Diabetes Cookbook - Meals, Snacks, and Desserts

A good diabetes cookbook is all a matter of taste. There's no need to give up tasty meals if you're diabetic - there are so many ways to cook nutritious meals with great flavors! Eating well is part of a diabetes treatment plan, but it can be difficult at first to figure out what you need to do in order to make your diet "diabetic-friendly". A cookbook specifically written with diabetes in mind can help. They provide nutritional and diabetic exchange information with each recipe. Here are a few cookbooks that offer diabetic recipes:

Healthy Substitutions

Learning to substitute healthy alternatives is a great way to add more fiber, protein, and nutrients to your dishes. Any recipe can be customized! For example:

• Learn to use spelt in place of wheat flour. Spelt, a nutritious ancient grain, has more fiber and protein that regular wheat flour. Both fiber and protein help us feel fuller, for longer, and thus can help us maintain a healthy body weight. Spelt also has a lower glycemic index than wheat flour so it won't raise blood sugar levels quite so dramatically. Spelt flour can be substituted for regular wheat flour in pretty much every recipe.

• Bake with coconut flour. Coconut flour is just the dried meat from a coconut that has been ground into a fine meal. Packed with fiber and low in carbohydrates, it's a great way to make desserts and baked goods healthier. Coconut flour also has no gluten; eggs - lots of them! - are used to help give baked goods struture and loft. That means that baked goods made with coconut flour are also high in protein, in addition to being high in fiber. Again, high fiber + high protein = feeling fuller, helping us to eat less and manage our weight.

• Quinoa is a popular seed that packs a ton of nutritional value and high protein content. It's often thought of as a 'grain' because of its texture, and can be prepared similarly to rice. Use it as a substitute for rice, or cook and add it to salads for an extra protein boost.

Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too

A diabetes cookbook doesn't have to contain just meal recipes, either... there are many delicious, diabetic-safe dessert recipes too! Of course, desserts should be eaten in moderation, so talk to your dietitian about how to incorporate sweets into your eating plan.