Diabetics Should Read Food Labels And Educate Themselves. Part 1

Posted by Laurence in Blog

When you’re diagnosed with diabetes, you’re immediately overwhelmed with a flood of information. Do this, do that, don’t do the other thing… and on it goes. Knowing what’s in the food you eat is a major part of controlling your health so diabetics should read food labels and educate themselves.

Most packaged food has a label of some kind on it. If you don’t do your own grocery shopping, you may not really have paid much attention to this in the past but from now on it will be a different story. You need to know what’s in the food that’s going into your body so you can better control your blood glucose levels, fat intake and weight.

Don’t be fooled by the eye-popping labels that say “fat-free” or “sugar-free” or any other similar claim. Low fat can still contain a high level of carbs. Sugar-free can still contain a sugar substitute and some of them are almost as bad as actual sugar.

If you’re the grocery shopping person, start reading the labels. Teach yourself what the words actually mean. Manufacturers use the technical terms for many additives in the hope that people are either fooled or too lazy to work out their real meaning.

If you don’t know what something is and you buy it, Google it and learn so next time you’ll know whether you should have bought it. If you don’t buy it, write down what you’re unsure of and Google it anyway because that could save you money next time.

If you buy a packet of biscuits because the package says low calorie, work out the reality. Firstly, low calorie means 40 calories or less PER SERVING. If there are 20 biscuits in the pack, that means each one could be 30 calories. If you eat four of them, there’s 120 calories gone in an instant. Let’s face it, most people do eat more than one biscuit at a time.

Don’t mix up serving size with portion size. A serving is usually one biscuit. A portion is what you choose to eat. If you have a full meal on a huge plate and it’s full of food, then that’s a LARGE portion. If you have a meal on a full, smaller plate, then it’s a SMALLER portion and will theoretically contain fewer calories, fat, sugar and everything else.

When you check the labels, read what’s in each serving. That’s how to calculate the total volume of each substance you consume. Once you have been reading labels for a while, it will become a fairly easy habit to maintain.

After all, isn’t it more appealing to control your diabetes with the right food and exercise than to start popping pills and jabbing yourself with insulin needles every single day? Next time we’ll cover more information about food labels.