A balanced diet is an important facet of diabetes care, as a balanced diet is essential to healthy diabetic living. Well-balanced diabetic diet guidelines can help you:

• Avoid diabetic complications
• Establish and maintain ideal weight
• Maintain proper cholesterol and triglyceride levels
• Manage blood sugar levels.

Luckily, a diet for diabetes doesn't require any special foods and is a healthy way of eating for the whole family.

Diabetic Diet Guidelines

An appointment with a nutritionist or dietitian will get you on the right track and teach you some basic diabetic diet guidelines. A diet for diabetes will include a variety of foods with:

• Carbohydrates: Contrary to popular belief, doctors actually recommend that a diet for diabetes include 45 to 65 percent carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates are the best, since they are digested at a slower rate than simple carbs, and generally rich in healthy fiber. Examples of complex carbohydrates are whole grains and vegetables.
• Fats: Diabetic living includes making sure that healthy fats make up 20 to 35 percent of your diet. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are best, like those found in olive and canola oil and nuts and seeds. Diabetes care also involves avoiding saturated fats from animal products and trans fats, found in many fried and processed foods.
• Proteins: Since they don't raise blood sugar like carbohydrates or contain high calories like fats, doctors recommend that proteins make up 15 to 20 percent of a diabetic diet. Some high-protein foods that are rich in healthy fats are fish, lentils and soy.

Diabetes Care: The Glycemic Index

In order to adhere to diabetic diet guidelines, you may want to use the glycemic index. This tool rates foods--using a number from one to 100--by how they will affect your blood sugar levels. The higher the number, the more quickly a food will raise blood sugar levels. Here are some common foods and ingredients and where they fall on the glycemic index:

• Apples: 38
• Barley: 22
• Honey: 91
• Soy: 14
• Table sugar: 64.

Diabetes Care: Get Enough Fiber

Fiber intake is a vital part of diabetic living. If you're pre-diabetic or at high risk of developing diabetes, a diet high in fiber can lower your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, as well as help you:

• Aid digestion
• Control blood sugar levels
• Decrease risk of heart disease
• Help to attain and maintain a healthy weight
• Help to decrease cholesterol levels.

In diabetic living, you may want to consume these high-fiber foods:

• Fruits
• Legumes
• Nuts
• Vegetables
• Whole grains.

Resources

Mayo Clinic. (n.d.). Diabetes diet: Create your healthy-eating plan. Retrieved June 8, 2010, from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/diabetes-diet/DA00027.

Women's Health Resource. (2009). Diabetes diet. Retrieved May 31, 2010, from http://www.wdxcyber.com/diabetes_diet.html.