Do you enjoy sweet treats? Your answer is likely YES because our desire for sweets appears innate. But, do you wrestle with portions and your blood glucose when you indulge? Get the up-to-date diabetes nutrition recommendations about sweets and gather tricks to enjoy sweet treats while you balance your health and diabetes.
Sweets and Diabetes: Current Guidelines
Since 1994 sugary foods and sweets have been Since 1994 sugary foods and sweets have been axed from the verboten list for
people with diabetes. This dramatic change occurred because research
demonstrated that equivalent amounts of carbohydrate from sugar don’t raise
blood glucose any faster than other sources of carbohydrate such as potatoes and
rice.
Current nutrition guidelines from American Diabetes Association (2008) recommend
you fit sugars and sweets into a healthy eating plan in moderation. The
moderation mantra has as much to do with blood glucose control as it does with
achieving a healthy weight and normal blood lipids.
Sweets: Nutritionally Speaking
The intake of added sugars, from regularly sweetened drinks, baked goods, candy,
etc., has risen many fold over the last two decades. Many obesity experts point
to this escalating intake as one culprit in our twin epidemics of type 2
diabetes and obesity. Sugary foods and sweets have three strikes in the
nutrition and diabetes ballgame because they provide:
-
concentrated calories with few vitamins, minerals and fiber
-
hefty amounts of carbohydrate which may raise blood glucose levels
-
unhealthy saturated fats from ingredients such as butter, cream, and sour cream.
Figure Your Sweets Quota
Answer these questions to determine the right amount of sweets for you:
- Are you at a healthy weight, or too heavy? you at a healthy weight, or too heavy?
- Is your blood glucose in good control or not?
- Are your blood lipids at healthy or abnormal levels?
If you are at healthy weight and your blood glucose and lipids are in good control, you have more leeway with your sweets. On the converse, if you’re trying to trim your waistline, get your blood glucose under control and straighten out your lipid profile, you’ll need to limit servings of sweets.
Next, consider your individual desires by answering these questions:
- How many times a day, week or month do you crave sweets?
- What’s your list of must-have or nice-to-enjoy sweets?
Portion Control Tricks
Want to trim your waist line and get your lipids under control by reigning in your count of sugars and fats? No need to cut sweet treats out, just practice portion control tricks.
- Relish small portions of your favorite desserts with a frequency that balances your craving for sweets with your health and diabetes goals.
- Decipher your true favorites. Don’t spend precious calories on eating just OK tasting sweets. Make sure the sweets you eat make your tastebuds flutter.
- Satisfy your sweet tooth with small portions of your favorite sweets. Split one dessert among fellow dinners when dining out. Order small portions of ice cream – junior, kiddie or small portions are often available.
- Limit the number of sweets in your house. The closer to your lips the harder they are to resist.
- Quench your sweet tooth with low sugar and calorie options: sugar-free popsicles or fudge bars, hot cocoa, diet soda, dried fruit, baked apples or fruit compote, powdered drink mixes, and sugar-free jam
- Learn to bake a few palate pleasing desserts with reduced amounts of sugar and/or sugar substitute. Start your search on the sweetener’s websites, such as
www.splenda.com or
www.equal.com; or diabetes sites, such as American Diabetes Association:
www.diabetes.org.
Tricks to Control Blood Glucose Rises
- Check your blood glucose 1, 2, and up to 5 hours after you eat sweets to learn how high it goes and when it comes back down. Let this information help you decide which sweets to eat, when and how much as well as the amount of blood glucose medication to take to cover the rise (if you are able to adjust your medication, such as insulin).
- Become educated about the calories, carbohydrate count, total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol of your favorite desserts with carbohydrate counting resources provided in Eating Restaurant Foods – How to Nail Those Carb Counts (please link to this column). Knowing the carb counts help you cover the rise of blood glucose.
- Be active before and/or after you eat sweets. An increase in activity can help slow the blood glucose rise.
 Don’t Be Tricked by the Nutrition Facts (sidebar)
When you pick up a food and spin it around to view the Nutrition Facts, do you
zero in on “sugars” because you believe they deserve your utmost attention.
Total carbohydrate, the words in bold print above “sugars,” should be your focus
because the grams of sugars are accounted for within the grams of total
carbohydrate. Plus, the sugars aren’t just added sources of refined sugars,
they’re defined by FDA as all the naturally occurring sugars (such as lactose in
milk and sucrose in fruit) as well as added sugars (such as high fructose corn
syrup in regular soda, fruit drinks or ketchup).
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