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You got into the shape you’re in today because of the foods you’ve been eating since you were weaned from the bottle.
Your life and health depend on the decisions you make today about the food you’ll be eating in the future.
The food you eat is as important to you as anything else in your diabetes management plan. As important as exercise. As important as medication. As important as monitoring.

Your Eating Plan is the Key
Without a proper eating plan, you can’t expect to gain control of your Type II diabetes. There are no easy ways to achieve diabetes control. You have to follow an eating plan that’s designed to get you into the best possible physical shape – and then you have to stick to an eating plan for the rest of your life.
If you’re like most people with Type II diabetes, you’re now carrying quite a few extra kilograms. You’re overweight or obese. You got those kilograms as the result of eating too much and exercising too little during the past decades.
Now you have to take off those excess kilos and keep them off. If you do this, your blood glucose levels will fall – perhaps even into the normal range – and your overall physical fitness will improve.
You don’t have to be “gaunt and gorgeous” to gain some benefits. You don’t even have to achieve the “ideal” body weight for a person your size and age.
What you have to do is lose about ten to twenty per cent of your present weight. For instance, if you now weigh ninety kilograms, you will begin to see some benefits when you drop nine kilograms and even more benefits when you drop eighteen kilograms. You don’t have to go all the way down to the fifty-nine kilograms that a published weight table says you should be at to have an “ideal” weight.
However, dropping those extra kilos and keeping them off is easier written than done.
You need to reduce the amount of kilojoules your body gets from food and increase the amount of kilojoules your body burns as fuel. That’s the secret formula for achieving permanent weight loss.
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This glossary describes of some of the key foods that can form part of a low G.I. diet.

Lemon juice (G.I. = 0). A small amount of lemon juice (1 tablespoon) won’t add any carbohydrate but its acidity has a powerful slowing effect on stomach emptying thereby slowing down the rate of starch degestion. Vinegar has the same effect.

Milk (G.I. of 27) • Lactose, the sugar occurring naturally in milk, is a disaccharide which must be digested into its component sugars before absorption. The two sugars that result, glucose and galactose, compete with each other for absorption. This slows down absorption and lowers the G.I. The presence of protein and fat in milk also lowers the G.I. of milk.

Oat bran (G.I. of 55) Unprocessed oat bran is available in the cereal section of supermarkets, usually loosely packed in plastic bags. Its carbohydrate content is lower than that of oats and it is higher in fibre, particularly soluble fibre, which is probably responsible for its low G.I A soft, bland product, it is useful as a partial substitution for flour in baked goods to lower the G.I.

Oranges (G.I. of 44) • Well known as a good source of vitamin C, most of the sugar content of oranges is sucrose. This, and their high acid content, probably accounts for their low G.I. Parboiled rice (G.I. range: 38 to 87) • Parboiling involves steeping rice in hot water and steaming it prior to drying and milling. Nutrients from the bran layer are retained in the grain and the cooked product has less tendency to be sticky- Some studies have found parboiled rice to have a lower G.I. but studies on Australian rice have found only small differences between parboiled and regular rice. The overriding determinant of the G.L of rice is the type of starch present in the grain.

Pasta (G.I. range: 32 to 64) • Pasta is made from hard wheat semolina with a high protein content, which gives a strong dough. Protein-starch interactions and minimal disruption to the starch granules during processing contribute to the low G.I. There is some evidence that thicker pasta has a lower G.I. than thin types.

Peach (G.I. of 42, fresh; 30, canned) • Most of the sugar in peaches is sucrose (4.7 per cent). Other aspects like their acid and fibre content may account for their low G.I.

Peanuts (G.I. of 14) • A low carbohydrate but high fat food, being 50 per cent fat and 25 per cent protein* which is one reason for the low G.I. value.

Pear (G.I. of 38, fresh; 44, canned) Another fruit with a high fructose (6.7 per cent) content, accounting for the low G.I.

Peas (G.I. of 48) • Peas are high in fibre and also higher in protein than most other vegetables. Protein-starch interactions may contribute to their lower G.I. They also average 3.5 per cent sucrose giving them a sweet flavour.

Pineapple juice (G.I. of 46) • Mainly sucrose (7.9 per cent).

Pita bread (G.I. of 57) Unleavened flat bread was found to have a slightly lower G.I. than regular bread in a Canadian study. Sold in supermarkets in packets of flat rounds.

Ploughman’s Loaf™ Wholegrain (GJ. of 47) • A wholemeal bread with additional whole grains. It is widely available in supermarkets. Other varieties under the Ploughman’s label are probably also low G.I.

Plums (GJ. of 39) • The G.I. for plums comes from a European study. Australian plums containing a fairly equal mixture of glucose, fructose and sucrose. The higher the concentration of sugars, the slower the food is emptied from the stomach and hence the slower the absorption. This may account for the low G.I.

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