glycemic index Archives - Diabetes Counselling Online

Yoghurt, probiotics and d-health

March 10, 2015 by Sally 2 Comments

With so much fascinating talk about gut microbiata (micro-organisms/bacteria) and health about, I thought it worth a fresh look at yoghurt as part of the dairy serves in our day as it is a great source of these microbiata in our diets. I’m also often asked about which are the best yoghurts from a fat and sugar perspective. Please consult your healthcare team before following the advice here, especially if you’re pregnant, breastfeeding or have a compromised immune system.

We’ll start with a review of why dairy is so important in our diets, then go on to look more closely at probiotics (live organisms/bacteria) and to look at some of the yoghurt choices available on the market, and what to look for when you’re making choices. We’ll finish with some ideas to help us to include more yoghurt in our day.

Last year I wrote a couple of blogs on ‘Dairy and Diabetes’ that I’d really like to remind everyone of, as they included some important messages for our diabetes health.

In the first one, ‘Dairy Foods – health benefits for us with diabetes’ we looked at the dairy and alternatives group in the Healthy Eating Guidelines for Adults brochure. We notice that different genders and ages have significantly different requirements in this important food group. We all need different amounts for different reasons, and for us with diabetes it’s a really important food group for many reasons. Not least, that dairy products have a low-glycemic index. There’s also a great amount of evidence relating to how meeting our dairy serves can contribute to improved wellbeing, with or without diabetes, so pop back and have a read of this one too.

We’re also reminded in the words of the Australian Dietary Guidelines that: “Milk, cheese and yoghurt have various health benefits and are a good source of many nutrients, including calcium, protein, iodine, vitamin A, vitamin D, riboflavin, vitamin B12 and zinc. These foods provide calcium in a readily absorbable and convenient form.”

The Guidelines also remind people with lactose intolerance in relation to yoghurt that: “lactose in yoghurt is already partially broken down by bacteria that thicken the yoghurt, so should be well tolerated”.

The second blog (link above) is about milk comparisons and more ideas for including more dairy in our diet.

Which leads us on nicely to more on yoghurts….

Probiotics – why are they important?

Yoghurt provides similar health benefits that milk does and can have the added benefits of good bacteria or probiotics (eg aBc – La-5 Lactobacillus acidophilus, BB-12 bifidobacterium, Lc-431 Lactobacillus Casei and LCG) which contribute to improved health. Health based on those good bacteria is currently attracting a lot of research into improved immunity, general wellbeing and to improve specific conditions such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome, NAFLD (very relevant for those with type 2 diabetes) and mental health among others. This article provides much more detail if you’d like to read more about probiotics and health/wellbeing.

However, not all yoghurts contain added probiotics, so it’s important to check the label for mention of them, otherwise you may not get the benefits you’re hoping for from them. It’s also worth noting that yoghurts containing probiotics will have a shorter shelf-life as the bacteria deteriorate fairly quickly, so don’t wait around until the yoghurt is on its ‘best by’ date if you’re hoping for the probiotic benefits.

Fat & Sugar in yogurts

With diabetes, and even just in general health, it’s important that we minimise added sugars and keep an eye on the saturated fats in our food products.

The Australian Dietary Guidelines recommends that we choose low-fat dairy products, which means we’re looking for less than 2g/100g saturated fat due to its link with heart health issues, inflammation and increased insulin resistance/decreased insulin production over time. This is particularly important for us with diabetes, and although adding fat to a carbohydrate will lower the glycemic index of the meal, it is just not worth taking the risk with saturated fats. It’s best to try to minimise them in our food choices.. The other aspects of the yoghurt (low GI quality carb and protein) will still help to lower the glycaemic index of the meal without the extra fat.

As to added sugar, we are always looking for as little as possible as an added ingredient. Lactose is a naturally occurring sugar with a low-GI that’s found in dairy foods, so just looking at the amount of sugar in the nutrition information panel may not help us to know whether it has added sugar. Check the ingredients listing first, looking for ‘added’ sources of sugar, like ‘sugar’, honey, palm sugar, maple syrup and other syrups. On the nutrition information panel, look for less than 10g/100g sugars to help watch the added sugars.

