If the child has diabetes, it will take some brains for parents to prepare meals.
Food materials need to be carefully selected. It takes longer to consider nutrition collocation when buying vegetables. When cooking, you even have to calculate the content of nutrients-because diet will affect the blood sugar level of children.
Dietary Principles for Diabetic Children
Once insulin injection is needed to treat diabetes, it must be injected all the time. This requires the amount and time of diet. Only when you eat it properly can your blood sugar be stable and not too high or too low.
1. Ensure the child’s three meals a day and eat another 1-3 snacks.
Forming a eating rule can make children have a stable blood sugar level at the same time every day, which will make the daily dose of insulin injection safer.
2. The key to the daily diet plan is continuous stability.
If the disease permits, the child should be fed and given sufficient nutrition to supply the nutrients needed for growth.
3. Balanced nutrition and diversified ingredients
The menu of the diet plan should not be single, but can be formulated according to the flexible and changeable ingredients in the season and in combination with the children’s living habits and diet preferences.
4. The menu should pay attention to the following indicators:
- It is feasible to meet the needs of children’s appetite, achieve normal growth and development, and maintain blood sugar balance.
Does Food how Affect Blood Glucose Fluctuation?
People usually think that people with diabetes cannot eat sugar, but in fact, they can and should eat sugar. The key is to pay attention to the type, amount and time of sugar they eat. The forms of sugar in foods are not all the same. To take good care of diabetic children, one needs to understand the characteristics of sugar in different foods.
Food provides many nutrients to the human body, mainly in three categories-protein, fat and sugar. Vitamins and minerals are micronutrients. Different foods contain different proportions of the three nutrients, which should be considered in different categories when making diet plans.
Step 1 Sugar
Among them, sugar-rich foods have different effects on blood sugar.
- Sugars such as fructose, sucrose and lactose are relatively easy to digest and absorb. They can directly and rapidly raise blood sugar and should be eaten carefully. Starch and other sugars with complicated structures need to take longer for the body to absorb and utilize, and the speed of raising blood sugar is also slow.
Diabetic children need sugar to provide energy, but it should not exceed 10% of the total energy intake.
2. Protein
Foods rich in protein, except dairy products, ice cream and beans, generally do not directly affect blood sugar. Only when the body has not eaten for a long time or is undernourished will the body convert protein into sugar to supply energy.
Proteins are necessary for body development and also promote wound healing and tissue repair.
In addition, foods rich in protein usually contain vitamins and minerals necessary for the body.
Step 3: Fat
Eating foods rich in fat will not directly affect blood sugar.
Fat is an important part of a reasonable diet and an essential nutrition for growth and development.
There are three main types of fats in food-saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat and monounsaturated fat.
- Saturated fat is mostly animal fat, which is solid at room temperature and easy to raise plasma cholesterol. Polyunsaturated fats are common in vegetable oils and are liquid at room temperature. Eating such fats will generally keep plasma cholesterol at a low level. Monounsaturated fat may reduce plasma cholesterol and reverse the damage of saturated fat to the body.
It is suggested to control the oil content in the diet and eat more foods containing unsaturated oil. Normal blood lipid level is very important for health, because hyperlipidemia can cause many cardiovascular complications.
Step 4: Vegetables
Some vegetables, such as lettuce, celery, cucumber and chili, do not belong to the above three categories of food, but they also need to be matched in the diet. They provide vitamins, minerals, cellulose and can improve the taste of the diet. These foods contain few major nutrients, so they can be eaten or not eaten according to personal preferences.
Responsible Editor: Haitang
Compiled from: Aboutkidsheath
Source: Shutterstock.com