Meal Planning for Diabetics: Nutrition and Dietary Insights
Methods for Planning Meals for Diabetics
Nutrition Guidelines
Nutrition guidelines are booklets that provide general guidelines for planning an adequate diet. They may contain a section for making healthy food choices, exchange lists, and images of types and quantities of food.
Menus
A menu is a description of the dishes for each day over a period of time (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks).
Exchange Lists
Exchange lists cluster food in measures that provide roughly the same number of calories and macronutrients.
Lactose Intolerance
Lactose intolerance is an intestinal mucosal involvement with the inability to digest lactose because of a deficiency of the enzyme lactase.
Symptoms
- Abdominal pain
- Diarrhea
- Abdominal bloating and flatulence
- Weight loss appearing with malnutrition
It is a disease that occurs in infancy but progresses with age.
Diagnosing Lactose Intolerance
- Lactose Tolerance Test: After ingestion of 100 grams of lactose, blood samples are taken at 30, 60, and 120 minutes. Normally, an increase of 2mg/dl glucose should appear at 2 hours after ingestion of lactose.
- Test of Breath Hydrogen: Increased breath hydrogen after ingestion of lactose.
- Acidity Test of Stool: Increased acidity indicates lactose intolerance.
Recommendations in Lactose Intolerance
Remove all kinds of feeding cow’s milk and derivatives. Read all food labels to see if they contain milk or milk derivatives such as instant milk powder, skim solids, dairy margarine, butter, whey, hydrolyzed casein, curd, ice cream, and cheese.
Lipids
Lipids are a chemically diverse group of compounds. Their common feature is their insolubility in water. They are oily, fatty, and waxy materials that can be extracted using organic solvents. Lipids have different biological functions, and this is reflected in the variety of structures observed.
Functional Classification
- Lipid Storage: Wax, Triacylglycerol
- Structural Membrane Lipids:
- Glycerophospholipids (or phosphoglycerides)
- Sphingolipids: Ceramide, Sphingomyelin
- Glycosphingolipids
- Sterols: Cholesterol
- Lipids with Specific Biological Activities:
- Steroids: Progestogens, Corticosteroids
- Isoprenoids
- Sex Hormones: Vitamins A, D, E, and K
- Intracellular Signals: Diacylglycerol, Inositol-1,4,5-triphosphate
- Eicosanoids: Prostaglandins, Thromboxanes, Leukotrienes
Main Functions of Lipids
To provide metabolic energy, storage lipids are an important source of energy reserves, providing 9 Kcal/g. Acylglycerol (fatty acids + glycerol) and waxes are used almost exclusively to store energy.
Functions of Lipid Nutrition
Power supply conveyors of dietary lipids, essential fatty acids are part of cell walls.
Role of Essential Fatty Acids
These are components of cell membranes, carriers (lipoproteins), and modulatory functions. They are involved in the regression of the corpus luteum, prostaglandins, smooth muscle contractions, vasoconstriction, and mucus secretion in the stomach.
Digestion of Lipids
In the stomach, there is a slight lipid hydrolysis acting at neutral or slightly alkaline pH (works in the pyloric area). There is barely functional. True lipid digestion begins in the small intestine. At the end of the stomach is another circular sphincter, the pylorus, which is relaxed by the peristaltic waves and allows the passage of chyme into the small intestine.
Chylomicrons are large spherical particles that carry dietary triglycerides from the intestinal absorption in the blood to tissues. The apolipoproteins serve to bind and stabilize the oil particles in an aqueous environment such as blood, acting as a kind of detergent. Lipoprotein receptors and the cell can identify different types of lipoproteins and direct and control their metabolism.