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Back to basics on carbohydrate foods

August 25, 2014 by Sally Leave a Comment

So many people I see in my practice who’ve had diabetes for a while, when I ask them which foods contain carbohydrates they struggle to answer. So this is really a back to basics blog to remind us about which foods contain carbohydrate, why it’s important to recognise them, which foods don’t contain carbohydrate (or enough to worry about from a diabetes point of view) and a quick summary on quality and quantity issues. I hope it will also be helpful for those of you newly diagnosed with D.

Why is it important for people with diabetes to understand about carbohydrates?

The billions of cells in our body choose glucose as their fuel to help them keep us functioning properly. The food that we eat contains energy from carbohydrates, proteins and fats and it’s the carbohydrates that are broken down by our digestive system and becomes glucose in our bloodstream to fuel those busy cells. The proteins and fats play other key roles including repair, protection and communication and we need a quality balance of all three for wellbeing. The words I’ve highlighted here will take you other blogs on those topics if you feel like you need further information about them.

Of course with diabetes we need to manage how much glucose is in our bloodstream, which is why it’s important to understand how much carbohydrate is in different foods, and how both quality and quantity of the carbs we eat makes an impact. The glycemic index of the carbs we choose also makes a big impact, so I encourage you to read this blog to learn more about this important aspect of carbohydrates. The only time we need high-GI carbs is for hypo treatments, and this should be discussed with your D-team.

We can’t just cut carbohydrates out of our diet as our bodies need them for basic energy requirements, and many of the foods that contain carbohydrates also contain essential nutrients for our wellbeing. It’s also not sustainable to just eat protein, fat and non-starchy vegetables. So if we can learn how to choose quality carbohydrates in reasonable amounts it can make an enormous difference to both our diabetes management and our overall wellbeing.

Which foods contain carbohydrates?

A good place to start is the Australian Dietary Guidelines and the five food groups which all contain sources of carbohydrates:

Vegetables – mainly potato, sweet potato, corn and legumes/beans
Fruit
Grains (cereal) foods
Protein foods – really only the legumes/beans and some nuts.
Dairy

Carbohydrates from these five groups are necessary for our overall wellbeing. The idea with diabetes is to take the majority of your carb intake from these groups. Again, click the highlighted words to link to previous blogs written just on those topics.

Discretionary choices or ‘sometimes foods’

Most of these contain carbohydrates, and (sadly for some) they’re not ‘good’ carbs so you need to be aware when you choose foods like these that you’re likely to upset your blood glucose control and disrupt your wellness.

As outlined in the Australian Dietary Guidelines, discretionary choices include these types of foods below which you’ll notice, along with fats, salt and alcohol, also contain carbohydrates that will affect our blood glucose management:

Sweet biscuits, cakes and desserts
Processed meats and sausages
Ice-cream, confectionery and chocolate
Meat pies and other pastries
Commercial burgers, hot chips and fried foods
Crisps and other fatty and/or salty snacks
Cream and butter
Sugar-sweetened cordials, soft drinks, fruit drinks and sports drinks
Alcoholic drinks

Which foods don’t contain carbohydrates?

Most of the protein foods (other than legumes/beans and some nuts) are carbohydrate free, and fats are carbohydrate free.

Non-starchy vegetables are also fairly carbohydrate free, in that we don’t need to worry about ‘counting’ the carbs in them.

In terms of dairy, the one that tricks many is that cheese doesn’t contain (much) carbohydrate – again not enough to worry us for counting it.

It’s important to remember with these ‘carb-free’ foods, that many of them contain calories/kilojoules so will affect our weight which in turn can affect our diabetes, so it’s important to check with your dietitian as to how much of each you should be consuming.

How do I carbohydrate count?

This subject really depends on the type of diabetes you have as to how accurate you need to be with your carb counting.

As a general rule though, here in Australia we count 15g of carbohydrates in a serve of food as one carbohydrate serve. If it’s 3g less, then it’s half a serve, and 3g more than 15g is 1.5 serves.

