Healthy food choices in diabetes

In your waking hours, you should eat every 3 to 4 hours. Regular meals normally include breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper, and snacks as required. This makes it easier to control the size of the meals, maintain a steady blood sugar level throughout the day and control your weight.

The total amount of food is adjusted on the basis of the amount of energy that you consume. If your goal is to lose weight, you should adopt a conservative approach, approximately 2 kg per month. You can reach this goal by reducing your daily energy consumption by approximately 500 kcal.

You can influence the blood sugar response to meals and heart health with your personal choices. Key factors for a healthy heart is reducing salt, choices that favour soft fats (vegetable oils, vegetable oil-based spreads, plain nuts, almonds and seeds) as well as wholegrains, root vegetables, greens, berries and fruits as a source of fibre.

The Heart Symbol makes it easier to choose heart-friendly products in each product group.

Self-monitoring helps you identify the individual effects of different eating habits. The effects on blood sugar can be seen in self-measurements of blood sugar or the results from a glucose sensor. It's also worthwhile to monitor your blood pressure at home with self-measurements, so you can see how your eating affects your blood pressure level. For weight management, tracking your weight at home at regular intervals is helpful.