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In This Chapter

▶ Discovering what makes up a healthy diet

▶ Exploring the core nutritional components

▶ Breaking down the vitamins and minerals you need

▶ Staying on top of nutrition with Canada’s Food Guide

Doctors seem to have an obsession with analogies to food. When describing certain diseases, doctors talk about nutmeg liver, strawberry tongue, and cauliflower ear; and when it comes to the risk of diabetes, whether you are pear-shaped (meaning your body is fuller around your buttocks, hips, and thighs) or apple-shaped (meaning being round around the middle). Being apple-shaped increases your risk of acquiring type 2 diabetes.

Eating healthfully is, pardon the pun, an essential ingredient to maintaining good health in general, and controlling diabetes in particular. Indeed, we can think of no better example of the phrase “You are what you eat.” How important is it to fuel your body with healthy nutrients if you have diabetes? Oh, no more important than having oxygen in the air that you breathe.

In this chapter, we look at how your food choices can help you manage your diabetes and keep you healthy. In particular we consider how your nutrition plan can help you

✔ Keep your blood glucose levels under control

✔ Lower your blood pressure

✔ Improve your cholesterol and triglyceride levels (that is, your lipids)

✔ Achieve and maintain a healthy weight

The recipes in this book were created with the preceding factors in mind; that is, the recipes provide healthy food choices that are geared toward assisting you in your quest to control not just your blood glucose levels but your blood pressure, your lipids, and your weight also.

What Is a “Diabetic Diet”?

This could be the shortest section in this entire book because, truth be told, we don’t believe a “diabetic diet” exists, and certainly not in a restrictive or limiting sense. Indeed, virtually any food can be accommodated if you have diabetes. A “diabetic diet” really means a well-balanced, nutritious, healthy eating program.

Because the word “diet” often conjures up so many negative connotations – crash diets, fad diets, failed diets, and so on – all replete with frustration and aggravation, we’re hesitant to even use the word. (Perhaps it’s no coincidence that diet is a four-letter word!) Our preferred term for a “diet” is “meal planning” or simply “healthy eating.” When we refer to a “diet” in this book it is this healthy eating strategy we’re referring to.

The Canadian Diabetes Association (CDA) recommends – as do we – that people with diabetes follow Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide (which you can find online at www.healthcanada.gc.ca/foodguide, or in an abbreviated form in the colour insert of this book). Health Canada created this guide (typically referred to in its short form: Canada’s Food Guide) to help Canadians plan meals based on choosing appropriate amounts of food from the various food groups.

Canada’s Food Guide offers these sensible eating tips:

✔ Enjoy a variety of foods from the four food groups (vegetables and fruit, grain products, milk and alternatives, and meat and alternatives).

✔ Emphasize vegetables, fruits, and cereals, breads, and other whole-grain products.

✔ Choose lower-fat dairy products, leaner meats, and food prepared with little or no fat.

✔ Achieve and maintain a healthy body weight by enjoying regular physical activity and healthy eating.

✔ Limit salt, alcohol, and caffeine.

We look more closely at the recommendations in Canada’s Food Guide later in this chapter (see “Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide”).

In addition to general healthy eating principles as discussed in this chapter, you can undertake several other CDA-approved strategies to enhance your health.

✔ The Mediterranean diet can improve blood glucose control and lower the risk for cardiovascular disease. The Mediterranean diet emphasizes consuming olive oil, legumes, unrefined cereals, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, dairy products, and fish. Meat is consumed in only small amounts.

✔ A vegan or vegetarian diet can improve blood glucose control and lipid levels. (Though definitions vary, generally speaking a vegan diet excludes all animal products, including dairy products, and a vegetarian diet excludes meat, fish and poultry, but includes dairy products such as cheese, eggs, yogurt, or milk.)

✔ A DASH (“Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension”) diet can lower blood pressure, improve blood glucose control, and lower the risk for cardiovascular disease. The DASH diet emphasizes fruits, vegetables, fat-free or low-fat dairy products, whole grains, fish, poultry, fibre, and nuts, and avoids saturated fats, cholesterol, and red meats.

The CDA also notes that diets high in “dietary pulses” (examples of dietary pulses are beans, peas, chickpeas, and lentils) can be consumed to improve blood glucose and lipid levels.

In order for you to succeed with your diabetes nutrition plans, you must know what to eat. This chapter provides helpful information, but nothing replaces the guidance that a registered dietitian provides. If you haven’t seen one, you’re missing out and we would strongly encourage you to arrange an appointment. In Chapter 1, we look at how you can find a dietitian.

A prescription for a healthy eating program

Doug hadn’t seen a doctor for years but, having turned 40, he figured it was time to get “checked out.” Although he was quite a bit overweight, he felt reasonably well and was very surprised when his family physician told him that not only did he have diabetes but he also had high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

“Gee doc, I guess this means you’re going to recommend I take a whole bunch of pills, eh?” he said dejectedly.

To Doug’s surprise, his doctor responded by saying, “Well, we could use a whole bunch of pills, but your blood glucose levels aren’t all that high and your blood pressure and cholesterol aren’t all that bad, so it’s up to you.”

“Up to me?” Doug said with surprise.

“Yes, it’s up to you,” the doctor continued. “If you think you can change your eating habits, cut down on your calories, and reduce your salt and fat intake, you may be able to avoid medication.”

Doug was all for that, so the doctor arranged an appointment with Cynthia, who got Doug set up with a healthy eating program, and it didn’t take long before his blood glucose, blood pressure, and cholesterol were on the way down. Was Doug on a “diabetic diet”? As Shakespeare said, a rose would smell as sweet by any other name.

Exploring the Key Ingredients

Most of what people eat is made up of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Other necessary ingredients in a person’s diet are vitamins, minerals, and, in abundant quantities, water.

Although everybody needs to pay attention to how much of each of these things he or she eats, in order to stay healthy, people with diabetes need to be especially careful to ensure they get the right amounts of the right nutrients.