For people with type 2 diabetes who are not on insulin, we often suggest a small fist size counts as one carb serve – think one piece of bread, one glass of milk, one piece of fruit, etc.

How many serves you have depends on you and your health professional’s personalised advice for you. In terms of a minimum amount of carbohydrate, you might like to read this blog discussing low carb diets.

There are some excellent free resources to find out how much carbohydrate is in different foods. There are lots of these available, but a few good examples include:

In Summary

If you can learn to recognise the carbohydrates in the foods you’re eating then you should also begin to see patterns emerging in your blood glucose control. Choosing nutritious, preferably low GI carbs spread evenly across the meals and snacks in your day should make a great difference in your diabetes management.

If you’d like to talk with others on this and other ‘diabetes and food’ topics, why not join our Diabetes Counselling Online popular Facebook closed group ‘Diabetes and Food – let’s celebrate it!’? We all love our food there, and have lots to celebrate about it.

As usual I recommend that you speak to your own Accredited Practising Dietitian for personalised advice, but hope that you found this blog helpful.

Sally

Sally is the Social Media Dietitian with Diabetes Counselling Online, owner of her private practice (Marchini Nutrition), and has had type 1 diabetes for close to 40 years and coeliac disease for many years too. You can access a list of all Sally’s Diabetes Counselling Online blogs here.

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Ten dietitian tips for pregnancy in type 1 diabetes

August 18, 2014 by Sally 2 Comments

I’ve been asked to write this blog as a dietitian for the Pregnancy and Parenting with Diabetes closed group for Diabetes Counselling Online. It’s a little challenging mostly because each of us has different requirements and should set personalised targets, so these tips are for a general guide only. I recommend that you should check with your own diabetes health professionals before changing any current plan. Hopefully what you learn in this blog will help you to be the leader of your d-team of health professionals. Keeping track of any questions you have to ask them will be a great advantage to you and your baby.

Having a baby as a person with type 1 diabetes can be a frustrating and scary experience, but it doesn’t need to be if we know how to help our healthcare team to provide us the best support along the way.

Planning

As with most aspects of diabetes, planning ahead is essential for best results. It’s not always possible to plan a pregnancy, but if you have the opportunity to do so then your chances of birth anomalies will be greatly reduced.

Ideally planning will begin at least a year in advance. During this time it’s important to ensure that you:

are taking precautions to avoid pregnancy during this timeframe
have started on a folic acid supplement of at least 0.8mg/day (no more than 5mg/day)
have asked your doctor about the need for iodine supplementation
talk to you doctor about stopping statins and all other diabetes meds except insulin
stop smoking
minimise alcoholic consumption
improve your physical fitness

HbA1c target

Your main diabetes target will be to aim for an HbA1c of around 6% to minimise risk of anomalies in your pregnancy. But you don’t want to get there too quickly as it may affect your own eyesight (retinopathy). This is one area where medical guidance is particularly important.

Once you get there, it’s important to keep it there for at least 6 months to allow your body to stabilise before proceeding to pregnancy.

Diet

When planning the pregnancy, it’s important to get back to basics in many of the issues related to food. It’s worth having a reminder session on your carb counting and to understand more about the glycemic index of carbohydrates. Reviewing label reading is also an excellent idea.

Whereas people with type 1 are ordinarily encourage to eat carbohydrates freely, in this planning stage it’s encouraged that we get back into a strict routine with quite rigid diet patterns. The reason for this is partly to do with stabilisation of the HbA1c for 6 months prior to proceeding to pregnancy, but also to help make it easier for you while you are pregnant as it makes such a difference at that time.

That means we’re looking for regular meals and mid-meals with no more than 2.5-3 hours in between each one across the day. And each meal should contain about 40-45g of nutritionally high low-GI carbohydrates, with snacks at 15-25g.

Another good habit to get into that will help your dietitian to help you better is keeping a food and BGL diary. Although a pain in the *#@* to do, can help not only to work out where you can make improvements but will help you to learn to recognise patterns based on your BGLs and the food you’re eating. And if this is your first pregnancy then such a record will be invaluable for future pregnancies too!

