Everyone has a lot of misunderstandings about the diet of diabetes. For example, people with diabetes can't eat fruit or meat, and can only eat vegetarian food; even sweets can't eat a bite. Is this true? Today, I summarized a few misunderstandings about diabetes and diet.

1. Diabetes is caused by eating too much sugar

The truth: In fact, there are many and complex factors that cause diabetes. In addition to genetic susceptibility, many factors such as obesity, smoking, emotional stress, etc., can induce diabetes, not just because of excessive sugar consumption. The reason why diabetic patients have sugar in their urine is not just because they eat too much sugar, but because the body has problems with insulin metabolism and cannot use the sugar ingested.

It is very important to prevent diabetes to develop a good diet and living habits, not as simple as not eating sugar or eating less sugar. For diabetic patients, it is difficult to achieve satisfactory results in blood sugar control if the bad living habits cannot be improved.

2. Diabetics cannot eat sweet foods, only unsweetened foods

Truth: In fact, when choosing a food, people with diabetes cannot choose food only by taste, but also on the ingredients and total energy contained in it.

Most sweet foods contain sugar, such as biscuits, sweet drinks, etc. These sugary sweet foods can raise blood sugar and should be controlled and eaten less. However, some sweet foods are actually sweeteners, such as aspartame, cyclamate, etc. Although sweeteners have a sweet taste, they hardly provide energy. It doesn't matter if these sweet foods are eaten appropriately.

Moreover, some unsweetened foods, such as the rice and steamed buns we eat, although they do not taste sweet, the starch they contain will turn into glucose after digestion, and you cannot eat more.

3. Don't eat foods with high glycemic index

Truth: The glycemic index is an indicator to measure the blood sugar response of food. Diabetic patients should pay attention to it, but they cannot blindly choose food according to the glycemic index. It also depends on the glycemic load of the food and the total amount of carbohydrates.

Foods with a lower glycemic index (GI) have less impact on blood sugar fluctuations. Diabetics are generally recommended to eat low-GI foods. But this does not mean that those fruits with high GI cannot be eaten. It also depends on the blood glucose load (GL), which is an index that combines the quality and quantity of carbohydrate intake to evaluate the total blood glucose effect of the diet. It is more important for guiding diet. It has practical meaning.

For example, the GI of watermelon and soda crackers are both 72, but the carbohydrates in 100 grams of food are quite different. Soda crackers contain about 76 grams of carbohydrates per 100 grams, and their GL is about 55, while 100g of watermelon contains carbohydrates. The compound is about 7 grams, and its GL is about 5. The difference in GL between the two is as much as 10 times.

4. Diabetes can't eat fruits

Truth: Most fruits have low glycemic index and low blood glucose load, so people with diabetes can eat fruits in moderation.

The American Diabetes Association believes that people with diabetes can eat fruits. Among the dietary recommendations they provide for diabetic patients, the first one is to eat more fruits and vegetables, and it is best to eat fruits and vegetables of various colors to enrich the diversity of fruits.

However, it is best not to drink fruit juice for people with diabetes. Fruit juice usually loses some dietary fiber, and the blood sugar response will be higher than that of whole fruit.

5. Sweeteners can cause diabetes

The truth: Sweeteners, such as aspartame, cyclamate, etc., can provide sweetness but almost no energy, and will not raise blood sugar.

Therefore, sweeteners are a good alternative product for diabetic patients. If you want to eat sweet food and worry about raising blood sugar, sweetener food is a good choice for diabetics.

6. Diabetics can rest assured to eat sugar-free food

Truth: "Sugar-free" does not mean no carbohydrates or no calories.

my country's nutrition labeling standards stipulate that if a food is to be claimed as "sugar-free", it is required that the sugar content per 100g or 100ml in solid or liquid food is not more than 0.5g (referring to carbohydrates).

Many so-called "sugar-free products", such as sugar-free biscuits, sugar-free cereals, sugar-free lotus root flour, etc., although they do not contain artificially added sucrose, they still contain a lot of starch, and some even add starch syrup, glucose syrup, and maltose. Ingredients such as pulp and maltodextrin. They raise blood sugar at no less speed than the white sugar you eat daily, so it's better to eat less.

7. Diabetics can only eat less or no staple food

The truth: Many diabetics think that if they control their blood sugar, they can’t eat staple foods. Even if they eat, they can only eat a little bit. In fact, this is a complete misunderstanding. Diet control is to control the total daily intake of calories. It is unreasonable to control certain types of food alone. Excessive control can also cause hypoglycemia and malnutrition. A balanced diet should be taken.

The biggest problem with our staple food is that it is too delicate. For example, the current refined white rice noodles, in addition to the loss of vitamins and minerals, are also high in blood sugar index, which is indeed not conducive to blood sugar control. For diabetic patients, the daily staple food choice should be as little as possible to eat refined and processed staple foods, including the current "fine white and soft" rice noodles; instead, staple foods such as coarse grains and beans should be eaten. At the same time, attention should be paid to the combination of thickness, such as adding black to white rice and white noodles. Rice, soybeans, etc. Therefore, we advocate the staple food of miscellaneous grains, such as black rice, yellow rice, potatoes, etc. The staple food that needs to be controlled is mainly refined white rice and noodles.