Introduction

This book was written to give you the nutritional and culinary knowledge necessary to prevent, treat, and even reverse diabetes. Armed with simple strategies and sound advice, Diabetes Meal Planning & Nutrition For Dummies enables you to take control of diabetes. Whether you purchased this book for yourself or for a loved one and use it to prevent, treat, or reverse a diabetes diagnosis, you will find the answers you need all in one place.

There should be no such thing as a “diabetic diet.” A person with diabetes should not need to choose from a different restaurant menu or be limited to looking for specifically labeled products that have sugar substituted by an artificial sweetener. With the number of people worldwide estimated to have diabetes projected to rise to 642 million by 2040, there is a compelling case for looking at nutrition for managing type 2 diabetes not only when it occurs but also as a strategy to prevent it from developing.

More than half of the population of many countries is now defined as being overweight and at risk of having established type 2 diabetes, undiagnosed type 2 diabetes, or its precursor, prediabetes. The reasons for the dramatic rise in type 2 diabetes and prediabetes are almost certainly related to the move away from traditional healthy lifestyles to our current so-called “Western” processed diets with refined sugars and additives and sedentary patterns of behavior. It is also clear that the complications of poorly controlled diabetes such as heart disease, stroke, dementia, and kidney disease are conditions that can also cause chronic illnesses in people, especially those with poor diets who do not have diabetes.

The dietary advice we give in this book aims to help you achieve excellent blood glucose control, optimum weight maintenance, and better overall health — things that can benefit the majority of people with or without diabetes. The best nutritional advice for people with or without diabetes is to enjoy a diet of foods and nutrients that reduce the likelihood of many of these chronic illnesses. This makes diabetes, its prevention, possible reversal and management, and reduction in its complications everybody’s business.

Best of all, this book exemplifies how you don’t need to give up good-tasting food in order to maintain a diabetes-friendly lifestyle! On the contrary, it shows how to pair ingredients together for maximum flavor and nutritional benefits. You’ll fall in love with culinary therapy techniques that have the power to transform your life. Food is the simplest, least expensive, most available, and most immediate treatment option for diabetes health and overall wellbeing.

Luckily, the foods used in this book are readily available and offer options for a wide variety of tastes. Many of the simple foods that we take for granted are the most beneficial to our diets, and this book shows you how to unleash their power, all while keeping an eye on the clock and the budget. Many people with diabetes struggle to adopt healthier eating habits, many to the point of giving up. This book, however, was built to inspire with enjoyable practices that will enrich your life as well as your meals.

If the word planning in the title seems like the least important (even least interesting) subject in the pages ahead, you are in for an amazing surprise — maybe even an epiphany. See, the struggle with healthy eating doesn’t come from your stomach, your pancreas, or an uncontrollable hand that sneaks unhealthy food into your mouth when you’re not looking. Your struggle with healthy eating is a struggle between your incredible brain and your primitive survival chemistry, and when it comes to food, chemistry often wins. You’re about to learn how planning can tip the balance, and make healthier eating your newest accomplishment. Adopting the advice in this book can provide a way to establish a balanced, satisfying, and truly enjoyable relationship with food.

About This Book

Diabetes Meal Planning & Nutrition For Dummies zeroes in on the important relationship between diabetes and food, and helps you make choices that benefit your long-term health and satisfy your eating preferences. The book’s focus is on which foods you can, and should, eat to improve your health with diabetes, and not on what you shouldn’t eat. There is no doubt, by the way, that how you choose to eat when you have diabetes can have a remarkable effect on your health — this book helps ensure that effect is a positive one. And it is not just about considering the nutrients we eat in the greatest quantity — for diabetes the all-important carbohydrates, fats, and proteins — but also to understand the vital role of micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals, as well as the new science of our gut microbiome and food constituents called bioactive compounds that can have profound antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.

The book acknowledges and explains some of the barriers you may have experienced to adopting healthier eating habits, and how your best intentions can be sabotaged. And, you see how the power of making eating decisions in advance — planning — can get you beyond those barriers and keep you there. More than 80 percent of people with type 2 diabetes are overweight or obese, and many have made attempts to change eating habits without success. This discussion on planning may be just the advice you need.

The target audience is people already diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, but the concepts and practical advice for managing diabetes with diet apply to gestational diabetes, to those with prediabetes, and even to people who feel they may be at risk of diabetes. This book doesn’t substitute for medical nutrition therapy from a registered dietitian, but should help you put your personalized diabetes meal plan into action.

Diabetes Meal Planning & Nutrition For Dummies does discuss diabetes as a disease, but if you’re new to diabetes you may want to grab one of Dr. Poole’s and Amy Riolo’s other books, such as Diabetes For Dummies, for a more detailed discussion. Food is an important part of managing diabetes over the long term, but there’s a lot more you need to know.

Diabetes often occurs with medical conditions, like celiac disease or lactose intolerance, that limit food choices. And, diabetes can promote health conditions, like kidney failure, that trigger very specific dietary requirements that are significantly different than general recommendations for a diabetes meal plan. Your doctor and a registered dietitian can advise you in these cases, but advice in this book may not always apply.

You should know that you don’t have to read this book from front to back. All For Dummies books are written so that each chapter will make sense on its own. It’s not necessary that you remember anything either — a detailed table of contents helps you find what you need whenever you need it. This book is meant to be a reference; there will be no final exam to test your memorization skills.

Here are a few other tidbits that may answer your questions before you have to ask:

• Blood glucose is often casually called blood sugar. Blood glucose is the correct terminology and is used exclusively in the book. In common usage, the terms mean the same.
• Blood glucose is measured in milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl) in the United States, but many countries use the International System of Units measure of millimoles per liter (mmol/l). The same is true for cholesterol and triglycerides.
• Healthy eating is no less important for people with type 1 diabetes, but insulin does provide a more direct way to control blood glucose. Some discussion about managing food amount and timing may be less relevant to people with type 1 diabetes when rapid acting insulin is used.
• The term diabetic is not used to refer to a person with diabetes. Diabetes is not who you are; it’s a condition you have.
• This book does not spend much time addressing the particulars of insulin dosing, insulin-carbohydrate ratios, or insulin correction factors. These are very individualized and must be worked out with your doctor or diabetes educator.

Foolish Assumptions

Your authors have some preconceived notions about you, and thought you might be interested in knowing what those are. This book assumes the following:

• You have diabetes, or have an interest in someone who has diabetes. It’s okay if neither is true, by the way.
• You realize that effectively managing diabetes for better health includes managing what and how you eat. Maybe you’ve been advised about the importance of diet, or maybe you learned from previous experience with diabetes.
• You are not expecting a miracle answer that requires no further thinking or effort from you.
• Even though you are not expecting a miracle, you appreciate advice that makes healthy eating for diabetes easier.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout For Dummies books you find icons that call your attention to something especially important, or something technical. This book includes the following icons:

A Tip icon often suggests you try something or check something out, and it usually points to something surprising about food or nutrition.

A Warning icon does exactly what it sounds like. It warns against potential problems.

The Remember icon might...