
Getting type 2 diabetes means you immediately have to change your diet.
But what ingredients should diabetes recipes contain to lower your blood sugar level?
Below, you'll find 18 healthy, easy-to-follow tips for diabetes recipes that can help reverse your type 2 diabetes. Handy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
More...
My top tips for handy recipes that'll reverse your diabetes
When it comes to healthy diabetes recipes that reverse your diabetes, you can do two things:
If you choose the fish, you're taking the easy way out, and you'll never cure your diabetes. But if you opt for the rod, you'll learn what is and what is not healthy and how you can apply this to your diabetes recipes.
Today, I want to explain exactly how you can dine like royalty while healing your diabetes.
I could give you 10,000 diabetes recipes that help you banish your diabetes.
But I think it would be more useful to know the principles these diabetes recipes are based on.
Then you can adjust your own recipes so that they become healthy. Whether it's for the main course or dessert, there's always a way to make it "diabetes-proof."
Purpose of this article
Below, you'll find 18 tips for diabetes recipes that will achieve"diabetes-proof" status.
These tips are easy to apply and comprise a complete dinner, from starter through dessert.
What is the best diet for diabetics?
When you eat sugars, they enter your blood through your digestive system. Depending on how much insulin you have in your body, these sugars will be absorbed by your muscles and brain - or they will keep circulating in your blood.
As a diabetes patient, you don't have enough insulin to absorb these sugars, or your body is no longer sensitive to it. As a result, the sugars remain in your bloodstream.
In the worst case, you will have so much sugar in your blood that you'll become hyperglycemic. To stand any chance of curing diabetes, your mission is to eat only food that:
In all three cases, the result is the same:
Reduced blood sugar levels so you won't suffer any permanent damage.
As promised, here are my 18 diabetes recipe tips:
#1 Make small meals
The easiest way to prevent too much sugar from entering your bloodstream all at once is to eat more slowly.
The problem is, it's a difficult habit to learn. I've tried to teach clients to chew their food at least thirty times and wait a minute between bites.
"I might as well ask them to rebuild Notre Dame, actual size, out of matchsticks. It's really that impossible."
Fortunately, I quickly found several "hacks" that work like a charm and can even make the biggest glutton eat more slowly.
Hack 1: Small meals (with a break in between)
In a restaurant, you usually get the soup first. Then you wait 15 minutes before getting the main course. Finally, after twenty minutes, the dessert is placed on your table.
That's a good rhythm to get into if you cook for yourself. But, for bonus points, you should stretch it out a bit.
During the breaks, you can make your next dish. Or you could chat with your partner about what happened at work. Or play with your children. After these nice little intermezzos, you can enjoy another pleasant moment of eating together at the table.
Hack 2: Do you eat alone? Split your meal
Suppose your partner took the kids to visit grandma, went to a soccer match or another event that you'd rather skip. You sit in front of the TV, watch your favorite program and get a plate of food from the fridge.
Of course, in such a situation, you don't want to eat five dishes in two and a half hours. Much too complicated. Especially when your favorite TV show is on the tube.
If you only have one big dish, you can easily split it up into several smaller ones.
You eat a third each time, with half an hour in between. An average TV program lasts an hour, so that fits precisely.
If you eat the whole dish in one sitting, all those sugars enter your bloodstream at once. But by eating a third at a time, the food enters your stomach in relatively small portions. And that prevents lots of trouble.
You reduce the risk of overeating
Some people get worried that if they eat several small meals or split one big one, they'll end up eating more than they should. This paranoia is understandable but, fortunately, unfounded.

Important information
Your stomach sends a message to your brain when you're full. But before this happens, your food has to cover a certain distance in your stomach. So, there's a delay between when you've eaten enough and when your stomach confirms the fact by signaling it to your brain. In the meantime, you keep on eating.
When you divide your food into smaller portions, you get more insight into when you're full.
For example, after the first portion, you might think: "Gee, I'm still starving." But if you wait 30 minutes for the next meal, you might suddenly feel full.
The result is you eat less and not more.

With a bit of luck, you'll lose weight. Which means you are less likely to develop complications due to your diabetes. A useful trick to apply when eating diabetes-friendly recipes.
#2 Start with soup
Have you ever wondered why a multiple course meal usually starts with soup?

