What Must Diabetics Prepare for the Holidays?

What Must Diabetics Prepare for the Holidays?

By coach Myrel de Castro

You are diagnosed with diabetes. You love food. But food during this season is not your friend. 

You want it but your body rejects it. Would you opt for fasting? Or feasting? Confused? 

Here are some suggestions to prepare for this long holiday. 

1. Salad

Families are used to preparing salads during the holiday seasons. Creamy salads at that.
But these salads are very high in sugar and can raise your blood glucose level. Worry not,
there are many different kinds of salads safe for diabetics like you.

a. Sweet potato salad - Replace your favorite white potato salad with sweet potato.

Find a vegan mayo from grocery stores without sweeteners and use stevia instead. 

Ingredients: 

Sweet potato steamed or boiled (2-3 medium sized)

Onions blanched (1 medium size)

Garlic powder(½ tablespoon)

Pickled cucumber(½ cup diced)

Celery (1 cup, chopped)

Vegan mayonnaise (2 cups)

Breast chicken steamed cut into strips or cubes (1lb)

Salt (rock sea salt) (1 tsp)

Pepper dash

b. Mixed Green Salad

Ingredients:

Iceberg lettuce 2 leaves

Romaine Lettuce 3 leaves

Arugula 6 leaves

Purple cabbage 1 leaf

Walnuts or cashew a handful

Apple cider vinegar/lemon half lemon or 2 tablespoon cider vinegar

Olive oil 2 tablespoon

Salt and pepper A dash

Stevia/coco sugar A dash 

c.Buco Pandan Salad

Ingredients: 

Young coconut shredded

Thick Coconut milk 2 cups

Seaweed gelatin powder

Pandan leaves (7pcs) juice

Thick Cashew milk

Stevia

2. Main Course

Vegetarian Meatloaf

Ingredients:

ChickPeas

Lentils

Rolled Oats

Carrots 

Celery

Parshley

Oregano

Thyme

Onion

Garlic

Tomato sauce

Salt 

Pepper
Pickled cucumber
Bell pepper

3. Noodles/Pasta 

a. Sotanghon Guisado: I recommend sotanghon as the noodle of choice because its ingredients
are mung bean and potato starch which is low in sugar compared to flour based egg noodles which is
a simple carb noodles.

b. Japchae: I recommend Japchae as second best because its noodles is made from potato starch.

Altho japchae is always cooked with sugar or potato syrup, you can replace it with stevia as a
sweetener.

For your spaghetti noodles, you may choose the whole wheat pasta. However,
you have to be patient because it takes time to cook it. For sauce, you may have Pesto,
Pomodoro, or puttanesca sauce. You may also try vegetarian lasagna or spaghetti which you
may use zucchini as your noodles.

4. For fried food options, you may have lumpiang shanghai or lumpiang gulay.
You may use vegetables such as puso or mushroom for your vegetarian shanghai.

As diabetics, we can still eat delicious food but we should carefully select food that have low glycemic
index (GI) and low glycemic load (GL) to maintain our blood glucose levels. 

Holidays are the best time to merry-make with our relatives and friends and food is the best way to
express our love for them. Let’s enjoy the holiday season without spiking our sugar and taking
someone to an emergency care. 

Enjoy your merry making! Happy Holidays!