Eating for Wellbeing

Nutritional adequacy is very important to address for wellbeing in any pregnancy, and meeting the Australian Dietary Guidelines for women as outlined in this brochure for Healthy Eating During Your Pregnancy before and during the pregnancy should be a major focus, especially for those of us with type 1 diabetes. This brochure also outlines the foods that pregnant women should avoid for safety.

The helpful hints section at the back of the ‘Healthy Eating During Your Pregnancy’ brochure encourages:

“You can eat well by:

enjoying a variety of fruits and vegetables of different types and colours
increasing your grain consumption to 8-8.5 serves a day – mostly wholegrain (and low-GI) – in preference to discretionary choices
choosing foods high in iron, such as lean red meat or tofu, which are important for pregnant women
Making a habit of drinking milk, eating hard cheese and yogurt, or calcium enriched alternatives. Reduced fat varieties are best.
Enjoying a wide variety of vegetables, legumes, fruit and wholegrains and drinking plenty of water every day can assist with constipation – a common occurrence during pregnancy.”

After all the excellent preparation and you fall pregnant, then what?

Firstly a huge congratulations is in order! Well done for doing all that you can to get yourself into shape to the best of your ability for the health of the precious baby growing inside you.

I hope at this point you’ll have developed a regular relationship with your doctors, dietitian and diabetes educator to help with the hormonal insulin requirement changes through the stages of the pregnancy.

Of immediate concern is learning to deal with your morning sickness. Planning for this is essential as you don’t want to take insulin and then not be able to keep your food down. Personalised advice is essential so I won’t make suggestions here other than to encourage you to ask your team about it.

Being prepared for extreme hypoglycaemic and hyperglycaemic (particularly ketones) is something else to look into. It may not happen to you, but you’re better to be prepared just in case. Also hypo warning signals often change during pregnancy, so being aware of this and testing your BGLs frequently can help you avoid extreme hypos, and to keep you and other safe in activities such as driving!

It’s important to know that your insulin doses will change throughout your pregnancy due to hormonal changes related to the pregnancy at different stages, so working closely with your diabetes team and keeping regular checks on your BGLs will help here.

A key nutritional focus aside from keep your BGLs in range is also managing your weight through the pregnancy. This is where your food and BGL diary will assist your dietitian to keep you on track.

This leaflet by Diabetes Australia, the NDSS and Diabetes Australia Vic called ‘Can I have a healthy baby? Diabetes and Pregnancy’ is a very helpful resource that I recommend familiarising yourself with.

In summary, my top ten tips to remember are:

Start your planning a year in advance
Learn to work closely with your diabetes healthcare team
Aim for an HbA1c of 6 stabilised for 6 months before conception
Come up to speed with carb counting and label reading
Aim for a strict routine with quite rigid diet patterns (set number of carb serves spread evenly across the day)
Keep a food and BGL diary
Follow the Australian Dietary Guidelines for Healthy Eating in Pregnancy to ensure nutritional adequacy and safety
Managing your weight through the pregnancy
Being prepared for extreme hypoglycaemic and hyperglycaemic (keytones) events
Enjoy the experience!!

Wishing you a smooth and healthy pregnancy that results in a happy, healthy baby and Mum.

Sally

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Saucy tips to improve d-health

August 4, 2014 by Sally 2 Comments

Earlier this month we shared a thread in Diabetes and Food – let’s celebrate it! on what people’s favourite sauces were. There were some awesome ideas presented by our members on how to swap some of the more processed sauces for lower sodium/fat/sugar varieties and some great ideas for fresh, homemade options. I thought we’d look at some of these today, and how we could modify some recipes to make our own that would be kinder to our d-health.

Some of the sauces mentioned were Satay sauce, Bernaise sauce, salsa, curry sauces, tomato/bbq sauce, salad dressings, Worcestershire sauce, sweet chilli sauce, mustard pickles, and pestos.

It’s important that we remember that it’s okay to have small amounts of what we like if we really want them, but is better if we can find fresher, healthier alternatives or modify what we like to make the most of it while still considering our health.