No? Neither have I! But, even if I had, I don't think I would have found the answer.
However, one thing I do know for sure is that diabetes patients in particular can benefit enormously from the soup course.
It's good to make a habit of it.
I'm talking about homemade soup here!
Soups contain mainly liquid. When you ingest lots of liquid before your main meal, it makes you feel a lot fuller.
This will make you eat less of the meal that follows. What's more, soup can be quite low in calories, especially when you make it yourself, and therefore ideal for losing weight.
So soup makes a great appetizer because it satisfies your hunger and keeps your blood sugar stable. Below, you'll find some tips on making homemade soup, which is easy to do and very healthy.
How do you make soup healthy?
First of all: do not eat any bread with it (or without it, for that matter).
Soup is supposed to be an appetizer, not a meal in itself. And bread is full of carbs and sugars that will undo the positive effects of the soup.
Soup from a container or a can is not healthy. Soup from a can often contains lots of added sugars. It is, therefore, better to make your own soup.
That sounds like a lot of work, but fortunately it is not. You can make a large pan of broth once a week and eat it for the rest of the week. Soup made from vegetables and bones is delicious and healthy. The vitamins, minerals and amino acids that you get from freshly brewed broth are essential nutrients and are vital in healthy diabetes recipes.
How to make broth:

When you want to make a soup as one of your diabetes recipes, do this:
Brewing broth takes about fifteen minutes (apart from the initial cooking time). Heating the soup up takes 5 minutes. If you get hungry in the evening, you can always warm up a cup of broth and drink it.
#3 Choose a salad as a second dish
Salads are easy to prepare and have tremendous benefits if you have diabetes.
The fiber content of vegetables slows down any rises in blood sugar levels and thus prevents sugar spikes
Plus, you decide to eat a vegetable-based dish, instead of pasta-, rice- or potato-based dish. Who does that nowadays?
Even if you eat a little bit, the fibers in vegetables will dampen a blood sugar spike and provide you with all sorts of healthy nutrients.
That is a nice bonus.

And if you add some fat (oil) and protein (cheese, chicken or salmon), you will fill your stomach without even tickling your blood sugar level.
"You can make a delicious salad in less than five minutes."
See the two examples below:

Example 1: Sauerkraut salad
500 grams of cold sauerkraut, 100 grams of white cheese, 100 grams of sun-dried tomatoes, 100 grams of black olives without stones, a few tablespoons of olive oil with some stevia as a dressing.
Example 2: Spinach salad
300 grams of washed spinach, 2 balls of mozzarella, 4 sliced tomatoes, olive oil and vinegar as a dressing.
Diabetes recipes don't have to be complicated to be delicious and healthy. A simple salad made in the blink of an eye can easily be one of the best things you can eat for lunch or dinner. And there's nothing to stop you breakfasting on one of the diabetes recipes described above, as a super healthy way to start the day.
#4 Serve these drinks
Eating soup is healthy because you ingest fluids that break up the sugar intake and satisfy your hunger.
But other things apart from soup can have the same effect. You can drink a lot of water before and during dinner, for example. Preferably at room temperature, because that's good for digestion.
You don't like water?

A good alternative is green tea with a slice of lemon.
When you're a big eater, green tea can be particularly helpful.
It contains substances that make you less hungry. Your appetite will be suppressed, thus making you eat less.
In the summer, you can make green (or black) tea and let it cool down.
Add a few ice cubes and you'll have a cold drink that, though not that popular in the Western world, is all the rage in Asia. A simple tip, but an ideal addition to your diabetes recipes. Want more sugar-free drinks? Click here.
#5 Use this hack to eat less of your main course
Different foods have different effects on our appetite. This is partly because we don't need every nutritional item to the same extent.
A good example is the difference between sugars and proteins and the consequences they have for your diabetes recipes.
During these periods, people would obviously get no sugars or proteins.
To provide the energy that normally comes from sugars, the body draws on its fat reserves. which it can conveniently convert into ketones. By doing so, it not only fulfills its energy needs but burns up some excess fat as well.
That is a nice bonus because excess fat is unhealthy and increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
But the lack of proteins in diabetes recipes is another story:
Your body cannot convert fat into proteins. These must come from food. If that is not the case, then your body has a problem. Proteins are building materials and your body needs them to recover (and stay alive).
Proteins make you feel nicely full and satisfied

