If you are searching for information about diabetic food pyramid, I recommend pyramid proposed by Joel Furhrman, M.D. in his book “Fasting and Eating for Health.” This pyramid differs from the standard USDA food pyramid and the one proposed by the American Diabetes Association. Although both pyramids recommend eating less sweets and fats and focus more on starchy vegetables, beans and grains, they differ significantly in the amount of fat and animal protein recommendations.

The following are recommendations for a healthy diet pyramid and diabetic food pyramid (these two rare really the same!):

- Raw or cooked vegetables: 6-10 servings (30%-60% of calories). Vegetables are rich source of minerals, vitamins and fiber, but low in fats.

- Fresh, raw fruits: 4-6 servings (15%-30% of calories). Fruits are rich source of vitamins, minerals and fiber. You can choose any fruit you like, including blackberries, blueberries, cantaloupe, strawberries, cherries, oranges, grapefruits, apples, bananas, peaches, watermelons, pears, and grapes.

There is a false belief that eating fruit causes high sugar problems, so people with diabetes often try to eliminate fruits completely from their diet. However, eating fresh fruit is not the cause of blood sugar problems. Even if you eat a lot of fresh sweet fruit, it should not create high blood sugar problems … if your diet is not too high in fats. Fat interferes with absorption of sugar into cells, causing sugar levels to rise above normal levels.

- Whole grains, brown rice, bulgar or quinoa: 2-4 servings (15%-30% of calories). No white flour products and limited consumption of wheat products.

- Beans, other legumes, nuts and seeds: 1-2 servings. Nuts and seeds are high in fat, so should be used sparingly.

- Low-fat dairy limited to no more than 4 times a week.

- Poultry/fish, eggs, fats, oils, sweets, meat - eat sparingly no more than 4 times per month. These foods are high in fat and should be limited to once a week or less.

Diet alone is designed to provide the diabetic patient with calorie, support normal growth in young people with diabetes and bring the weight of the obese diabetic patient down to the correct level. A balanced diabetes diet with high fiber content and the food being digested and absorbed slowly is necessary for people with diabetes.

Highlighting diabetes diet further, foods that are being consumed by man contain one or more of the six classes of food which are; carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals and water. Each of these food classes has vital role to play in the normal functioning of the body system. After thorough study of diabetes diet, some classes of food were found to be helpful while others can worsen a diabetic state.

Two vital symptoms implicated in diabetes are overweight and excess sugar. Based on this, it became apparent that for good diabetic diet, avoidance of certain food becomes necessary. It could also be the only requirement for prevention or control of diabetes. Any food that can make one become fat or one with high energy content should be excluded from diabetes diet.

A word of caution to everyone is this: In managing diabetes diet, bear in mind that high sugar foods are more concentrated in carbohydrates. High sugar foods are always tempting to eat, so it is recommended that you go for low sugar foods. That is diabetes diet for you.

Please don’t deceive yourself by feeling free to consume so much food just because there is no taste of sugar. Your diabetes diet meal plan is designed in a way that the carbohydrate contents of your food remain as consistent as possible. Strict adherence to your diabetes diet aids in controlling diabetes.

Oral hypoglycemic Agents: They work by making the pancreases of a diabetic patient secrete more insulin thereby lowering the blood sugar level in the blood. Thus there should be residual pancreatic activity. Pancreatic activities include reduced hepatic release of glucose and increased sensitivity to insulin.

Side effects include fever, jaundice, photosensitivity, headaches.

Insulin: Insulin is a polypeptide hormone which is usually extracted from beef or pork pancreas and purified by crystallization. It can also be made biosynthetically by recombinant DNA technology. It is easily digested by the GIT enzyme hence its parenteral use. It may be given in the abdomen, arm and thigh with their absorption in that order. It could come as rapid onset short acting, intermediate acting or delayed onset long acting insulin. Patients requiring very large doses of insulin should receive two or more injections of soluble insulin daily.

Complications of insulin include unusually low level of blood sugar in the blood, a localized shrinkage and loss of fat under the skin, presence of microorganisms in tissue etc. Complications of diabetes requiring expert management include diabetic retinopathy (a disease of the retina), nephropathy (a disease or medical disorder of the kidney), diabetic foot etc.

It is well known that diabetes is a dreadful disease which is caused due to the excess sugar deposited in the blood. Usually, blood glucose levels depend on the volume and nature of the foods taken. There are some diet foods including fruits which increase the blood sugar levels. The fruits identified as bad fruits for diabetics should be totally avoided. Diabetes can deteriorate the patient’s condition if the patient happens to consume foods that are not recommended by the dietician. There are some diet foods, in general, which are to be totally avoided. There are some other foods which can be eaten in small quantities just for taste. The third category of diet foods are those which should necessarily be consumed for controlling blood sugar.

By foods, one should not mistake rice or wheat or bread pieces alone. These foods are normally eaten by all people with vegetables as side dish. Many people do not eat fruits but they simply taste them. Eating is different from tasting. It is emphasized that the diabetics should EAT fruits also. It is not sufficient that they simply taste fruits. Some fruits should be eaten in one plateful as a regular meal. In similar sense, there are some other fruits which should be totally avoided when they are loaded with high sugar.

In fruits also, there are some varieties rich in fiber content and others rich in fat content. Since the fiber content foods are good for diabetics, you can eat such fruits and avoid other fruits which contain high sugar. Good nutrition is the basic requirement to get rid of diabetes. Vitamins and minerals are also needed at balanced level.?

Bad fruits for diabetics:

There are some diabetes fruits to avoid since they are partially harmful for your health. Fruits like mango, banana, ripened papaya, pineapple and sweet grapes are not helping to beat diabetes. Since these fruits do not contain pectin needed for stimulating good digestion, they are not helping to clean your digestive track by removing the waste products. So, all such fruits are very bad for diabetics.

Synthetic juice in the name of fruit juice is highly harmful. The juice is highly sweetened with refined sugar. Fruit salads can be good but fruit drinks and sugar cane juice are not recommended for diabetics. There are lots of ready packed fruit drinks which are sold in the market. They contain synthetic sugar which can be extremely harmful for the diabetics. They should be completely avoided even though the label of the packed food may contain the words of promising that it is sugar free.