OK, so you or someone in your house is a diabetic.  So how do you go about planning diabetic menus that are appealing and easy to prepare?  It’s actually not that much more complicated than it would be plan a menu for non-diabetics.  You just have to learn to think a little differently.

If there are things in particular that the doctor has said to specifically avoid, then those need to be noted.  Most other things will really be more along the lines of eating less of something or eating more of certain things.

Since consumption of starchy foods need to be decreased, find recipes to include in your diabetic menus that include a little starch but are not based around starches.  For example, instead of serving potato soup, serve beef or chicken soup that has a few potatoes in it.  That way the potatoes are still there for a little “comfort food” but they are not the main part of the dish.  Or if you want a little more body to your beef or chicken soup, puree some veggies and use that to “thicken” your soup base.  Add some extra non-starchy veggies to round things out and give your dish more color.

I spent a couple of hours looking through cookbooks last night and deciding what recipes would be OK for diabetic menus.  It really wasn’t that hard to come up with acceptable things.  It will even force you to try new things instead of always eating the same old thing.  Just choose dishes that focus more on vegetables and acceptable proteins with little emphasis on starch.  Avoid the dishes that are based on pasta, bread and other starchy staples.

Any time you need to make a change in the way you’ve always done things, there will be some adjustments that need to be made.  Just know things will never be the way they used to be … but that doesn’t mean they can’t be better.  Don’t make planning diabetic menus any harder than it has to be.  Look at it as a new experience.