Tip!
That's why your body has a clear preference for proteins. They give a fuller and more satiating feeling than sugars.
Scientists think this is because your body can always use your fat supply, but doesn't have a designated place for storing proteins. As a result, eating protein is more highly rewarded.
Researchers have discovered that rats will continue to eat until they receive a certain amount of protein. It doesn't matter if you give them food that consists of 10% or 50% protein. Once they have the amount of protein they "need", they stop eating.

Checklist
An excellent way to eat less sugar is to have a larger part of your meal consisting of proteins. Always process a protein source in your diabetes recipes.
You will find a lot of proteins in:
Now, it's not wise to eat only proteins. Excess protein is converted into sugars. So keep this in mind when you eat a (small) protein source at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
#6 Healthy diabetic recipes consist of 50% vegetables
Nutrition scientists enjoy nothing better than discussing questions they don't know the answers to.
Usually, it is about a theory that a researcher has but can't prove because they haven't done enough research. When the theory comes out as a statement, other experts immediately opposed it.
The result: ordinary people are overwhelmed by the contradicting messages and no longer take science seriously.
Fortunately, however, one thing they all agree on is:
"It's healthy to eat lots of vegetables."
The more vegetables you eat, the less likely you are to get sick

Important Information
Vegetables do not make you fat. They do not increase your cholesterol, blood pressure, or blood sugar level. They do not cause cancer, kidney failure or skin conditions. And it is very rare to find anyone who's allergic to any particular vegetables.
For you as a type 2 diabetes patient, it is especially important that veggies keep you slim and don't raise your blood sugar level. And when you combine bread, potatoes, rice, or pasta with vegetables, it slows down the release of the sugars into your blood.
Vegetables consist of fiber, water, vitamins and minerals and a tiny amount of sugar.
An almost unnoticeable amount.
Vegetables take up a lot of space in your stomach and intestines, so it's very difficult to develop blood sugar spikes.

When you serve your main course, make sure that half your plate contains vegetables. Preferably in all colors of the rainbow. The more variation, the better.
Do you find this article helpful? Click on one of the buttons to share it!
#7 Use whole wheat pasta and brown rice in your diabetes recipes
It's impossible and, in fact, unhealthy to keep sugar out of your diet completely.
"But you can choose in which form you get your sugar."
So, you can choose to put brown rice on your plate instead of white rice. Or choose whole wheat pasta instead of white pasta.
There is less sugar and more fiber in whole wheat products than in "normal" products. That makes them less stressful for your blood sugar level.
The glycemic index (GI) of these whole wheat products is better thanks to the amount of fiber.

The lower the glycemic index, the healthier the product.
For these reasons, whole wheat products are better. This goes for whole wheat variations of:
This way, you can continue to enjoy spaghetti or risotto without giving your blood sugar level a pounding.
#8 Choose a fatty piece of meat
Fat has built up a bad reputation over the years. And it's not entirely unjustified. It has been negatively associated with cardiovascular disease and various forms of cancer.
But recent research shows that certain fats are not bad at all. As long as you combine them with lots of vegetables and whole grains, they come with have healthy advantages (source). Fat seems to have particular benefits for diabetes patients.
What does this have to do with your blood sugar?
Fat does not increase your blood sugar level.
And your body needs a lot of time to digest it.
When you add fat to your meal, your body takes longer to digest the food.
This causes the sugars to enter your bloodstream more slowly.

Animal fat is not only healthy but it also ensures that your blood sugar level rises less quickly.
The best animal fats are:
#9 Do not eat your potatoes without butter (or a greasy sauce)
You may have noticed that when I was discussing whole wheat products, I mentioned all kinds of carbs, except potatoes. That's because, believe it or not, there's no such thing as "whole wheat potatoes".
Potatoes contain a lot of sugars and hardly any fiber. And there is not much you can do about it.
However, if you're paying attention, you will have learned something relevant to this in the previous tip, and that is:
Fortunately, there are a lot of fats that taste great with potatoes. That's why I advise you to combine your potatoes with a fatty sauce and create delicious dishes such as.
With all these variations, the increase in your blood sugar level is slowed down by the addition of fat. Whether it comes from meat, cheese or a milk product, it doesn't matter.
The greasier you can make your diabetes recipes, the better they are.
#10 Give your fryer away
By now, you know that it makes little difference how you cook your potatoes. But there is one way of preparing potatoes that is incredibly bad and absolutely unhealthy. And I can't emphasize it enough:
Deep frying potatoes is the fastest way to make them unhealthy in every conceivable way.

