Healthy eating

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What is Healthy Eating?

Having a healthy, balanced diet is important for keeping you healthy and will also help to control your diabetes. The ‘eatwell plate’ is a tool that can be used to guide you on how to make sure you have a healthy diet.

Eatwell plat

The eatwell plate.

Looking at the ‘eatwell plate’, you will see that about a third of your food should be bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods. Another third of what you eat should be fruit and vegetables. The remaining third is split into 3, with the smallest amount of what you eat being foods and drinks which are high in fat and/or sugar. The table below shows you some examples of foods in each of these groups, where you might find them in your diet, and why they are important.
table 3

Does it matter what time I have my meals?

The timing of the meal does not particularly matter and you can be flexible with the timings of your meals. However, blood glucose levels tend to be more stable when you have more of a routine.

Nutritional Requirements

Nutritional requirements are guidelines to show you how much of each nutrient you need each day to grow and develop. Your requirements are the same as everyone else your age. Your dietitian will calculate your nutritional requirements and provide you with a record to keep.

Carbohydrate

Carbohydrate is a source of fuel or “energy” and is needed in your body. About half of the energy in your diet should come from carbohydrate.

Carbohydrate comes in 2 forms: sugar (glucose) and starch.

Glucose

Glucose is another word for sugar. You might have noticed on food labels it tells you the total amount of carbohydrate and “of which sugars”. This tells you how quickly the food will be digested into simple sugar – glucose.

When glucose is eaten in the diet it is already sugar and therefore is quickly taken up by the blood stream. You need insulin to help process this.
Glucose metabolism

Glucose metabolism

Starch
Starch is made up from lots of glucose molecules bonded together. The body takes time to break these bonds down, which is why it takes longer for starch to be digested than sugar.
Insulin works well with starchy foods therefore it is important to have a starchy carbohydrate at each meal. Examples of starchy foods can be found in table 3.
Glucose metabolism

Starch metabolism

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