 I'm Dr. Sagarika Mukherjee. I'm an endocrinologist at Monapal Hospital in Kurgata. We'll be talking about diet, the importance of diet in diabetes. Actually, our concept of diabetes is progressively changing as we all more understand the biology involved with diabetes. Previously in olden days, about 20, 25 years ago, people used to say that if you have diabetes, you have to eat a lot of bitter stuff. You have to eat a lot of things that ideally people don't like to eat. And so diet used to be really, really very complicated thing. But now what we say is you need to have a healthy diet in order to keep your diabetes under control. So the diet with diabetes is really the healthy diet that we tend to promote to keep yourself healthy for the rest of your life, which consists of a moderate amount of carbohydrate depending upon the type of activities you have. Now, where do we get carbohydrates from? We get carbohydrates from making wheat-based product and rice-based product that tends to provide us our main carbohydrates. Also, fruit, vegetable, salad, those provide carbohydrates as well. But additionally, fruit, vegetable, salad, whole grain, legumes, et cetera, do have, along with carbohydrates, they do have a lot of fiber as well, which tends to slow your digestion process and the slower your digestion processes so that the sharp peak in rise of blood sugar doesn't happen. So what does your diet consist of? Your diet should contain a moderate amount of carbohydrate, but if you have a lot of physical activities involved, so say you're doing a physically strenuous job, then obviously you're going to need carbohydrates. But if you do not have physical activities, that much of physical activities, if you're an office goer or you are just working at home, do not have so much of physical straining, then your carbohydrate amount has to be reduced because if you tend to indulge in too much of carbohydrate, that carbohydrate is going to be stored in the body as fat because the body will think that I'm getting a lot of calories so why not store it in the body? And fat is a storage form of energy for our bad body so that will increase your weight. Next comes protein. You do need protein. We do not need protein for growth. Adults do not need protein for growth. But we need protein for body. We are to maintain our body for various type of enzymatic activities inside our body. We need protein and protein comes from mainly animal-based food like meat, fish, etc. And vegetarian sources of protein like milk, pulses, soybean, rajma, etc. are good sources of plant proteins. And then comes fat. Fat mainly comes from oils and the fat content in your food should be reduced. That is you should not give indulging food too much indulging food which is cooked in a lot of oil like oily, oily snacks, deep fried stuff, etc. And the type of oil that you choose that is also important tend to have more unsaturated fatty acid oil like mustard oil, sunflower oil, soybean oil. There is no particular oil which is considered as very healthy and whatever oil that you're taking if you burn that oil that increases the right level of the oil and it does not stay healthy at all. So the diet for diabetes should be like you say take moderate amount of carbohydrates like 55 to 60% of your energy should be provided by carbs. About 25 to 30% of energy should come from protein and about 15 to 20% of energy should come from fat. If you are obese or if you are overweight then obviously your calorie requirement should come down and that should come in consultation with a healthcare provider like your doctor and your dietitian. The doctor will suggest that exactly how much of calorie is required and the dietitian is going to discuss with you about the menu plan or exactly what type of food you're allowed in order to keep your weight under full control. So if you do not have too much of physical activity reduce your carbohydrate but do increase fibrous type of food like fruit, vegetables, legumes, salad, et cetera because that is going to keep you full as well as going to reduce the total calorie intake. And also not only that it's going to provide you lot of anti-oxidant materials lot of minerals and vitamins, et cetera. Take a moderate intake of protein so that your body doesn't break, your muscles do not break and also the fat content in your diet should also be, should not be too much or food cooked in deep fried in oil you should try to avoid those kind of food. Next comes salt intake. If you increase your salt intake like free salt or excessive amount of salty snack that increases your chances of giving you high blood pressure called hypertension because salt tends to retain a lot of fluid inside the body and that can push your blood pressure up. So reduce your free salt intake or reduce your salty snack, et cetera. Next comes sweet and stuff like sugar, honey, sweets, ice cream or stuff which contains a lot of free sugar in them. Whenever you indulge in free sugar intake in diabetic patients what happens there is a sharp rise in your blood sugar level once you take sweets and that sharp rise of blood sugar level because your insulin system the amount of insulin which is secreted or the action of insulin inside your body is defective in time to diabetes your body cannot manage that sharp rise of blood sugar level whereas in a non diabetic person it's very easy to manage the sharp rise of blood sugar level after taking sweet stuff diabetic patients for body find it very difficult to manage that sharp rise of blood sugar level so better to avoid excessive amount of sweet stuff like sweets, honey, sugar, jaggery, et cetera those kind of stuff should be avoided. So one of the main pillars for control of diabetes is following your diet, doing regular sort of exercise and having the proper medication in the proper dose at the right point of time which your healthcare provider is going to advise to you. Sweet diabetic patients can stay healthy and can stay up and about and active for a long period of time provided they're compliant with their diet with their medication and their exercise regime. Thank you very much for staying tuned.