Diabetic Sweets Secrets

Although your genes and lifestyle affect your getting diabetes, a constant overconsumption of sweets will increase your risk of getting diabetes.

Having spiked blood sugar levels means you have to monitor your carb intake. Carbs are the main culprit for raising blood sugar levels.

It’s not like you’re absolutely not allowed to eat sugary foods when you’re diabetic, but it’s crucial that you do it in moderation and know how it will affect your blood sugar. You have to watch the sugar in your desserts and snacks.

Kinds of Sugar In Your Food

Having diabetes means your body doesn’t use insulin properly or isn’t making enough insulin.

When your insulin mechanisms are shot, sugar will accumulate in your blood system for the reason that insulin is responsible for moving sugar from the blood to the cells.

Foods that are high in carbs raise blood sugar. Your carbs have to be regulated when you find out your blood sugar levels are abnormal.

When you read a nutrition label, carbs can also refer to sugars, fiber, and complex carbohydrates.

A lot of sweeteners are added in food stuff like salad dressings, yogurts, and cereals that aren't good for people with diabetes.

Watch out for labels with dextrose, fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, lactose, malt syrup, sucrose, honey, glucose, and maltodextrin.

These will raise your blood sugar. They can also be found in cookies, flavored oatmeals, cakes, ice cream, pies, puddings, smoothies, yogurt, and sports drinks.

They can spike up your blood sugar rapidly because these simple sugars are digested faster than complex carbs.

It affects your ability to manage your blood sugar. But scientists have addressed this problem through alternative sugar sources. Sugar substitutes like xylitol, erythritol, and even natural sweeteners like stevia (Truvia, Pure Via), have almost no effect in our blood sugar levels.

Sugar substitutes like aspartame and saccharin have harmful effects on the body. Resistance to insulin is studied to be higher in people who consume these often.

Studying how foods affect you can greatly impact your managing diabetes, and even curbing diabetes if you’re only prediabetic.

Desserts In Stores

It can be hard to know what will affect your blood sugar and what won’t. If you find these modified sugars in desserts, consume them in moderation. Sugars like acesulfame potassium, aspartame, neotame, saccharin, and sucralose.

These sweeteners can cause blood sugar spikes and can even mess up with your gut bacteria.

Sugar Alcohols

These can be found naturally or synthetically. They contain 2 calories per gram compared to 4 calories per gram for regular carbs, making them less able to raise your blood sugar than regular carbs.

Examples are glycerol, lactitol, maltitol, mannitol, sorbitol, erythritol, and xylitol.

It’s familiar because it’s in the packaging of sugar-free products or those labeled no sugar added.

Natural Sweeteners

These can be used to substitute sugar in dessert and viand recipes. Examples are nectars, fruit juices, honey, molasses, and maple syrup.

These impact blood sugar like other sugar sweeteners.

Although stevia is an exception. The FDA labels it as a food additive. Stevia is added to homemade desserts.

Soft drinks are starting to use stevia. Stevia is sweeter than sugar and doesn’t raise blood sugar. Stevia brands today are Truvia and Pure Via.

Reading Nutrition Facts

When you want to know what’s going in your body, look for indicators like serving size, total carbohydrates, added sugars, total sugars, and total calories.

The American Heart Association tells people who don’t have diabetes to only consume 24 to 36 grams of sugar a day.

A can of Coke has 39 grams of sugar. So if you start to observe bodily changes like hot flashes and canker sores, it may be because you’re consuming too much soda, or eating too much of something bad like something really sweet or something that’s more likely to have lots of live bacteria.

Summary

It’s important to know what foods will affect your health and well-being. If you really can’t help it, you have to discipline yourself with portions, like buying only a certain amount.

Diabetes-friendly snacks are granola, trail mix, graham crackers, avocado smoothies, mixed berries, and no-sugar brownies.

It doesn’t mean that if you don’t add sugar that the carb content won’t also affect you. Always be mindful of what you can do to take your mind off food.