If you have diabetes, a healthy eating plan should help you lose weight, if needed, and regulate your blood sugar levels. Diabetic food exchanges can help because they group foods according to how they affect your blood sugar. If you have diabetes or pre-diabetes, work with your doctor and a nutritionist to develop the best diet and lifestyle plan to control your blood sugar.
Meal Planning
You can use diabetic food exchange lists to plan your meals or daily menu. Each food exchange list contains a group of foods that have a similar amount of calories, carbohydrates, fat and protein. According to MayoClinic.com, you can exchange one serving of any food on a list for one serving of any other food on another list. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute suggests daily menus at different calorie levels, using the food exchanges to substitute different foods to add variety to the menu.
Carbohydrate Food Lists
Diabetes website states that 45 to 60 g may be a good amount of carbohydrates to aim for at each meal so that your blood sugar levels do not fluctuate too much. On the food exchange lists, each vegetable serving provides 25 calories and 5 g carbohydrates, and serving sizes are half a cup cooked vegetables or juice or 1 cup of raw vegetables. Fat free milk or very-low fat milk exchanges have 90 calories, and fruits contain 15 g carbohydrates and 60 calories per 1-cup serving raw or 4 oz. juice. Starches such as bread, corn, peas, beans, barley and pasta provide 15 g carbohydrates and 80 calories per serving.
Protein and Fat Food Lists
Foods with protein and fat but no carbohydrates do not cause your blood sugar levels to spike. However, they do provide calories, so it is important to use portion control with these foods to prevent weight gain. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute states that very lean protein, such as 1-oz. chicken breast, canned tuna or fat-free cheese contains 35 calories and 1 g fat. A 1-oz. serving of lean protein, such as salmon, lean beef or pork contains 55 calories and 2 to 3 g fat. Medium-fat proteins have 75 calories and 5 g fat in one egg or 1 oz. of beef or tofu. Fat has 45 calories and 5 g fat per serving, such as 1 tsp. of butter or oil.
Considerations
The food exchange lists are helpful for finding foods that have similar amounts of calories, carbohydrates, protein and fat, but they do not indicate other nutrients in the food. You may get a balanced diet by choosing a variety of foods within an exchange group; so, your starch choice could be beans sometimes, oatmeal at other times and corn or barley another time. These foods all provide different nutrients. Also, the lists only tell you quantities of macronutrients, not their quality; for instance, they do not distinguish healthy, unsaturated fats from unhealthy, saturated fats.
