My wife has just been diagnosed a diabetic, I wanted to see if anyone could recommend me some meal ideas or recipes that are diabetic friendly.

Most people will recommend recipes with ‘fake’ sugar like splenda, this is a terrible idea as it
actually makes you crave sweets even more.

Honestly, the best thing to do is something like a low carb atkins diet and eat only healthy food (if you have to question or wonder if something is healthy, it is not) while exercising regularly(5 times a week for 30–45 minutes)

Start here

That is the first place my doctor sent me.

Your doctor should refer your wife to a nutritionist who will help her rework her normal meal plan.

You are fine with any kind of meat and vegetables.

Avoid carbohydrates: potatoes, rice, pasta, Look for a low carb slice of bread. Here is one that is relatively low carb.

Limit fruit. It is best eaten in the morning.

With snacks, limit crackers. Try to include protein with your snack. For example, cheese and crackers or peanut butter and crackers.

Here is a good website put together by a woman who has a relative with diabetes. She has reviewed a lot of the cookbooks for diabetics and makes recommendations.

Here is a website that is full of interesting diabetic recipes and articles pertaining to diabetes.

And here’s another website that has recipes, but also has little videos to show you how to cook certain items.

Here’s a site by the National Diabetes Clearinghouse that has all sorts of info on what to eat, how much of each item to eat, the dieabetic food pyramid etc.

And here’s a site that gives healthy food swaps to substitute “bad” or “banned” foods for better choices.

The Mayo Clinic is a good source for information and nutrition with regards to diabetes. This page talks about how to read food product labels and what to buy when you go grocery shopping. This page has links to all sorts of diabetes info.

And the American Diabetes Association has tons of info on everything having to do with this disease, including this particular page which talks about the foods that diabetics are allowed to eat, with recipes and meal planning guides.

First, ignore the recommendations from the American Diabetes Association. They recommend a lot of foods that spike your blood sugar and cause insulin responses.

Try eating something close to Paleo, as it’s basically what we’re evolved to do.

Try veggie quesadillas, they are absolutely delicious and healthy :) I’m not diabetic, but I’m a vegetarian and I cook very good healthy food :)

I’ll tell you what you don’t want to do… thats consume splenda

Why? It’s better then sugar for a diabetic isn’t it? NO! it’s not.

Splenda by itself is a Sucrose which is about a 61 on Glycemic Index… and that is better then High Fructose Corn Syrup which is a 90. However the Splenda that you buy in the store also contains maltodextrin which is 155 on the GI… the higher on the GI the worse that it is for a diabetic.

@mrlaconic You are so right about that, plus it’s better to learn to enjoy foods that don’t have any sweetners. I think a whole new world can open up when people start eating things without sugar or artificial sweetners at all, because then they really taste the food. Of course, learning to embrace savory foods is very helpful too. And herbs and spices are great for enhancing the flavor of any of these new foods that will be introduced. A Diabetic diet does not have to be bland. But watch out for salt (don’t add it to food, and pay close attention to the sodium content on purchased food) that’s not good for you either because it raises the blood pressure.

Check out sparkpeople.com they have a huge database of healthy recipies, many geared Towards diabetics.

See the American Diabetes Association’s website. My friend who is diabetic has this rule of thumb: Don’t eat anything white. It works for her.

@perspicacious I’ve heard that too about eating nothing white because most of it’s bad for you. Examples: sugar, splenda, white bread, mayonaise, white rice, potatoes, regular white flour. Bad!

@Kardamom I didn’t say white foods were bad for you, but they do generally have a lot of complex carbs (which convert to sugar) and diabetics need to avoid them or at least limit them. An exception would be milk and I’m sure we could think of some others.

@perspicacious : You have it backwards. Simple carbohydrates are the refined stuff like table sugar and white bread; Complex carbohydrates like those found in high fiber foods and 100% whole wheat/grain breads are important to have because the fiber content helps slow down absorbtion of the carbohydrates into the blood stream, meaning less of a spike.

Jicama is a good example of a white root vegetable that is not only high in fiber and produces lower spikes, but may actually help control blood sugars.

Nopal (Cactus) is also pretty tasty and may have blood sugar controlling benefits. I eat them all the time with scrambled eggs in the morning and i have noticed a considerable more steady line of BG readings.

@sinscriven You are right; thanks

There are the following cases

1) Type 1 diabetes
2) Type 2 diabetes with diet restrictions
3) Type 2 diabetes with diet restrictions and oral medication
4) Type 2 diabetes with insulin injections

For 1) and 4) all these meal ideas and recipes and restrictions are a thing of the past unless the diabetic is unable to manage it properly or got no means to measure blood sugar levels.

Far more important than recipes is the education about the amount of carbohydrates and their glycemic indeces. So diabetics need to be able to look at a plate and be able to judge by just looking at it. For 2) and 3) this means eating very small amounts of fast carbohydrates. Once they are on insulin they got all choices.