Heart-Healthy Diabetic Diets

Diabetics face a challenging meal plan. Many times, their goal is not only to shed excess pounds essential to their health, but they also need to lower their blood pressure. They likewise have to worry about balancing their glucose levels. While individual needs vary, there are some basic heart-healthy diet tips that most diabetics can follow.

Ingredients

Foods rich in fiber should serve as the carbohydrate portion of the diet. These include beans, barley, whole grains and nuts. In addition to being rich in fiber, many nuts offer secondary benefits to diabetics in terms of having high quantities of antioxidants. At least six servings per day should be consumed from this group.

Five servings or more per day should come from the fresh fruits and vegetables categories. These foods are rich in fiber, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, key ingredients for heart health. Fruits and vegetables, according to the American Diabetic Association, help lower your blood pressure, which is a central concern of many diabetic patients.

For protein sources, choose alternatives to red meat. Fish, poultry and soy protein are all healthier alternatives to getting the daily protein you need. Make sure the poultry is skinless, and both poultry and fish should be baked or steamed, not fried. Fish in particular is high in omega-3 fatty acids, which is linked to heart health.

Choose non-fat and low-fat dairy products such as milk, yogurts and cheeses.

Avoidance

Avoid saturated fats and trans fatty acids. All diets, including diabetic diets, require some degree of fats, but the fats chosen should be unsaturated fats. Total fat consumption should average 35 percent of the daily caloric intake, but saturated fat should amount to no more than 7 percent. For cooking oils, choose olive or canola oil, because they are monosaturated fats.

Limit your daily cholesterol levels. A diabetic should ingest less than 200 mg daily.

Greatly reduce the amount of sodium consumed each day. If pre-packaged foods are a diet staple, purchase foods that have reduced sodium or are sodium-free. Reduce the amount of salt you add to your foods, both in cooking and after cooking.

Fad Diets

Many fad diets claim to be solutions to heart health. Some of these fad diets have even shown success in research trials. However, their success is simply because they followed the steps already laid out. For example, the Mediterranean diet and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet have both been shown to lower blood-pressure levels, according to reports in Journal of the American Medical Association and at meetings of the American Heart Association. The basic foundations of both these diets include reducing sodium and red meat while increasing whole grains, vegetable and fiber content.