If you like the sweeter flavoured yogurts, try adding your own sweetness in the form of fruit, or even a small amount of added sugar, so at least you are in control of the extra sugars. Of course artificially sweetened yogurts are also readily available if you don’t mind the flavour.

Dietitian Connection recently published a comparison table of yoghurts by student dietitian Stacey Beech (thank you Stacey!) which includes information about all the macronutrients (fat, carbohydrate & protein) as well as fibre, calcium, sodium and probiotics. From this list I’ve picked a few ‘better’ examples of brands from that table to try, with a focus on the good bacteria, the low saturated fat, and low added added sugars. My top three favourites are:

The Nestle Ski Soleil (artificially sweetened) range
Vaalia Natural Probiotic Yoghurt (unflavoured)
Pauls All Naturally Tub Set Yoghurt 99.8% Fat Free (also unflavoured)
Jalna Low Fat plain yoghurt

There are other yoghurts on the market that may not have made Stacey’s list, so remember that you want the pack to tell you about the good bacteria (probiotics) it contains, look for less than 2g/100g saturated fat and less than 10g/100g sugar (preferably no added ‘sugar’). This Aldi one is a good example. It’s 2.7g/100g saturated fat, just over our target, but ticks all the other boxes so I’d say that it was worth a try too!

If you’re finding that plain yoghurt is a little bitter for your tastebuds, why not give the lactose free versions a try. These seem sweeter because the added lactase enzyme has split the lactose sugar into its parts, which changes the way it tastes, but with the same health benefits.

Some of the strained Greek yoghurts are also less tart because the whey has been strained off.

Of course you can always make your own, but watch the sugar and fat components in doing that

Multiple uses for yoghurt

For those of you who struggle to meet the recommended dairy serves in your day, yoghurt is an excellent option that can be included multiple times across the day. More than one serve a day is easy to achieve. It works:

At breakfast on top of cereal with fruit
As a snack or dessert choice
As a dressing on your salad (mixed with fresh herbs, lemon juice or vinegar and a teaspoon of grainy mustard)
In place of sour cream on your baked potato (helping to lower the overall GI of the potato)
In place of fats in baking recipes (read this blog by Joan Bailey to learn more)
As dip or accompaniment to Indian curries (example recipe)

How else do you include yoghurt in your day? We’d love to have your comments and suggestions! See the comments box below.

Sally

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

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D-thoughts on snacking

January 26, 2015 by Sally Leave a Comment

Happy Australia Day! And what good timing for a blog on snacking! It must be the ‘most asked’ question I get as a dietitian: “What are the best snacks for people with diabetes?”

It’s not really a black and white question as the answer depends on your personal diabetes requirements, your personal tastes, your ability to be mindful in your choices and your knowledge of healthy eating in general. So this blog aims to help you to be mindful in making snacking decisions.

We encourage you to choose foods that are higher in nutrients to add to your overall wellbeing, rather than ‘discretionary choices’ which everybody, diabetic or not, is encouraged to limit. It’s especially the case for us with diabetes… but it doesn’t mean missing out on delicious flavours!

Priority One

Your first priority needs to be your overall diabetes goals. Are you getting all the nutrients from your diet that you need for wellbeing? Are you needing to watch your weight? Is matching your food intake to your body’s ability to process carbs an issue for you?

A perfect segue to our Australian Dietary Guidelines… Are you actually meeting the quantities recommended in the 5 main food groups across your day?

In an ideal world we would choose snacks that are included in the foods that we are recommended to enjoy each day. In these examples I’m referring to the ‘Healthy Eating for Adults’ brochure, but there’s also a Healthy Eating for Children brochure for those thinking about their children with diabetes. In both cases, the actual food group listings are on page 2.

Each of the food groups has snacking potential, so there’s always plenty to choose from.

