diebetic help

[anitacj2004]

Heelllppp!!!!!My mother is a diabetic who will NOT eat right.She is supposed to eat a specific dieatary plan.You might as well forget about that.: .Which drives me crazy . She eats anything that 's bad for her. She hates anything good for her Especially vegetables.It's like trying to get a 1 yr old to eat vegetables.
I need diabetic recipes so i can "trick " her into eating vegetables and eat right.She won't listen to me,my dh,the nutritionist,or her dr.
So it's affecting her health.Any ideas would be most welcome.Thank you.: :

[AnnC]

Originally Posted by anitacj2004

Heelllppp!!!!!My mother is a diabetic who will NOT eat right.She is supposed to eat a specific dieatary plan.You might as well forget about that.: .Which drives me crazy . She eats anything that 's bad for her. She hates anything good for her Especially vegetables.It's like trying to get a 1 yr old to eat vegetables.
I need diabetic recipes so i can "trick " her into eating vegetables and eat right.She won't listen to me,my dh,the nutritionist,or her dr.
So it's affecting her health.Any ideas would be most welcome.Thank you.: :

I have been diabetic for 13 years, and I personally hate being told what to eat, and those specific dietary plans are very annoying, especially when you realize you are supposed to eat like that forever. AND almost all nutritionists give you that low-fat high-carbohydrate diet that just makes you crave more carbohydrates, and is very unhealthy, especially for a diabetic.

The main thing is to cut out ALL vegetable oils, with the exception of coconut, palm, and extra virgin cold pressed olive oil. NO trans fats. Trans fats are a MAJOR cause of diabetes. NEVER heat ANYTHING in plastic -- the plastic leaches into the food, and also is a cause of diabetes. Healthy fats are very important: lard, butter, coconut oil, palm oil, EV olive oil, tallow. They help stabilize blood sugar, even if you eat sweets.

Help her make healthier versions of the foods she loves. If she craves French fries, cut up potatoes and fry them in beef fat or lard. Or goose fat, if you can get it. Avoid white sugar -- for desserts, use raw honey, maple syrup, or stevia. Salsa is a perfectly good vegetable source, as is vegetable juice, cooking meat with onions, vegetables in stews or chili. Beans are good, be sure to use the dry ones and soak them overnight, then cook. They have so much fiber they don't make your blood sugar go up very much. In other words, don't ignore her cravings for sweets -- start to make better, healthier sweets. If you get the cookbook Nourishing Traditions, it has a lot of good dessert recipes that have no white sugar or high fructose corn syrup (another terrible food that is very bad for everyone, especially diabetics). Eventually, your cravings for sweets can go away, or at least reduce.

By avoiding the bad oils, white sugar, and high fructose corn syrup, it is possible to actually reverse diabetes. I am working on that right now with my naturopathic doctor.

Mainstream doctors generally treat diabetics like they are idiots, too, which makes the patient feel very rebellious : (at least I do!)

My best wishes to both you and your mother!

Ann

[ChristieB]

Ann had some very good ideas! I'd like to add that agave nectar is a very good sweetener. We use that and stevia for sweetening around here (ds has diabetes). Agave nectar has a glycemic index of 10 (very, very low). And btw, I totally agree with Ann about the diet the nutritionists advocate. It's awful! (Ds has type 1, not type 2, but they advocated a pretty unhealthy diet for him, and I've read diets for type 2, and I'm not impressed).

Also, you can't make someone else (esp. an adult) eat right. They have to decide to do for themselves. That said, maybe if you provide her with some good healthy foods that also taste good (to her -- I'm not saying you don't cook good-tasting food ), she'll notice how much better she feels and want to keep it up.

For baked goods, you might want to try some SCD recipes. See here for some ideas: http://www.pecanbread.com/recipes.html . I love that, when I use just nuts and eggs (no fruit) and when I use agave nectar and/or stevia to sweeten with, the muffins/pancakes don't count as a carb. They actually count as a protien. So ds can have one as a snack any time!

As for getting veggies into the diet, I like to puree veggies into pizza sauce (believe it or not, pizza can be healthy). I saute some onions and garlic, add some grated carrot. When the carrot starts to get soft, add diced tomatoes and a little tomato paste. Cook that until the tomatoes start to break down. I add some already steamed kale that I keep in the freezer. Then I puree the whole thing. I also add some pizza seasoning that includes fennel seeds. It's really quite nice. The carrot makes it a bit sweet. I've added chopped up, steamed kale to burritos, too. I don't have many other good veggie ideas, since really ds really likes his veggies. One of his favorite ways to eat veggies is fresh with a dip. Dip ideas include homemade guacamole, homemade hummus, or a sour cream/yogurt dip made with a mix of spices (avoid prepared dip seasonings, since they usually have sugar and/or MSG). I use two mixes from Penzey's, http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/shophome.html , but you still have to be careful, since some of theirs have sugar or MSG, too. One of our favorites is Fox Point Seasoning (Sunny Paris is very similar but without the salt, and that way you can add as much spice as you want without making the dish too salty). Guests have raved over my dip, but it's so simple: just sour cream and Fox Point. It's good in scrambles eggs, too. Another one I use is their Italian Dressing mix, but that has sugar, so I make my own based on theirs. But they have many spice mixes that are really good, and if you read the ingredients, you'll be able to avoid the sugar.

Smoothies are great way to add nutrients to the diet. I use the frozen fruit of my choice, add coconut cream concentrate or coconut oil or coconut milk, some sesame seeds for calcium, some ground flax seeds, a little stevia, a little vanilla sometimes. I used yogurt when we were eating dairy. It's really very good, and good for us. It might help curb the sweet cravings, too (it does for me). Coconut oil helps with sweet cravings, too.

HTH,
Christie