The Diabetes Food Pyramid: Vegetables
When it comes to vegetables, people with diabetes, should eat at least three servings a day. Vegetables are healthy, chock full of vitamins and minerals, and some give you much needed fiber. The best part: vegetables are naturally low in calories -- if you are careful not to top them with butter, sour cream, cream soups, or cheese sauces.
Remember, non-starchy vegetables such as spinach, broccoli, lettuce, greens, carrots, chilies, peppers and tomatoes (those in this food group) do contain a small amount of carbohydrate -- 5 grams per serving.
Easy ways to eat your vegetables:
- Keep frozen and canned vegetables on hand to know you always have vegetables at the ready.
- Make double and triple portions; at a serving one day and have one ready-to-go for the next.
- Blanch (quick cook and chill) a head of broccoli or cauliflower, break it into pieces, place in a plastic container and have a ready supply for the week, hot or cold.
- Keep a bag of pre-cut or baby carrots around -- grab a handful as a snack, pack them with lunch, throw them into stew, or microwave for a quick vegetable.
- Microwave or sauté onions and peppers to put more vegetables into a tomato sauce.
- Toss extra sautéed vegetables on a frozen pizza.
- Make a big salad to last a few days, store in the refrigerator in a plastic container.
- Add vegetables into sandwiches -- not just the old lettuce and tomato, try alfalfa sprouts, sliced red onion, sliced cucumbers, sliced yellow squash or zucchini, red peppers, or leftover grilled vegetables.
- Add vegetables to an omelette or scrambled eggs -- sauté onions, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes and add some fresh herbs.
- Drink tomato juice, V-8 or Bloody Mary mix as a vegetable.
- In a tomato sauce, cut the amount of meat you use in half, and add more vegetables -- onions, peppers, mushrooms, eggplant, zucchini or others.
Adapted from the book Diabetes Meal Planning Made Easy. Written by Hope S. Warshaw, MMSc, RD, CDE, a nationally recognized expert on healthy eating and diabetes.