In the ‘Vegetables and legumes/beans’ group you can always find a low-carb snack if that’s what you’re after. Whether it’s raw veg to nibble on, celery with nut butter, blanched asparagus spears when they’re in season, tasty tiny tomatoes that burst with flavour in your mouth, hummous dip with veggie sticks, or even leftover cold roasted non-starchies or ratatouille (recipe in the files section of the closed ‘Diabetes and Food – let’s celebrate it!’ Facebook group). There are always options in this group of foods if one of them will meet what you’re looking for…

Next group down and a great one for those wanting something to satisfy a sweetness craving is the ‘Fruit’ group. With diabetes we are recommended to aim for about 2 serves per day, eaten at different times. However, some fruits are really low in carbohydrate, so we can have more of these without upsetting our glycemic control. Some of those include berries, passionfruit and kiwifruit. But still watch your quantities. If you want to know how much fruit will contain 15g of carbohydrate, take a look at www.calorieking.com.au , search for the fruit you are looking at, and adjust quantities to get to the 1 carb serve number.

In the ‘Grain (cereal) foods’ group, it’s easy to calculate whether you’re going to meet your daily recommended amount. Often for people with diabetes this is a group that people actually tend to be low in. Instead of choosing a ‘discretionary item’, swapping in a low-GI high fibre grain snack such a piece of heavily grained toast with a topping to suit your taste can be a great option to satisfy your hunger and keep your BGLs stable. Or even a small bowl of your high-fibre cereal. Of course these options all contain carbs, but they are all much more nutritious than a cracker or sweet biscuit.

In the ‘Protein’ group, snacking options are easy to find, but it’s important to remember to try not to exceed the guidelines in terms of serve sizes and number of serves recommendations. This is because protein contains energy (or calories/kilojoules) that will cause weight gain if you have too much, although they shouldn’t upset your glycemic control. I recommend having a read of this blog on Protein : written earlier, if you’d like more info. The perfect snack from within this group for us with diabetes is really a handful of nuts, as the evidence behind inclusion of nuts in our diet is quite outstanding. Read more about nuts in this blog.

And last, but not least, is the ‘Dairy and/or alternatives’ group. I wrote a couple of blogs about dairy and diabetes as it’s such an important food group for us with diabetes. Here’s a link to the first one and the second one that contain more great ideas for snacking. My favourite snacking recommendations to help meet the nutritional guidelines are a low-fat yogurt (low sugar too if you’re watching your carb intake closely) or plain low-fat greek yogurt with berries mixed in. Or a low-fat milk based smoothie made on frozen berries, with a couple of teaspoons of chia seeds added for extra fibre. Even a cup of milk based coffee can do the trick… These should work well to satisfy hunger and provide you with the nutrients this group is known for.

Priority Two

Your second priority, also a very important one, is to ask yourself what do you actually feel like eating and why? Sometimes snacking can become a habit. People say “I have a sweet tooth and NEED a biscuit or cake”. (or whatever) This is important too, because if you deprive yourself of what you really want (or feel you need) all the time, then your craving will only grow bigger and you’ll end up overdoing it and regretting it later. Not a good thing, but happens all too often. If you can enjoy a small amount of what you feel you “need”, being mindful of enjoying every mouthful, savouring the textures and flavours that you’ve wanted so badly, then you’re in a better place to return to your ‘healthier’ options on a regular basis.

Do I really need to snack?

If you’re medicated for your diabetes, and are putting yourself at risk of a hypo if you don’t snack, then you should snack as you’ve been advised by your medical diabetes team. If in this case you’d rather not be snacking as you’re just not hungry, then you should talk to your d-team and arrange to have the medication adjusted so that you don’t need to snack.

For those of you where snacking has just become a habit, it’s worth thinking twice to see if you really are hungry before you just head for a snack. Is it out of habit or because you’re bored? Sometimes a drink of water will satisfy that ‘hunger’ feeling, which may actually be your body telling you that you’re dehydrated. If you’re bored, take the opportunity to go for a walk, call a friend, do something off your household chores list, read a book, or engage in your hobby.