Of course, the first point is the most important when it comes to healthy diabetes recipes.
Because if you thought that boiled potatoes were terrible, then you have not met fried potatoes yet.
"They can increase your blood sugar level as fast and high as a can of soda."
Due to the high heating, the carbs in the potatoes are broken down and transformed into sugars.
Fortunately, there is a secret trick to transforming potatoes so that the sugars become many times more complex. In the next tip, I explain how to do it.
#11 How to make potatoes healthier for your diabetes recipes
In the last ten tips, I've mainly talked about ways to prevent your blood sugar level from rising. But there are other things that can help reverse your diabetes.
Like making your body more sensitive to insulin.
Insulin is the hormone that ensures that the sugars you have eaten are removed from the blood. The more sensitive your body is to that hormone, the faster the sugars are removed and the less damage they can cause.
And potatoes offer an opportunity to ensure that your body can handle insulin better.
"Leave your potatoes overnight in the fridge before you eat them"
Yes, boil them and put them in the fridge overnight. The next day you prepare them as mashed potatoes.
Or you can do it this way: make a big pan of potatoes, which you will use for three days. The first day you eat them "fresh" because of the taste.
The second and third day you process them in potato salad, or as mashed potatoes.


What happens during the night in the fridge?
Because the potatoes are left for a while in the fridge, they change their structure. Certain sugars in the potatoes become indigestible. And these are the sugars that make your body more sensitive to insulin.
These sugars are also called "resistant starch." It is a fancy way to say that these sugars can no longer be digested. But what's even more important is that they have a positive influence on the amount of insulin in your body (source).
This is useful if you like potatoes as it allows you to enjoy them without endangering your health.
#12 Use plenty of garlic in your diabetes recipes
You will never hear me suggest that anyone should just stop taking their medication. Unlike a doctor, I don't have the many years of learning required to make informed statements about which medications people should or shouldn't take. Still, what I'm going to say now will amaze you... and may even shock you.
Garlic provides a greater increase in insulin than some prescribed medicines.

Important information
Research in rats shows that garlic lowers blood sugar levels, positively influences the amount of cholesterol, and provides more insulin.
Scientists have researched this very carefully and compared the results with those of a diabetes drug. And guess what? Garlic did better.
That is not a reason to stop your medication today. After all, rats are not people and not everything that has a positive effect on rats works as well on humans.

But it is promising. Garlic doesn't seem to have any adverse effects and it's certainly cheap. So why not use it to your advantage?
What's more, it tastes great too.
Throw some cloves in your cheese sauce, or add some garlic to dishes you make.
In combination with some vinegar and lemon juice.
#13 Add sour to the sauce
"Vinegar, lemon juice & lime juice."
What do they have in common?
First of all, they have an important function in almost every "world cuisine".
Acidity and herbs often give the characteristic taste to a cuisine. Lemon and parsley for example. Or wine vinegar and garlic (French).
But more importantly: the acidity inhibits spikes in your blood sugar.
It is therefore not a bad idea to imitate the chef from your favorite restaurant and, in the same way, use vinegar and lemon juice in your cooking.


Just a drop not only ensures your food tastes more authentic but is much healthier as well. And those dreaded sugar spikes will not occur.
#14 Drink a glass of red wine
In a previous article about alcohol and diabetes, I concluded that alcoholic refreshment is one of life's pleasures, but that they can easily mess up your blood sugar level.
The only use of alcohol I can truly approve of is drinking it during a meal, with the warning that it should stay at one glass and no more.
I'm sure you occasionally have parties where you'd prefer to drink a beer or five. Or share a bottle of wine with your partner and happily start a second not long after the first. However, I strongly discourage these amounts of alcohol if you have diabetes. It will only make your situation worse.
But if you want to enjoy a glass once in a while, then the best moment is during dinner. When drunk in small amounts, alcohol lowers your blood sugar level. Drink a glass with a meal and you'll avoid most of the adverse effects.
One really should mean one
Perhaps that's why research always shows that one glass is healthy, but more than that is unhealthy.
People who drink one glass while eating and keeping it at one, don't suffer all the drawbacks that regular drinkers have to deal with.
A glass of red wine at dinner can have favorable effects. But you have to stick to just the one.