Reminder on our targets

Primarily for heart health reasons, we need to look for less than 2g/100g saturated fat, less than 400mg/100g sodium, and we should minimise added sugars which may throw our BGL readings out of range.

Ideas for alternatives

When you consider the main reason we enjoy sauces with our food is to add flavour, then herbs (fresh and dried), spices, garlic, chilli, ginger, lemongrass, lemon/lime juice/zest and other fresh flavours can really lift your meal to a new level of enjoyment.

Sometimes thinking of alternatives to what you might normally use can prove inspirational and help you to enjoy the food even more knowing that you’re doing your insides a favour too!

One of our members who enjoys pickles and fruit chutney (high in sodium and added sugars) on her sandwiches and a store bought barbeque sauce (high in sodium, sugar and fat) or sweet chilli sauce (oh the sugar!) on her chicken or salmon suggested she would swap to “avocado on sandwiches and lemon juice on my chicken or salmon”. Such a simple idea and yet so delicious!

This website gives some great examples of various spices and what foods they go with to help you with some ideas, as well as how to best store them for freshness.

Another idea that emerged in our Facebook chat was that an easy alternative to lemon pepper (high in sodium) would be to grate and dry some lemon zest and mix it with freshly ground peppercorns. Wowser! and so easy

Salsas

Salsas are a mix of chopped fresh ingredients such as tomatoes, fruit, avocadoes, fresh herbs, garlic are so versatile that you can make up varieties depending on which fresh herbs you have available and what you’re adding it too.

Here are some recipe ideas for a tomato based salsa, a mango and capsicum salsa, an avocado salsa, and a spicy salsa, and there are plenty more where they came from! Don’t they look amazing!?!

Salad dressings

Store bought salad dressings can be a nightmare for heart health, and yet they’re such an easy thing to make yourself! At home we just use one third quality vinegar (white balsamic is my current favourite) or freshly squeezed lemon/lime juice to two thirds extra virgin olive oil. You can choose various oils (preferably those higher in monounsaturated fats) for variations on flavours. Sometimes a dash of sesame oil or other stronger flavoured oils can transform your salads.

And if you prefer the creamier salad dressings, just try some based on low-fat yogurt. This Australian Good Taste recipe sounds wonderful. As discussed further down too, if you *really love* your current processed creamy dressing, just mix it with half low-fat yogurt to make it a better option.

Here’s a link to some more awesome salad dressing recipes from Taste.com.au.

Pestos

It’s great to see that some of you have started experimenting with pestos as they’re so versatile and can really transform a boring meal into something very special. They can be used in pasta dishes, as a coating on meats, as a filling or stuffing in vegetables, and tossed through roasted vegetables make them irresistible, plus a whole lot more.

You just need a big bunch of soft-leafed herb (such as basil, coriander or parsley), a handful of nuts of your choice (pinenuts, walnuts and pecans work well), some quality extra virgin olive oil and extra flavours if you want them such as a quality parmesan cheese or fresh garlic. And if you have more than you need they freeze well for future use.

Here’s a link to some pesto recipes from Taste.com.au, remembering that you can control the sodium levels to suit your own health needs.

Modifying recipes

An awesome way to have the sauces you love but without the heart health issues is to make your own. We make our own barbeque sauce at home (and our own satay sauce) from recipes that we’ve found online and then modified to suit our heart healthy preferences.

For example in most recipes you can easily cut the ingredients that might be adding the salt and sugar in half quantities, and swap any saturated fats for monounsaturated fats.

Break it down

For our satay sauce we buy the Ayam brand of satay spices (which has a massive amount of sodium) and then break it down using low salt/sugar peanut butter and low-fat coconut flavoured Carnation milk to make it to our liking. It’s rather delicious too!

And if you fancy mayonnaise, try mixing 1 tablespoon mayo to 3 tablespoons low-fat natural yogurt which gives you the taste of mayo with less fat and more nutrients.