If you are constantly actually hungry, it may be worth your while to visit an Accredited Practising Dietitian to see how your meal plan can be adjusted to help avoid that happening. Being hungry is not good or necessary for you to manage your diabetes and weight well.

More ideas?

In the Diabetes Counselling Online closed Facebook groups ‘Diabetes and Food – let’s celebrate it!’ and ‘Diabetes Weight Matters’ we’ve asked the members what their favourite snacks are and have created a document up in the files section of the groups. I think I still need to finalise the weight matters file, but it’ll be there soon. These are member ideas, not necessarily dietitian approved, so please use this blog as a thought process in helping to make your snacking decisions right for you.

Also in the current issue (February 2015) of the Australian Healthy Food Guide they’re running a feature relevant to this blog that you may find helpful. It’s entitled “Your Treat Foods Toolkit” and explains “why those ‘naughty’ treat foods are discretionary, and how they can fit into a healthy diet.” It’s written by an Accredited Practicing Dietitian, Brooke Longfield and can be found on page 34. Although not related specifically to diabetes, you’ll find it helpful for portion sizes and understanding more about ‘discretionary’ foods.

Happy snacking! Sally

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Making Rice Nice for Diabetes

January 12, 2015 by Sally Leave a Comment

Rice is one of those grains that can be problematic for people with diabetes, so I thought it might help if we explain a little of why that is, why different rices have varying effects on our BGLs and ways to make rice more diabetes friendly.

You may know that, generally speaking, a quarter of a cup of cooked rice is one carb serve. You can see that in this snip from CalorieKing showing that half a cup of boiled rice = 28.8g carb (or 2 carb serves).

And this photo shows you what half a cup of cooked rice (2 carb serves) looks like on a plate.

You may also know that, particularly for us with diabetes, we’re better having rice that breaks down more slowly to glucose in our bloodstream, or low-GI rice. The main types in Australia of low GI rices are long grain rices including Basmati and Doongara. Even when choosing brown rice for the extra fibre, we’re best to choose brown Basmati or Doongara.

This mini-table gives you a feel for the glycemic indexes of various rice products.

Source: Low GI Diet Shoppers Guide 2014

Rice type	Glycemic Index	Glycemic Index rating
Aborio/risotto rice, boiled, SunRice	69	Medium
Basmati white rice, boiled, SunRice	59	Medium
Basmati white rice, SunRice, microwave pouch	52	Low
Calrose rice, brown, medium-grain, boiled	76	High
Calrose rice, white, medium-grain, boiled	87	High
Japanese style sushi rice, SunRice	89	High
Jasmine fragrant rice, SunRice	73	High
Long-grain rice, white, boiled 15 mins, Mahatma	50	Low
Low-GI Long-Grain rice, Brown, SunRice	54	Low

This is only a snapshot, but it indicates that there’s quite a difference in how quickly the different rice types break down to glucose in our bloodstream. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the longer you cook any rice the higher it’s GI rating will become, so try to keep it tender, not mushy.

What makes these rices different in GI is the type of starches they contain combined with the shape of the grains. The two main starches found in rice varieties are amylose and amylopectin. Wikipedia explains that high-amylose varieties of rice, the less sticky long-grain rice, have a much lower glycemic load. It’s to do with the chemical structure of the starches.

Nutritionally rice is mostly starch (80-90%). This snip from Wikipedia shows the nutritional content of Rice, white, long-grain, raw, and demonstrates that it doesn’t add a whole lot of nutrients to our meals other than carbohydrate.

By keeping your portion sizes reasonable, consuming protein foods and vegetables with your rice meal will add nutrients and lower the overall GI of the meal.

And dishes that you’ve previously always used rice in can be nutritionally enhanced by swapping in other forms of more nutritious grains such as barley, quinoa and cracked wheat. Why not do an experiment and try some swaps out for yourself? One of my dietitian colleagues makes her sushi with quinoa, and barley risotto is amazing! Here’s a recipe from Taste.com.au for it.

