Diabetes & the Food Pyramid

"Hi, I'm Brenda Thompson, registered dietitian and owner of Life Skills Nutrition. This segment I'm going to talk about the food guide pyramid and the dietary guidelines. There are a few different kinds of methods in controlling your diabetes with diet and this one I'm going to talk about the food guide pyramid. If you look here, you can find the food guide pyramid at www.mypyramid.gov. Now the mypyramid is not made for people who has diabetes, so if you're not going to use this method, is very important that you consult with your diabetes educator and your registered dietitian. However, this is a great way to control your diet because it does have, it does recommend a balanced diet. Here you'll see that they recommend grains and you'll want to make half of your grains whole which we talked about. Whole grains includes chromium which helps regulate your blood sugars and it also gives you lots of fiber. You also want to talk to your dietitian to find out how many servings of vegetables you would like that you need to consume. And this also provides you with fiber. Fruits provide you with lots of antioxidants which we have not talked about and they also provide carbohydrates and fiber. Oils, we talked about consuming Olive Oil or Canola Oil are your best options when consuming diabetes and this is also recommended by the mypryamid. There is also the recommendation of milk which they recommend you get enough calcium-rich foods and they also recommend low fat choices are one percent choices. This is the meat and beans group and you want to go lean. It's very important to talk to your dietitian to figure out how many ounces of meat and beans you need each day. The mypryamid.gov also has a program on there where you can go in and put in your personal information and it will provide you with etiquette calories. This is a great idea, however it should not be replaced by seeing, consulting with a dietitian or a diabetes educator."