Share your Fave Diabetes Friendly Food/Products
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Does anyone do spaghetti squash instead of spaghetti noodles? Looking for ideas for toppings/sauce.0
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dee_thurman wrote: »Does anyone do spaghetti squash instead of spaghetti noodles? Looking for ideas for toppings/sauce.
I do it quite often. I make a sauce using shrimp, scallops, green peppers, mushrooms. A bit of tomato paste. Add some water to get the consistency you like. Throw in some Italian spices and a bit of cayenne pepper. At the very end, add some cut up zucchini. Scoop out the squash from the shells and pour the sauce ver your squash. I make individual servings before pouring the sauce on it. Makes 2 to 4 servings, depending how much stuff you put in your sauce.1 -
No, I don't care for the taste and texture of spaghetti squash, although I have tried it many times in an effort to acclimate myself to it as substitute for pasta. Then I learned that if I do this to my pasta that it works well for me ...
.... Do not over cook it. It should be chewy, not soft.
.... Rinse it and refrigerate it, then warm it back up before serving by dropping it for a few seconds into boiling water.
... Learn how to eat it in the correct portion sizes. The pasta needs to be the garnish to the dish, not the main ingredient.0 -
No, I don't care for the taste and texture of spaghetti squash, although I have tried it many times in an effort to acclimate myself to it as substitute for pasta. Then I learned that if I do this to my pasta that it works well for me ...
.... Do not over cook it. It should be chewy, not soft.
.... Rinse it and refrigerate it, then warm it back up before serving by dropping it for a few seconds into boiling water.
... Learn how to eat it in the correct portion sizes. The pasta needs to be the garnish to the dish, not the main ingredient.
Are you actually testing your blood sugar 30, 60, and 90 minutes after you eat pasta prepared this way?
(I have trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that a dose of refined flour can be diabetes-friendly in any earthly scenario.)0 -
No, I don't care for the taste and texture of spaghetti squash, although I have tried it many times in an effort to acclimate myself to it as substitute for pasta. Then I learned that if I do this to my pasta that it works well for me ...
.... Do not over cook it. It should be chewy, not soft.
.... Rinse it and refrigerate it, then warm it back up before serving by dropping it for a few seconds into boiling water.
... Learn how to eat it in the correct portion sizes. The pasta needs to be the garnish to the dish, not the main ingredient.
Are you actually testing your blood sugar 30, 60, and 90 minutes after you eat pasta prepared this way?
(I have trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that a dose of refined flour can be diabetes-friendly in any earthly scenario.)
I don't test at 30, 60, 90 minutes. My instructions from the doctor was to test before the meal and at 2 hours after the start of the meal.
Pasta has a lower glycemic index when it is cooked al dente and it becoes a resistant starch when refrigerated and then reheated before serving. The major reason for having a big rush of insulin is overeating on it. The kind of carb you eat doesn't matter as much as how quickly it's metabolized ( high/higher glycemic index), and how much of it you consume.
I weigh my serving out and eat anywhere from 1 to 2 ounces weighed dry pasta at a time ... which is putting me into a high carb meal (that 2 ounces is 57 grams of dry pasta provides 42-43 grams of carb), and actually, cooked up it is much more food than when dry, so less works well for many dishes I make using pasta.
I don't use prepared pasta sauce that is processed with added sugar to it ... as a matter of fact, I don't cook 'spaghetti and meatballs' or 'lasagna' or 'shells' or 'mac and cheese', or 'pasta and beans'. ... what I do for my once-a week pasta night is use the pasta as an addition to a medly of various vegetables and 1-3 ounces of protein, fatty is better than lean, that have been 'stir-fried'. Always hits the spot. Always stays within my max of 60 carbs for the entire meal. Always fills me up and satisfies my love of all things pasta.
PS ... I dunno, maybe it's the choice of vegetables I use in my dish, or perhaps the fat in the dish slows down the carb uptake ... but it works for me.0 -
@Nikion901, it sounds like you've got your routine carefully thought out and executed - an exercise in willpower not everyone can muster. Kudos!
If you're not testing carefully, though, how can you know whether and when your blood glucose is spiking? Unless you've tested extensively in the recent past and know how you react to specific quantities of specific foods, you can't be sure.
I can sadly report from personal experience that my A1c would be up around 8.0 if I ate 60g of carbs per meal - you may be able to eat that quantity without your BG climbing, but I can't. So 40g of pasta is definitely not diabetic-friendly in my case! My cutoff is 30 net carbs per day, not per meal, even with a boost from metformin. Also, I can attest that if I eat a large (for me) amount of carbs - like 50g of simple carbs in one small meal - my highest reading will be between 60 and 90 minutes later. If I were to wait until 2 hours later, I would miss the peak most of the time.
In short, a meal that mildly raises one diabetic's BG may spike the next person's through the roof. Guidelines are handy, but every individual is different, even at different times of their lives, and no guidelines will tell you which end of the carb-tolerance curve you fall on at a given point in time.
The risk of bad consequences increases as BG increases above normal, non-diabetic levels. You may not develop Alzheimer's, heart or kidney disease, or auto-immune problems, but the odds get worse as your BG rises above an A1c of around 5.0 (which is already slightly higher than non-diabetic levels).
Here's a chart here that summarizes a view of the relationship between A1c, glucose levels (plasma, I believe), and disease risk. You're free to reject the judgments embodied in the color coding as too conservative, of course, but personally I'd rather not roll the dice!
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@RalfLott ... thanks for posting the A1c chart.
Mine was 5.9 at the last 2 quarterly checkups ... but we are hi-jacking this thread, which is about favorite diabeties favorite foods ... >)
One of my favorite meals uses some of my favorite DB friendly foods ...
An egg cooked in a bed of sauted juilliene cut carrot, celery, green bell pepper, and sliced mushrooms in a little bit of olive oil till the whites are set and the yolk still runny. Don't need any bread with this ... low cal, hi nutrition, low carb count, filling.1
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