One trick with rice is to combine it with other grains for added fibre and nutrients and to further lower the glycemic index and improve that nutritional profile.

Fortunately more and more options are available to us.

The Australian company, SunRice, has a great range of ‘Health & Wellbeing’ rices and rice blends that you may like to consider trying.

And Coles also has recently launched some similar products that are all high in fibre and have a low glycemic index too. The varieties available are:

Brown Rice and Quinoa
Brown Rice and Chia seeds
7 Ancient Grains – a combination of brown rice, green lentils, millet, quinoa, sorghum, amaranth and chia seeds (the highest fibre variety).

These microwaveable packs usually contain 2 serves per pack. You should check the Total Carb per Serve column to check how many carb serves a ‘serve’ contains. It’s usually about two. They’re very convenient quality carb options to keep in your pantry.

Resistant starch

Just a reminder while we’re on the subject of starches, that cooked and cooled starches develop a crystalline structure which makes them resistant to digestion (hence their name) which lowers their glycemic index. So adding cooked and cooled rice to your salads is a great way of adding a serve or two of low-GI carbs to your meal to help manage your blood glucose levels and provide the many benefits associated with including low-GI carbs in each meal. The theory of resistant starch goes that if the starch resists digestion it will end up in the large bowel to feed the good bacteria which in turn improve our immunity and overall wellbeing. You can read more in the blog on fibre if you’re interested.

So I hope you learned how to make rice work better for you. Please let us know if you have any questions. 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 linked list of all Sally’s Diabetes Counselling Online blogs here.

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Breakfast with diabetes

November 17, 2014 by Sally 13 Comments

Many people have been asking me about their breakfast choices lately, so hopefully this blog will help to answer some of your own breakfast questions. They usually want to know how to choose a good breakfast cereal, how much of it to have to keep them feeling satisfied til morning tea without disrupting their blood glucose results too much, what they can have instead of cereal that is quick and easy and still healthy and how to enjoy a breakfast out without tipping the scales too much.

Before starting though I’d like to remind you to not make any changes to your current diabetes routine without first checking with your own health care professionals. These are meant as general guidelines only.

Why do we need it?

As people with diabetes, breakfast is important to us for several reasons:

It helps to get our blood glucose levels of to nice level start, especially when we include a moderate amount of low-GI carbs
It helps us to manage our appetite better as the day progresses, especially so we don’t end up very hungry and tempted to make poor choices
It fuels our brain so we can mentally function better and cope better with the curve-balls that diabetes can throw at us
It helps to reduce insulin resistance by providing us with the low-GI energy that our bodies need to function better

What should be in it?

A good starting place is a reminder that with each meal we should include low-GI carb sources, preferably 2 carbohydrate serves as a minimum, and a protein serve to ensure we have the slow release of glucose to keep our brain fuelled for peak performance and our tummies happy so we don’t crave poor food choices by morning tea. Extra fibre also doesn’t go astray.

How to choose a good breakfast cereal?

If you recall our earlier blog on label reading, when reading cereal packet labels we should be looking for whole grains, nuts and fruit with little or no added sugar or oil in the ingredients listing if possible. Ideally we’d like the fibre to be at around the 10-15g/100g level, but if it isn’t then extra can be added in the form of bran, psyllium or chia seeds to boost it.

Remember too that if you have nuts included in your cereal it may fall outside of the total fat value of 10g/100g, saturated fat 2g/100g targets that we aim for, but as long as there are no other fats listed then all the fat is from the nuts so it’s okay.

So if you’ve got the whole grains and the nuts and the dried fruit and the low-fat milk or plain yogurt for added protein and low-GI carb, you should find all the reasons listed above satisfied for the importance of your breakfast.

How much of it should I have?

Certainly an important consideration as too much could upset your glycemic control, rather than helping it, and could also contribute to unwanted weight gain.

Everyone is different and the answer will depend on your activity levels, on your hunger and of course on your diabetes management objectives.

This is where it’s important to check with your own d-team, preferably an Accredited Practising Dietitian, about how much is right for you.

What can I have instead of cereal?

