 There are a lot of myths about what foods diabetic can eat. Some foods are good, some are bad, and some are completely of limits. Well, having diabetes can make eating very limited and boring, and it seems like a life sentence. These beliefs are not true. Hi, I'm Dr. Ahmad Tergan. I'm an endocrinologist, a diabetic, and a hormone specialist, and today we are talking about foods You can enjoy without worrying. It is good news. You can eat a lot of good food and keep your diabetes in check, guys. So I'm sure that a lot of these are either already tasty, or you can make them taste better, which I will give you a few tricks about. So, plan to watch the entire video to get the best out of these things. Now, we know vegetables are good for people who have diabetes because they help them stay healthy and keep their blood sugar stable. Well, nothing makes a meal complete for diabetics more than a big bowl of vegetables. Now, sounds pretty boring, right? But hear me out. Even though starchy vegetables aren't of limits to you, you should try to eat more like a non-starchy vegetables instead and so forth. Well, we're gonna make them taste better, right? Let's do it. So broccoli is my number one. Now, broccoli has a lot of fiber. It helps you to absorb blood sugar more slowly and since it's a high fiber containing food, like 2.6 grams per serving, and if you don't like the broccoli, try this. Stir-fry the broccoli with bell peppers, salt, and crushed red pepper flakes in a little olive oil. It is that simple. Add a little orange or grated lemon zest and a tablespoon or two of the orange or lemon juice and a little bit of black pepper and if you want it to be more zesty. Now, this is a fantastic side dish to serve with chicken and steak, right? Number two, onions. Now, green onions are anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidants. They may lower the blood sugar, improve your bone health, and reduce your cancer risk. Now, you can use green onions to flavor the egg salad, tofu salad, for example, or use them chopped raw green onions like in anywhere. Number three, the Brussels sprouts. Not sure you like the Brussels sprouts? Well, not only it is great for diabetes, but also it's great on to cancer food. Cancer such as lung cancer, stomach cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer. They can all be prevented by eating these cruciferous vegetables. Try this delicious roasted preparation, for example. Simply cut the Brussels sprouts in half, place them on a baking sheet, tossed with olive oil and salt and pepper, grated or dried garlic, Parmesan or Asiago cheese and a squeeze of a lemon. Place in the oven for 125 degrees until they're tender or slightly crispy. What else do you have to worry about, right? That's a great side dish. Number four is bitter melon. You can find this thing in Indian or Middle Eastern or even local farmers market. It is actually a fruit, but it's cooked like a vegetable. So I included it here. It contains chemicals that act like insulin hormones, like in-cretins, and help lower the blood sugar levels. Some research suggests that they do this by allowing more glucose going into cell and then also helps your liver to produce less sugar. It helps your muscles and fat to utilize the sugar better as well. These components in the bitter melon may also prevent the body from converting stored nutrients into glucose, like glycogen into glucose, et cetera, and releasing into your bloodstream. So there's a lot of benefits. Now, bitter melon can be steamed or pan fried like a zucchini or left whole and stuffed like a squash. So it is bitterness pairs well with chilies and some olive oil, et cetera. I enjoy it raw or in a spicy curry. So if you're still saying no way, well, if you cannot eat that, the good news is that we have bitter melon extract in our advanced glucose support so you can take two capsules with each meal and keep your blood sugar under control without the tasting, the bitterness of the bitter melon. Carrots, it is an essential component in any salad or it should be, right? Or a healthy snack for health conscious individuals. You should be right for you, diabetics that have always been like numerous reasons to consider these to be an important part of anyone's diet. So what it does, it helps to improve your vision, which can be a problem if you have diabetes, right? It helps also boosting your immune system, which we all need nowadays with the COVID and so forth. Now, carrots have nearly five grams of carbs per cup, which is not much. And they're low in glycemic index, making them a very healthy food option for diabetics. Now, how to eat carrots and enjoy them better? Well, if you want, you can peel them with a vegetable peeler or a knife, but you don't have to, actually, you could then slice them into sticks and serve them with the hummus if you like the hummus. Or you can have a yogurt based dip at home and it's a great snack addition for you. If you don't like the crunchy carrots, you can serve them as a side dish by steaming or boiling or roasting them and a little bit of a spice and you're good to go. Next, spinach, one of my most popular leafy vegetables, spinach. Regular consumption of this leafy vegetable helps keep a variety of diseases at bay and keeps you fit and healthy. It is also great for controlling your blood sugar levels. Now, how's that? Spinach contains high levels of vitamin K, magnesium. You know, that's important for diabetes, folate. You know, that's important, phosphorus, potassium and zinc. It also contains flavonoids and plant chemicals that are beneficial to overall health and diabetes. Now, because it contains so many essential nutrients, it is one of the most sought after vegetables for diabetics. Now, how do you eat it? Well, you can put it in your eggs. Spinach and eggs are a great match made in heaven. Make shakes, for example, out of it. If you don't like to eat it that way, if you are sick of kale, for example, change the salad greens you're using and try to put some spinach in there. Try serving in this great salad with spinach leaves and lettuce combined and so forth. You can add it to your soups, stews. You can do stir fries. You can use it any stew. OK, so it adds a lot of nutrients to your dishes. The red peppers. Now, red bell peppers, which are high in vitamin C are not only delicious, but