Popular wisdom once held that diabetics should not eat dessert. However, the American Diabetes Association states that you can eat any food you choose on a diabetic eating plan as long as you include that food in your daily allowance of carbohydrates and calories. Although you should limit your portions of dessert to keep your blood sugar and weight within a healthy range, you should not consider desserts off-limits, says the ADA.
Misconceptions
The primary causes of Type 2 diabetes are consuming too many calories and being overweight, not eating too much sugar, says the ADA. With the proper planning, you can include desserts in your diabetic eating plan. As long as you are exercising regularly, taking insulin or oral medication as prescribed and maintaining your blood glucose level within the target range, you can enjoy desserts without compromising your health, according to the ADA.
Recommendations
The key to planning desserts is to include them in your overall intake of carbohydrates, says MayoClinic.com. If you are budgeting your carbohydrate intake to include 45 to 60 g of carbohydrates per meal, as suggested by the ADA, include dessert with the overall carbohydrate content of that meal. The Nutrition Facts labels on many desserts will tell you how many calories, total carbohydrate grams and fat grams are in each serving.
Planning
To keep the carbohydrate content of your meal within your recommended allowance, substitute dessert for another carbohydrate-containing food, such as a serving of potatoes, bread, juice or milk. If your dessert contains fat, eliminate one or two servings of fat from your meal, such as salad dressing, cheese, olives or avocado slices. The "total carbohydrates" figure on the Nutrition Facts label includes both sugars and starches. The amount of sugar you eat does not affect your health as much as the total amount of carbohydrates you eat, says the ADA.
Suggestions
You don't have to give up brownies, cakes or ice cream, but eating low-carbohydrate, low-sugar desserts may curb your sweet tooth. Fruit salads and fruit yogurt contain carbohydrates, but both are rich in nutrients. Frozen fruit juice ice pops offer a nutritious summer treat for kids. When baking desserts, you can often reduce the sugar by one-third to one-half. Spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and nutmeg add flavor to dessert breads and cakes without extra sugar. If you limit the amount of sugar in your diet, you may find eventually that sugary desserts taste too sweet.
Considerations
Eat desserts as part of your meal to avoid a rapid increase in blood sugar, advises MayoClinic.com. Because many desserts are high in calories but low in nutritional value, give nutrient-dense foods a higher priority. Commercially packaged low-sugar or low-carbohydrate ice creams, cookies and candies may still be high in fat and calories. These foods should included in your daily allowance of calories, carbohydrates and fats.