So many clients I see tell me they don’t like cereal, and that’s fine. We all have different tastes. There are many other breakfast options that are suitable for people with diabetes.

Multigrain toast and muffins with an egg or baked beans for added protein and extra veggies to help you meet your 5 veggie serves are awesome. Avocado and fresh tomato on toast (no need for a spread) is also a great way to get started. And peanut butter works on toast to give you the extra protein serve to keep you feeling fuller for longer.

Fruit smoothies also work well for those of you who struggle to eat in the mornings.

Cooked breakfasts are also wonderful when you have a little more time, and including veggies in there is a great idea.

I actually really like the ideas included in this blog by one of our Diabetes Counselling Online Facebook group members, Dr Lyndal Parker Newlyn: The Beauty of Breakfast that also talks about why it’s so important to get into this healthy habit.

What about eating out for breakfast?

Eating out can work well if you remember the diabetes basics about low-fat, low sodium and whole grains.

Choose meals like a bircher museli with fresh fruit and plain yogurt, or spinach, mushrooms and tomatoes on multigrain toast, or served with baked beans for that low GI carb with protein included.

And enjoy a coffee made on low-fat milk for the good low-GI carb and protein hit.

Traditional breakfast ideas that should be reviewed for better diabetes management

The first thing that springs to mind is fruit juice. Traditionally many Australians enjoy a glass of juice with their breakfast. With diabetes it’s not an ideal option when you consider that we’re aiming for two pieces of fruit per day and a glass of juice provides the carb energy of closer to 4 pieces of fruit without the fibre.
Avoid crumpets – yes, even the wholemeal ones. Not only do they have a high glycemic index but they’re also high in sodium (sodium bicarbonate is used to make the holes) and most people like to have butter or margarine on them which adds unneeded extra fats.
Doubling up – Some of my clients tell me they have both cereal and toast, and unless you’re having a half serve of each, you probably don’t need to have both. This is where many of my clients see a rise in their BGL readings 2 hours after breakfast, when basically they’ve just had too much for their system to manage.

What do you eat for your diabetes breakfast?

Please share below what your favourite breakfast ideas are, in case they spark someone’s tastebuds into action. We have different tastes, so the more ideas we can share the better!

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Making 2&5 easy

November 3, 2014 by Sally Leave a Comment

We’re all so busy these days. How on Earth are we meant to able to consider our health and getting enough fruit and vegetables (our 2&5) into the meals we eat?

Often I see clients who, when I take their diet histories, they don’t even start to consider foods like fruit and vegetables until so late in the day that it’s actually too late to get enough of those important plant nutrients. Or when they’re doing it they find them so unappealing that there’s no incentive to make them want to eat more.

In this blog I hope to help you find it easier to get them all in and enjoy them, which in turn will help you to improve your own wellbeing, diabetes health, mental health, heart health and so much more!

The Australian Dietary Guidelines tells us:

“There are many nutritional, societal, culinary and environmental reasons to ensure that vegetables, including legumes/beans, and fruit are a major component of Australian dietary patterns. These foods are nutrient dense, relatively low in energy (kilojoules) and are good sources of minerals and vitamins (such as magnesium, vitamin C and folate), dietary fibre and a range of phytochemicals including carotenoids. Many of the sub-components of foods and their relationships have not been studied in detail, and it is expected that other sub-components – and their biological effects – are still to be discovered.”

From a diabetes point of view, they’ll help improve our immune system, mental health, good cholesterol, bowel health and help with weight management (just to name a few benefits!).

Perhaps a good start would be to look at ideas to include them in your meals across the day, and then provide you with some easy recipes – some of my personal favourites, and I encourage you to share your personal favourites below too in case they inspire someone else to enjoy more of these wonderful foods.

A good starting point is to know what the guideline is and how much a serve is. This snip from the Australian Dietary Guidelines for Adults brochure provides a pretty clear picture.