That may sound somewhat strict, but for a diabetes patient, too much alcohol is really unhealthy.
#15 Make the dessert small
If all is good, and you used the tips I mentioned above, you should be quite full after a meal.
And by this I mean, after a:
You have quite some food in your belly.
But what I also know is that after a meal almost everyone is in the mood for something sweet. That's all part of it.
And, although I wouldn't want you to be taking a dessert every day, it's great to have a small one on special occasions.

Important Information
But you must also understand that you can lose all the gains you've made. When you eat vanilla custard or eat a donut, and especially when you play a game called "Who can eat the most ice cream?" everything you've worked so hard to gain will definitely be lost.
That's why it's good to keep your desserts modest. And make sure they're a little fatty. Think of a dessert based on cream.
Most people don't say the words cream and healthy in the same breath. But, if researchers look at what your blood sugar does after eating cream, they hardly see a peak. That's because of the fat in the cream. It prevents your blood sugar level from peaking.
Is it wise to eat ice cream? Well no, it isn't. And certainly not Ben & Jerry's, which is packed with artificial flavorings and added sugar.
Make your own desserts
On the other hand, what's a lot healthier is to make your own desserts. Below is a delicious example.
Homemade diabetes dessert recipe based on cream
Ingredients:
Preparation:
With all healthy desserts, there is usually a sweetener involved. You can think of liquid stevia. Stevia is a sweetener that doesn't raise your blood sugar level. You'll find out why in the next tip.
# 16 Use stevia in your dessert
It's become a bit of a fad in recent years to sweeten desserts with everything but sugar.
Unfortunately, the products that have been used instead of sugar are not much better for you. Think of:
And I do not want to be a pain in the you-know-what, but all these sweeteners are just as bad (or even worse) as regular table sugar.
There are several sweeteners that do not raise your blood sugar and are safe to eat. For desserts, however, I am a big fan of stevia.

Stevia is 100 times sweeter than sugar, and it does nothing to your blood sugar level.
Although the sugar industry has put a lot of money into research to prove that stevia is not healthy for whatever reason, scientists have been unable to find anything wrong with it.
So it is safe.
Unfortunately, some people experience an unpleasant aftertaste when they eat stevia. I can only tell you that it does take some time to get used to it. Which, it seems to me, isn't that big of a sacrifice if it allows you to enjoy healthy desserts and reverse your diabetes.
#17 Sprinkle cinnamon over your dessert
Cinnamon contains a unique substance that behaves the same way as insulin in your body.
This substance (cinnamon aldehyde) helps to absorb the sugars from your blood and transport them to your cells.
When you've eaten a large meal, it is not a bad idea to end it with a bit of cinnamon.
So sprinkle cinnamon over your healthy dessert. It also fits perfectly with the recipe in tip #15.
Cinnamon is a substance that absolutely belongs in your diabetes recipes.


To cap it all off, cinnamon makes your body more sensitive to insulin. So more sugar will go to your muscles and organs at a faster rate. As a result, there is a smaller chance that these sugars will stay in your blood and cause damage to your organs.
In all diabetes recipes (especially sweet things) you should try to add cinnamon.
#18 Diabetes-Free Secret
I've saved the best tip till last.
it has Recently been discovered that you can reverse type 2 diabetes. And everything you need to do this can be found in your local grocery store.
You can reverse type 2 diabetes with one powerful principle. It's something I call"The Diabetes-Free Secret." I've written a number of pages about this secret that will change your life forever. You will learn:
Enter your e-mail address below and I'll send you the E-book for free.
Greetings,
Ben Kuiper
PS: What do you do to create healthy type 2 diabetes recipes? Leave a comment below