Still worried about poor blood sugar control? Try this 7-day dinner recipe

For diabetic patients, the most important thing is how to eat to control blood sugar. Dinner is especially critical because it not only directly affects post-meal blood sugar, but also directly affects fasting blood sugar the next day.

So, how should diabetics eat dinner? This article will talk about eating dinner and controlling blood sugar, when and how to eat? At the end of the article, we will also share a 7-day sugar-control dinner recipe . Following this recipe, you can stabilize your blood sugar. Friends who need it can try it!

1. What time should I eat dinner to control blood sugar?

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Many people don’t pay attention to the time of dinner, thinking that they are not hungry anyway, so it doesn’t matter what time they eat. If you want to control your blood sugar, it is best to control the time of dinner.

Because eating dinner too late will not only make you fat, but also be detrimental to blood sugar control.

A large-scale study involving more than 600,000 people showed that glucose tolerance is impaired when eating at night, and late-night eating is closely related to high blood sugar.

Another study from the United States and Spain included 845 Spanish adults aged 18 to 70 years in a randomized crossover study. The participants were a Spanish natural late eater population, men and women of European descent, aged between 18 and 70 years, without diabetes and without any related medication use. The study divided their mealtimes into two groups: [1]

Earlier dinner group: Eat dinner 4 hours before your regular bedtime.

Late dinner group: Eat dinner 1 hour before your regular bedtime.

All subjects were randomly assigned to one group, and then switched to another group on another night to repeat the test of related indicators. In the end, the research team found that the earlier dinner group was easier to control blood sugar than the later dinner group. The delay in dinner led to a 6.7% decrease in insulin AUC (assessment of pancreatic beta cell function) and an 8.3% increase in glucose AUC (area under the postprandial glucose curve). The results of the study confirmed that late meals can seriously impair glucose tolerance through insulin secretion defects.

In other words, the later the dinner time, the lower the insulin level and the higher the blood sugar level, which is not conducive to blood sugar control and will also affect the fasting blood sugar of the next day.

2. How to eat dinner to control sugar?

- Meal time: It is best to finish dinner 4 hours before going to bed. For example, if you plan to go to bed at 11 o'clock, you should finish dinner before 7 o'clock.

- Adjust the order of eating: eat vegetables and protein first, then the staple food, and finally drink soup; or drink soup first, then eat vegetables and protein, and finally eat the staple food. [1]

- Combination of coarse and fine grains of staple foods: People with diabetes and overweight people should pay special attention to the combination of coarse and fine grains of staple foods. Whole grains can replace 1/3 to 1/2 of refined rice and white flour. Oatmeal, barley, buckwheat, quinoa, black rice, and chickpeas are recommended. Pasta and udon noodles are recommended.

- The combination should be reasonable: a meal should not only have a combination of coarse and fine staple foods, but also

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Mixed meals with vegetables and protein are more conducive to controlling postprandial blood sugar. For example, steamed bread, cakes, and rice are mostly high-GI foods when eaten alone, but when eaten with vegetables and protein, they become medium/low GI foods , such as steamed bread + celery scrambled eggs (low GI), cake + fried eggs with black fungus (low GI), rice + celery fried pork (medium GI), rice + garlic scrambled eggs (medium GI), and celery pork buns (low GI). [1]

3. Example of a one-week sugar-control dinner menu

▲Photo: Taken by myself

Dinner on the first day: 1~1.5 fists of buckwheat noodles + 1 poached egg + 1~2 fists of stir-fried rapeseed

Dinner on the second day: 2 slices of whole wheat bread + 1 fried egg + 1~2 fists of stir-fried lettuce

Dinner on the third day: 1 multi-grain steamed bun + 1 large bowl of Chinese cabbage and tofu soup

Dinner on the fourth day: 1~1.5 fists of corn noodles + garlic okra + cucumber fried shrimp + an orange

Day 5 dinner: 1 fist of oatmeal rice + broccoli fried chicken breast + cucumber egg soup

Day 6 dinner: 1 fist of chickpea rice + stir-fried cabbage with thousand sheets + mushroom and vegetable soup

Dinner on the seventh day: 1 boiled corn + pan-fried mackerel + tomato and egg soup

Summarize:

To control blood sugar, you should not only pay attention to the quality of dinner, but also pay attention to the meal time. In addition, try to cook at home, which is not only clean and hygienic, but also can better control the intake of oil, salt and sugar.

References:

[1]Garaulet M, Lopez-Minguez J, Dashti HS, Vetter C, Hernández-Martínez AM, Pérez-Ayala M, Baraza JC, Wang W, Florez JC, Scheer FAJL, Saxena R. Interplay of Dinner Timing and MTNR1B Type 2 Diabetes Risk Variant on Glucose Tolerance and Insulin Secretion: A Randomized Crossover Trial. Diabetes Care. 2022 Mar 1;45(3):512-519. doi: 10.2337/dc21-1314. PMID: 35015083; PMCID: PMC8918262.

[2] Yong Guangjin. Effects of dietary intake order and meal frequency on blood glucose levels in patients with gestational diabetes mellitus[D]. Dalian Medical University, 2022. DOI: 10.26994/d.cnki.gdlyu.2022.000610.

[3] Yang Yuexin. Chinese Food Composition Table 6th Edition Volume 1[M]. Peking University Medical Press, 2018

Cover image: Photo Network