Add more goodness

Actually choosing your favourite sauce and ‘watering it down’ with other vegetables, herbs and liquids can also be a good option to retain the flavour you love while minimising the damage. A good example of this provided by a member of the ‘Diabetes and Food – let’s celebrate it!’ group was that of Patak’s curry sauces. She said, “I always add tons of stuff to them”. Some examples of good ‘stuff’ to add would be tinned tomatoes or passata for tomatoey ones, low-fat Carnation evaporated milk to creamy ones, or even low-sodium stock, as well as lots of extra fresh vegetables.

Healthier brands?

There are a few companies starting to offer better heart health choices in their sauces and spreads. Always remember to read the label and check for the less than 2g/100g saturated fat, less than 400mg/100g sodium and added sugars, but some good options might include the Walden Farms range of sauces (suggested by a member of the group, although I couldn’t see a nutrition information panel on their website to check the numbers) and the Fountain ‘No Added Sugar Smart’ sauces: Tomato and BBQ.

In summary, it’s okay to have small amounts of what we like if we really want them, but is better if we can find fresher, healthier alternatives or modify what we like to make the most of it while still considering our health. Hoping you found these ideas helpful.

We’d love you to share your own ideas below in the comments section to help others find healthier options for favourite sauces, dressings and the like. Thank You! Sally

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Discussion on low carb diets

July 28, 2014 by Sally 8 Comments

Australian Guide to healthy eating poster

By popular demand through a thread in our Facebook group Diabetes and Food – let’s celebrate it!, this topic deserves a blog to help explain some of the ‘stuff we hear’ around carbohydrates and type 2 diabetes. I’d also encourage people with type 1 diabetes to read this though, because some of the points made are also relevant for us! Up front I will remind you that everyone has individual requirements and should see an Accredited Practising Dietitian for a personalised consultation, so this is a ‘general guide’ only.

Firstly we need to understand what ‘low’ means in such a context as in my experience as an Accredited Practising Dietitian, people tend to associate ‘low’ with ‘virtually no’ carbohydrate. We’ll also look at some of the evidence that shows that ‘low’ carb diets can help with glucose control in type 2s, and why when drugs (other than metformin or SGLT2-inhibitors) are introduced it’s important to ensure more (quality) carb intakes as advised by your health professionals. And lastly (but certainly not leastly) we’ll review how, based on the Australian Dietary Guidelines, it’s possible to have a nutritionally balanced diet while watching your carb intake.

What does ‘low’ carbohydrate mean?

If you ask some people what they think ‘low carb’ means, you may hear that it’s about cutting carbohydrates out as much as possible. Straight up as a dietitian my alarm bells ring as carbs feature in all five of the food groups that we need for nutrients to ensure our wellbeing: vegetables (starchy vegetables like potato, sweet potato and corn), fruit, dairy, protein (when the likes of legumes are included, and especially in vegetarian diets) and of course, the important grain/cereal foods.

The American Diabetes Association defines a low-carb diet as 130g of carb per day. Does that surprise you?? The ‘trick’ with low carb diets is therefore to know how to choose your carbs wisely so that you’re still meeting your nutrient requirements, and also to know what to replace that carb energy with (remembering that carbs, proteins and fats make up our daily energy intake) so you don’t get too hungry and be encouraged to ‘cheat’.

Remembering that there’s 15g of carbohydrate in an ‘exchange’ or ‘serve’ that gives us close to 9 carb serves across the day.

If you’re on medication that helps your body to produce more insulin, or you’re providing insulin yourself on a fixed dose then this idea is dangerous to your health so please speak to your health professionals before making any changes to your diet.

Some benefits of lower carbohydrate diets

Of course we know that all carbohydrates break down to glucose which is the fuel needed by our bodies, but in modern diets often too much (and poor quality) of this ‘fuel’ is provided which can cause stress to our organs and worsen our diabetes control. So understanding the benefits of a lower carbohydrate diet can help us to stick with it for longer and balance the rest of our diets more easily.

