Carbohydrate Counting
A diabetic diet meal plan is designed so that the carbohydrate content of the meals remains as consistent as possible from day to day.

If you are happy with your current meal plan, there's no need to change. But if you feel your current meal plan is too restrictive or too complicated, and you are willing to invest some time in record-keeping, blood sugar monitoring, and learning more about food portions and nutrient content, then carbohydrate counting may be just the diabetes diet meal-planning approach you've been looking for. Carbohydrate accounts for major chunk of our daily calories. Most of the carbohydrate we eat comes from three food groups:

• Starch

• Fruit

• Milk

Vegetables also contain some carbohydrates, but foods in the meat and fat groups contain very little carbohydrate. Sugars may be naturally present (such as in fruits) or they may be added. The nutrient term for sugars can also be identified by looking for -ose at the end of a word ( i.e. glucose, fructose, sucrose, etc. are all sugars). Look for these on food labels to help identify foods that contain sugar.

Given below are some examples of carbohydrate grams for some common food items:

Generally, most people begin carbohydrate counting by rounding the carbohydrate value of milk up to 15. In other words, one serving of starch, fruit or milk all contains 15 grams carbohydrate or one carbohydrate serving. Three servings of vegetable contain 15 grams. Each meal and snack will contain a specific total number of grams of carbohydrate.

For example: Every gram of carbohydrate that you consume provides 4 calories. A diabetic on a 1600-calorie diet should get 50% of these calories from carbohydrate. This would be a total of 800 calories or 200 gms of carbohydrate (at 4 calories per gram) spread out over the day. At 15 grams per exchange, this would be about 13 exchanges of carbohydrate per day.

The "Nutrition Facts" label on most foods is the best way to get carbohydrate information, but not all foods have labels. Most local bookstores and libraries have books that list the carbohydrate in restaurant foods, fast foods, convenience foods and fresh foods. You will still need to weigh or measure the foods to know the amount of grams of carbohydrates present. Using these resources carbohydrates can be counted in number of grams or can be counted as exchanges. One carbohydrate exchange equals 15 grams of carbohydrate.

But there is a good news too… There also exist free foods. These are foods that you can eat without counting. A free food or drink is one that contains less than 20 calories and 5 grams or less of carbohydrate per serving. If your serving or a food contains more than 5 grams of carbohydrate, you should count it in your meal plan.

Examples of free foods Bouillon or broth, Carbonated or mineral water, Club soda, Coffee or tea, Diet soft drinks, Drink mixes (sugar-free), Tonic water (sugar free), Sugar-free hard candy, Sugar-free Jell-O, Sugar-free gum, Jam or jelly, light or low-sugar(2 tsp), Sugar free syrup(2 tsp).

However, it is advisable that you spread out free foods throughout the day and not eat them in one sitting.