Canadian Diabetes Association

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Nutrition

Good nutrition and healthy meal planning are vital components of diabetes management. Recognizing the challenges involved in nutrition and diabetes, the Canadian Diabetes Association offers a full breadth of resources and information, including guides, tools, resources and manuals. We provide specific information on special topics such as carbohydrate counting, alcohol, sugars and sweeteners, portion sizes, the Glycemic Index and more.

Just the Basics
Recipes
Portion Guide: This easy to use guide provides ways to estimate appropriate portion sizes when planning a meal.
Meal Planning Resource: Meal Planning for Healthy Eating, Diabetes Prevention and Management has been created to help you eat tasty and healthy meals that will promote good health and diabetes management. The manual contains information on a wide variety of topics, from eating out, to recipe makeovers, to physical activity
Healthy Lifestyle Resource: Lifestyle Choices for Diabetes Prevention and Management will provide information to help anyone improve his or her lifestyle. The goal of this manual is to promote good health and to assist in diabetes management.
Top 10 Tips for Tasty and Healthy Meals: Preparing food that both tastes good and is good for you is not a magic trick. A few simple meal planning and preparation tips will help you to produce healthy, delicious food that your family will love.
Fats: Which is better for you - butter or margarine? This question is frequently asked by people who visit a registered dietitian’s office. Often people describe hearing, viewing or reading a news report that one is a healthier option that the other. It almost seems that there’s a different recommendation weekly!
Fibre: With changing dietary fashions, the current emphasis on low-fat items - witness the vast array of ‘light’ and fat-reduced products lining supermarket shelves - has given dietary fibre a back seat.
Healthy Eating is in Store for You™: This is an educational program that supports the change in Canadian regulations for mandatory labelling of packaged foods with nutrition information.
Meal Planning Guide: New research and new medications have changed both diabetes management and diabetes education. The Association’s new meal planning guide, Beyond the Basics: Meal Planning for Diabetes Prevention and Management, is based on the Association’s clinical practice guidelines and current scientific evidence.
Carbohydrate Counting: Research shows that it is the total amount of carbohydrate, which matters most to blood glucose control. In other words, if today for supper you eat all your carbohydrate as pasta and tomorrow you eat carbohydrate as syrup and milk, it won’t likely affect your insulin needs and diabetes control as long as the two meals are fairly equal in total carbohydrate.
A Guide to Eating Out: We all love to have food prepared for us, whether it is take-out, fast foods or at a sit-down restaurant. We don’t have to cook or wash the dishes - it’s easy! It is possible to eat out often and still make healthy food choices; however, this can be a challenge.
Sweeteners: Are you worried about the calories in sweeteners like sugar and honey? Are sugar substitutes a better way to sweeten foods without the extra calories? Let’s consider the sweet choices available to people with diabetes, and how they fit as part of a healthy diet.
Functional Foods: The best way to manage your diabetes is by eating a healthy diet, being physically active, and taking medication as prescribed. You may wonder about adding a functional food to your regimen.
Healthy Living Calendar: The 2009 Canadian Diabetes Association’s FREE Healthy Living Calendar features tips and tools to help you make healthier lifestyle choices. Check out the tasty recipes, convenient activity tracking chart, the handy portion control guide and much more!
What’s Cooking TV show: Diabetes prevention, lifestyle management featured on W Network
BMI Calculator