Some of those benefits may include:

Lower incidence of high blood glucose levels (hyperglycemia)
Lower amounts of medications need to control hyperglycemia
130g/day is a sustainable amount, meaning it’s easier to stick to in the longer term
Putting your pancreas under less stress to produce insulin, thereby helping it to keep working for longer
By ensuring your 130g/day is nutritious and low-GI carb you may also improve your blood fat levels (cholesterol/triglycerides) which will lower your risk of cardiovascular disease
It doesn’t necessarily lead to weight loss – that depends on your total energy intake.

How do you manage it best?

Again I will mention how important having a personalised consultation with your Accredited Practising Dietitian is because everyone is different in many ways. Here I will make suggestions that I hope will help to get your head around combining the idea of low carb into your daily routine while still meeting the nutritional requirements as outlined in the Australian Dietary Guidelines foundation diet (see page 2).

In a nutshell, it’s about only choosing your carb sources from the 5 food groups and balancing that out with quality proteins and healthy fats. I encourage you to re-read the previous blogs I’ve written on those topics as highlighted.

Remembering that 130g/day equates to close to 9 carb exchanges/serves, your day might start to look a bit like this:

Breakfast: ¼ cup of raw rolled oats (1 serve carb) served with 125ml light milk (half a serve), a small banana (85g – 1 carb serve) and a tablespoon of LSA mix (for extra fibre/protein) = 2.5 serves total

Morning Tea: A 100g tub of low-fat yogurt = 1 serve total

Lunch: A sandwich made on wholegrain bread (the grainer the better – 2 serves) made with a protein serve and as much non-starchy veg as you can handle, either on the sandwich or as a side, using half an avocado as the spread (for your good fats), and a piece of fruit such as an apple or pear (both good low-GI fruits – 1 serve) = 3 serves total

Afternoon Tea: A 30g handful of mixed unsalted nuts = not worth counting carb-wise

Dinner: Remembering the balanced plate being one quarter carb, one quarter protein and half non-starchy vegetables, this works with so many meals. Aim for your carb serve to = 2 serves total

Supper: You’ve still got half a carb serve up your sleeve. I would encourage something like half a slice of grainy toast with peanut butter on it to give you the energy to get you through the night, but half a serve of low-fat dairy would also work well, or even a couple of squares of dark chocolate if you fancied it = 0.5 serves total

In this example you can see that we’ve incorporated 9 carb serves/exchanges and yet have included quality carbs at every meal.

Some final tips

Remember to include protein and some non-starchy veg with every meal.
Rice and pasta can be problematic a serve size is so small. Something I recommend that works for many people is to include the carb serves in the form of legumes (lentils, chickpeas, kidney beans, etc) in the pasta sauce and use low-carb alternatives such as those made from konjac root, or make pasta/rice out of vegetables such as grated zucchini or carrot or cauliflower. I sometimes serve my pasta sauces on mashed cannellini beans and frozen spinach (warmed of course!) and find it’s very satisfying.
Don’t forget to exercise! If the point of minimising your carbs is to control your BGLs, then even as little as ten minutes exercise after meals can make a fantastic difference to your readings. Do some self-experimenting about how much your BGLs drop after say 10, 20 or 30 minutes walking after meals, and then if you want to include more quality carbohydrates in some meals, you’ll know how to manage better.

I hope this has proved useful for you, and that you have a better understanding of how a low-carb (130g/day) might help with your diabetes control. Of course please ask any questions below and I’ll be happy to address them for you.

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A fat introduction – blog 1 of a series on fats and diabetes

July 14, 2014 by Sally 2 Comments

I thought it was about time for another blog mini-series and fat is a topic that we see written about a lot so it’s easy to be misled when you’re provided with information that may be influenced by sales and marketing, and ‘fat’ is a huge topic to cover. The benefit of having such topics explained by an Accredited Practising Dietitian is that we’re not trying to sell you anything – just wanting to help you to make the best decisions for your d-health and we base our advice on the best available evidence through scientific research which is constantly being reviewed and updated where appropriate.

