goldengrain

Sorry to hear your diagnosis, but you are lucky that they caught it instead of just going on with the condition. My husband is also recently diagnosed. It appears as though different diabetics will react differently to any one food. My husband no longer eats fruit, nor will he drink. He does snack on a small amount of nuts during the day, mostly almonds and walnuts. He tests, tests, tests. His doctor told him that anything under 140 is tolerable, but my husband has read up on it and is trying to eat to keep his readings in the low 100's. He does not want to have a more varied diet if it means taking more drugs. Many of the drugs (not metformin) are involved in controversies (some causing cancer, others causing strokes and heart attacks). He has weight to lose, too, and perhaps he can cut his drug dosage down if he loses weight, too. At most, once the weight is lost, he hopes to have more wiggle room in the diet. We live in the US, though my husband is a UK citizen.

There is a diabetic forum from which my husband has gotten much good information, and you might enjoy it, too. It's called Diabetics Daily.

Please don't be discouraged about the diagnosis. My Ralph now has more energy and positive spirit than he did before he started the diabetic diet. It can affect your mood if uncontrolled, you know. He's lost weight and I suspect he will outlast me. If you control your diabetes well, you could very well end up in a healthier state than most around you.

There are many doctors who disagree with American Diabetes Assoc. guidelines, thinking that it sub-optimizes the diabetics life span. These doctors do not think diabetes needs to be a 'progressive' disease. Since sugar and carbs trigger the problem, it is best to dramatically limit them. My husband's doctors follow this concept and we agree with them. The first line of defense is through diet and drugs and insulin are to be an additional support to bring blood sugars into a normal range. That is another bone of contention - many lenient diabetic doctors do not feel as though a diabetic's blood sugars need be kept as close as possible to the normal range - our doctors disagree with this as well.

So, his diet consists of no (as much as possible) sugar, low carb, no milk, potatoes, yams, fruit, juices, peas, carrots, beets, rice and pasta of any kind - and probably a lot more than I can remember. He's allowed a small carb in two slices of dense whole wheat or sprouted grain bread. If he foregos that, then a small portion of whole wheat pasta or brown rice. He's allowed one cocktail tomato or one slice of tomato daily.

He is a fairly newly diagnosed diabetic. After the couple of months to acclimate to the diet and metform, he will be able to start testing his blood, introducing a portion of a slightly higher carb food, to see how his body reacts to it.

Diabetes is a very individual condition. There are many organs and tissues that play a part in the glucose and insulin dance in the body and each diabetic has a different internal environment than his brother diabetic. The trick is to try to know how YOU react and also to try to exert controls to mimic nature as much as possible, meaning control through diet first and drugs last.

He is losing weight on this thing and doing so much better.

So, there is not one perfect diet or drug for all diabetics and a chef will not be able to create one good diabetic diet for everyone. This means we cannot just ask a cruise line if they do a 'diabetic diet'. We should, in my opinion, give a list of specific foods that we can and cannot have.

That is as much as I've learned thus far and I am sorry if it conflicts with other opinions here.