Cooking for a diabetic focuses on reducing sugar and fat content in the diet. This is important because diabetes is a disease wherein the body is not able to process sugar (glucose) normally.
Diabetic gourmet cooking is all about eating healthy. That is why a diabetic diet is in fact beneficial not only to manage diabetes but to maintain good overall health.
If you are starting diabetic gourmet cooking, make sure to consult your healthcare provider, a registered dietician or nutritionist to get proper advice in planning your daily menu and preparing nutritious meals.
Here are some helpful diabetic gourmet cooking tips:
- Substitute butter, shortening and oil with vegetable oil spray. If you really need to use oil, choose olive oil or canola oil instead of vegetable oils.
- When cooking meats, you should always choose lean cuts. Instead of frying meat, consider grilling, roasting or broiling. Remove the skin off poultry.
- For pasta, go for the whole grain variety.
- Use water or low-fat broth when steaming vegetables
- Flavor your foods with spices and herbs, lemon juice or vinegar.
- For recipes that call for cheese, use low-fat or non-aft cottage cheese
- Instead of using butter or adding sauces on vegetables and fish dishes, use lemon or lime.
A typical complaint about diabetic gourmet cooking is that the patient would have to give up the foods that he or she loved. If those foods are high in fat and sugar, then definitely they should be avoided. However, there are ways to make those favorite dishes diabetic-friendly.
Just look at diabetic gourmet cooking websites, magazines and books and you will find so many delicious recipes that you will never feel like your being deprived. Here’s an example of a diabetic gourmet cooking menu: Stuffed Mushrooms with Cheese and Pesto for appetizer, Baked Chicken Garlic for your Main Dish and good old Chocolate Cake for dessert.
The secret to the above healthy recipes is that they use healthy ingredients. For example, a diabetic-friendly chocolate cake would use non-fat dry milk instead of regular milk and a sugar substitute instead of regular sugar. Often, all it takes is a few substitutions of ingredients and you can come up with the dishes you love that are good for your body.
Health and nutrition experts can give you more information on different resources covering diabetic gourmet cooking. They can also provide you with cooking tips and diabetic gourmet cooking recipes as well as advise you about exercise and weight management, which are all essential to diabetes control.
