If you’ve had diabetes for a while, or even if you’ve only been recently diagnosed, you’re probably already tired of your diabetes educator, your doctor, or your dietitian preaching to you about portion control.
Your health care providers are probably so concerned about getting the message across that you should only have a single cookie, a 3-ounce portion of meat or poultry, and high calorie oils and butter in moderation that they didn’t tell you what you can eat all you want of: non-starchy vegetables.
These include all lettuces and leafy greens, cucumbers, radishes, cauliflower, broccoli, beets, summer squash, green beans, and lots, lots more. You can find a full list here.
The American Diabetes Association calls these the non-starchy vegetables and they say that a serving is 1/2 cup of cooked vegetable or 1 cup of the raw vegetable. This serving size has about 5 grams of carbohydrate, so unless you’re loading up on other carbs at the same meal, you can eat two or three servings of these at a time.
Not only are these choices nearly a free ride when it comes to carbs, they are low in calories, high in fiber, and all of them have healthful antioxidants. If you’re out of ideas for preparing vegetables, check out the website FruitsandVeggiesMoreMatters.org. The site has more than 1000 recipes for fruits and vegetables in an easily searchable database.
Go to Eating Well magazine and Cooking Light magazine too and search for vegetable recipes. These two magazines do a fantastic job of creating great tasting recipes that are easy to prepare. I recommend them for people with diabetes also because all their recipes have the nutrition information included, so you’ll know how much of the dish can fit into your diet.
When was the last time someone told you to eat more of anything? Now, get yourself to the farmers’ market and start cooking.
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