As an introduction I’ll remind you that fats are an important part of our diets, as are carbohydrates and proteins (these 3 being the major macronutrients that produce energy) and every cell in our body needs quality fats to protect it, help it communicate with other cells and to allow important biological processes to occur in our bodies. It’s important for us, especially as people with or at risk of diabetes, to understand about the different types of fats, or fatty acids, and choosing the right fats in the right amounts can benefit our wellbeing in many ways. In this blog I’ll explain what the different types of fats are and where they’re found, as well as how much the Australian Dietary Guidelines recommends for people with diabetes.

From a healthy weight perspective, the Australian Dietary Guidelines reminds us that, “When eaten in large amounts, all fats, including healthy fats, can contribute to weight gain. Fat is higher in energy (kilojoules) than any other nutrient and so eating less fat overall is likely to help with weight loss.” So again, it’s all about balance!

Something I found enlightening when learning about foods applies particularly with fats, in that they’re not black and white in the varying types, but more like differing shades of grey. To demonstrate my point, nuts are a perfect example. If you refer to page 2 of this tree nut ready reckoner you can see that every nut has a different amount of all the different types of fat within it. I make this point to reinforce that, as with most things in diabetes, it’s about making healthy choices whenever you can but not worrying too much about small amounts of things that we know we’re better without (such as saturated and trans fats).

Which is a perfect segway to talk about Types of Fats

I think the most straightforward explanation of the different types of fats is found on the Dietitian’s Association of Australia website where they explain:

“There are two main types of fats: saturated fats and unsaturated fats.

Saturated fats

Saturated fats are ‘unhealthy’ fats, and eating greater amounts of saturated fat is linked with an increased risk of heart disease and high blood cholesterol levels. These fats are solid at room temperature and are found in:

Animal-based products:

Dairy foods – such as butter, cream, full fat milk and cheese
Meat – such as fatty cuts of beef, pork and lamb, processed meats like salami, and chicken (especially chicken skin)

Some plant-derived products:

Palm oil
Coconut
Coconut milk and cream
Cooking margarine

Saturated fats are also commonly found in many manufactured and packaged foods such as:

Fatty snack foods
Deep fried take away foods
Cakes
Pastries and pies
Biscuits

Unsaturated fats

Unsaturated fats are ‘healthy’ fats and are an important part of a healthy diet. These fats help reduce the risk of heart disease and lower cholesterol levels (among other health benefits) when they replace saturated fats in the diet.

There are two main types of unsaturated fats: polyunsaturated fats and monounsaturated fats.

Polyunsaturated fats:

omega-3 fats which are found in fish
omega-6 fats which are found in some oils such as safflower and soybean oil, along with some nuts, including brazil nuts.

Monounsaturated fats:

found in olive and canola oil, avocados and some nuts, such as cashews and almonds.

Trans fats

Trans fats are unsaturated fats that have been processed and as a result, behave like saturated fats. Consumption of trans fats increase the levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol and decrease the levels of ‘good’ cholesterol in the body which is a major risk factor for heart disease. It is important to lower the amounts of trans fats you eat to help improve your health.

Trans fats are found in many processed foods, also in butter and some margarines. When buying these products check the labels and choose the varieties that are lower in saturated and trans fats and higher in poly and monounsaturated fats.”

In summary, we should aim to have most of our fat intake from mono- and poly-unsaturated fats.

How much should we have?

You may remember from my blog on label reading that on nutrition information panels we should aim for less than 10g/100g total fat, and less than 2g/100g saturated fats. This is because people with diabetes tend to have higher rates of bad cholesterol, and reducing amounts of saturated fats (and poor quality carbohydrates) is one of the most effective ways of reducing that bad cholesterol.

The Australian Dietary Guidelines advises that in addition to the serves outlined for the five food groups, “an allowance for unsaturated spreads and oils for cooking, or nuts and seeds can be included in the following quantities: 28-40g per day for men less than 70 years of age, and 14-20g per day for women and older men.”

That’s probably enough info for this first blog. If you have specific fat-related questions that you’d like answered in the rest of the fat-series, just comment below and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.

Also remember to see your Accredited Practising Dietitian if you think some personalised advice could be useful, or arrange for an e-consultation with our e-dietitian at Diabetes Counselling Online.

Wishing you a great week! Sally

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