One of my best tips is to break up the intake of these foods across the day so that you’re not left with large amounts required at the end. Personally I aim to get 2-3 serves of vegetables at lunchtime and another 2-3 for dinner, and I one of my fruit serves at breakfast and one as a snack later in the day. But there are no rules about this. Here are some ideas that might help you.

Breakfast

Weekday breakfasts usually need to be fast to prepare and eat. So a bowl of high fibre cereal with a serve of fruit is one easy way to get you off to a good start. Think bananas, strawberries, blueberries. A milk based smoothie also works well here, as does multigrain toast with peanut butter and a squashed banana.

On weekends with a little more time, why not wilt some baby spinach leaves and panfry mushrooms and tomato, served on toast with an egg. Remembering that one medium sized tomato equals a serve, and half a cup of cooked veg (the mushrooms and wilted spinach) is another serve, you’re off to a great start with two vegetable serves already under your belt.

Lunch

I love lunchtimes in my office. I take the various ingredients to build my favourite salad and set aside an hour to build and eat it while I check my email and Facebook. My salads include mixed leaves, baby tomatoes (various colours if they’re available), Lebanese cucumber, onion, half a cup of 4 bean mix and a quarter of an avocado. That gives me around 3 vegetable serves and I salivate over every mouthful.

Of course leftover are also a top idea for lunch, especially ones high in vegetable ingredient, and can be served with baby spinach leaves to lift them.

And if you’re in a massive hurry and can only have time to make a sandwich, pile on the salad and take some extra veg in a box to nibble on with your sandwich. I just adore the flavour in the grape or Perino tomatoes, and cooked and cooled asparagus (in season at the moment) are such a treat flavourwise – I even enjoy it raw!

Dinner

A good place to start here is to remember the plate model, in that half your plate should be non-starchy veg or salad.

I’ll provide ideas below on some yummy ways you can make this happen. It is definitely the easiest meal to get those extra serves in, so 2-3 shouldn’t be a challenge at all.

Snacks

Of course a piece of fruit is an excellent snack, remembering you’re aiming for 2 per day, so if you’ve had one with your breakfast you only need one later in the day too. For us with diabetes they’re better off eaten at separate times to keep our BGLs more stable.

Five easy ideas to enjoy your vegetables

Simply steamed or microwaved to an ‘al-dente’ texture (ie not overcooked) mixed vegetables of your choice such as broccoli, zucchini, green beans and peas. Dress with the juice of a lemon, a finely chopped clove of garlic, extra virgin olive oil (equal amount to the lemon juice) and salt and pepper to taste. Delicious!
Start with a tin of tomatoes and add flavours such as garlic, anchovies and chilli. Then just add your choice of veggies and simmer in the sauce for 5 minutes or until they’re an al-dente texture (not overcooked). Tasty!
Take a bowl and add a huge variety of vegetables such as mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, capsicum, zucchini, pumpkin, beans, whole garlic cloves, onion and toss them in some extra virgin olive oil with fresh or dried oregano and salt and pepper to taste. Tip them into a baking tray lined with baking paper (for easy washing up) and roast at 180 degrees Celsius for about 30 mins. Also wonderful with crumbled feta cheese tossed through at the end, and delicious cold the next day for leftover lunches!
Soups and stews are such an obvious choice for those who find it hard to enjoy their veggies as all you need to do is add a whole load of mixed veggies into a large pot, cover with stock, simmer for 20-30 minutes and blend with your desired flavourings. How easy is that?!
Last but not least, if you have left over steamed vegetables it’s so easy to reinvigorate them by adding them into a mix of a few beaten eggs and some cheese and a few extra fresh herbs, baked for 30 mins at 180 degrees to make a frittata that will ‘Wow’ your guests. Also fabulous for next day lunches to help get your vegetable serves in. Yummo!

That’s probably enough to cover in this blog. I’ve give you quite a lot to consider. As mentioned, we’d love you to share your favourite ways of enjoying vegetables, and let’s talk about them more in our Diabetes Counselling Online groups such as Diabetes and Food – let’s celebrate it!, Diabetes Weight Matters and Men Living with Diabetes among others.

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