he should test to see how they actually affect his blood glucose.
There is also a whole world of substitutes for various foods. Most of them aren’t perfect, but some are good enough to be enjoyed. Note that I’m only pre-diabetic, and I’ve never done self testing to better understand how my body really works.
I personally enjoy shirataki noodles as a lower carb choice for pasta.
I used to make “lasagna” by using plane deli chicken slices instead of noodles. The noodles are bland placeholders anyway, and the chicken is pretty bland. You have to adjust for the fact that you don’t have starch to thicken the sauce. It’s not lasagna, but it provides most of the joy without the big carb hit.
It’s also useful to find out what ramps up metabolism. I’ve been told that I can eat a little worse after exercise, if I want. And that having a little protein before a little carb helps as well.
Prompt exercise after eating carbs is very helpful too. Eg. have a hamburger and do eat the whole bun? Go walk a mile just afterwards and your BG will be fine. Go sit in front of the TV afterwards instead and your BG will have a big bad bump. No need for the walk to be fast or difficult; just keep the big muscles moving for ~20 minutes and you’ll burn up most of the spike before it can harm the rest of your body.
We don’t eat a lot of rice, but I’ve switched to cauliflower rice when we do. My daughter has been a great help at researching and finding substitutes.
Vaguely unrelated, but I think if you drink metamucil, or a protein shake as a beverage with a meal, it lowers the glycemic index and postprandial glucose spike.
if you eat rice, look into basmati rice. The glycemic index is fairly low for rice.
I’ve found most labeled as “diabetic” foods are very disappointing. I’ve been doing this my whole life, and keep revisiting that aisle/shelf in the grocery store. Not much has changed except price. Make sure if you pick up a product you double check the normal version isn’t nearly the same, before you pay double.
Yes, yes, yes exercise is the true way to put diabetes on its ear.
Of course you have to eat. So making smart choices is the only way. I have a very restricted eating plan because I have other issues. I eat the same foods over and over. The ones I know, know won’t kill me. It’s boring. But I kinda like not feeling ill.
Y’all don’t have to be that way. Just watch the carbs. Cut out what really spikes him and exercise.
IME most of the specifically “diabetic” labeled foods are shams, consisting of some reduction in carbs and a gross amount of weird science. And a super-extra high price.
As to rice IME …
White starchy sticky rice is the worst, white non-sticky is a little better, brown ordinary is a bunch better yet and is roughly tied w ordinary white everyday basmati, and the best of the bunch is brown basmati. Which you will probably only find at a genuine South Asian grocery store.
None are all that good as a diabetic food, but for me a few bites of brown basmati makes any meal better than would 1 bite of ordinary white. for equivalent glycemic load. My attitude is that at least there’s some rice there with my oriental wokked chix & veggies or Indian tikka masala or whatever. The first couple times you have basmati w a Mexican dish in lieu of yellow Spanish rice the flavor profile is a bit weird, but it can be gotten used to.
I buy all my rice at a genuine South Asian grocery store. Rice is kinda our staple, and they sell large sacks at a good price. I mostly get Jasmine Rice for every day and basmati rice for special occasions.
Maybe not useful advise for diabetic cooking, but if you buy much rice, getting it at Asian specially shops is the way to go.
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