can also be great for to reducing some chronic diseases and aging related problems. Now, red bell peppers, also known as sweet peppers, have the highest nutrients of all the sweet peppers and give a huge volume of food with few calories and carbs and fat. Now, red peppers, red bell peppers are a tasty snack as well. And they are a great accent to any meal. Now, what you can do with them is slice them and add them to your eggs and salads and sandwiches. As is, you can do that or you can use it with a dip like you do with carrots. Now, peppers can also be roasted, grilled, sauteed, parade for soups and dips and so forth. You can use it in your chilies, stews, sauces and condiments. Bell peppers. Now, I think pretty much everything I said for the red peppers a block here difference is not just a case of a prejudice based on the skin color like green bell peppers that have been allowed to ripen, have been transformed into red or the yellow, right? But the red peppers are completely ripened and they take just a little longer to grow, which results in a sweeter and fruitier flavor and, of course, a higher price tag. That's pretty much the only difference. Mushrooms. Well, there's no reason not to try these fungi, right? They include a lot of vitamins and minerals such as iron, vitamin D, potassium and so forth. Now, mushrooms with their creamy texture they're one of the healthiest foods you can eat in the entire planet if you're diabetic. They have a very low carbohydrate and calorie content and fat content. They have a low fiber content, but they're super high in potassium, zinc, magnesium and folly. Want them to taste better? Well, what you can do is during sauteing, you know, you can add some garlic, some shallots and or some herbs for added flavor. Well, since we said about the shallots and so forth, let's talk about the shallots and garlic. Now, shallots are similar to onions. Onions have a stronger heat than the shallots, which have delicate and sweet flavor with a trace of sharpness. You can use shallots in almost any recipe that calls for onions. So it makes it a little bit easier to work with, right? So before adding shallots to a sauce, for example, they can be caramelized, nestled or roasted. And the garlic is a traditional flavor partner for shallots. So garlic also has medicinal features, as you know, not only by helping the blood pressure and cholesterol, but they also help in the blood sugar management by lowering fasting blood sugar levels, redishes. Now, what you can do with them, toss them in a salad, slice them and serve them with a dip instead of, you know, just eating chips, for example, make something truly spectacular with them. I love them in my salads, too. How about asparagus? Here's how you make asparagus taste great. In a skillet over medium heat, melt the butter at a splash of salt and pepper to the olive oil to ensure consistent frying on all sides. Add asparagus, spares to the skillet and continue to turn them throughout the cooking process. Now, the cooking time should not be more than 15 minutes. You do not want to overcook the asparagus. All right, you are ready to go as soon as they turn to brown. Celery, I love celery with any dip, especially the fish dip, but also consider adding celery to your guacamole, just like you would to your chicken salad and so forth for a very lovely, these fresh, crunchy feeling, eggplant. I have dedicated an entire video for eggplant before. If you don't watch it, you can watch it right there. But this vegetable or fruit, however, you're comfortable. If you want to call it whatever you want to call it. But it's a staple in Mediterranean diet. It can be prepared in a variety of ways. The antioxidant qualities of the phenols found in eggplant actually assist in diabetes control and the blood sugar levels. Well, how to make the eggplant taste better? Well, you can stir fry it. You can add eggplant along with other firm veggies to your stir fry early on, so it cooks thoroughly. And you can make, like, for example, baba ganoush, which is my favorite eggplant dish, fairly easy to make. You can serve baba ganoush with vegetables. Thin slice of pumpernickel bread with baba ganoush and some mixed greens and tomatoes for a great sandwich. That will be awesome tasting. Now you can roast and peel and toss with anything you like as well. If you want to use the eggplant that way. I like to top it with olive oil and some seasoned to ground beef. Oh, that's so good. Zucchini, well, vitamin B6, which is also a vitamin that we have in our neuropathy support, if you remember, is abundant in zucchini. This vitamin may help with the blood glucose regulation, according to a lot of research, and it's even possible that the vitamin B6 can help prevent the diabetes. Here's how you make the zucchini taste better. You want to cut the zucchini into rounds, half moons or bite-sized chunks, whatever. Melt the butter over medium heat. Cook, tossing regularly until the zucchini is golden and tender. Three to five minutes. Remove from heat and mix in with scallions, lemon juice and cheese. Season with some salt and black pepper to taste. You're good to go. Spaghetti squash. A spaghetti squash is super great for a low-carb pasta, right? It has a mild flavor and its vivid strands of flesh make it exceedingly adaptable. You should know how to cook both butternut and spaghetti squash and get that spaghetti you're looking for with no carbs. Onions. Well, we kind of talk about the shallots a little bit, but they are used so regularly that their nutritional value sometimes is disregarded. So, but this vegetable, if you don't like it, I will make you like it because it contains calcium, vitamin C, vitamin A, folate, just to name a few. They are low-calorie. They are non-starchy. And onions can be used in a variety of ways, right? So you can do raw onion slices to provide a little zing to you as a flavor on your sandwiches and so forth. You can also grill them. You can bake thick slices and serve them as a side dish. You can try sauteing them with peppers and serving them as a condiment with meats. Lettuce and arugula. Now, lettuce and arugula are great in salads. Well, still don't like them as possible, but you can experiment with some herbs such as basil and parsley and chives and thyme and cilantro, mint, dill to boost flavor to your salad. Still use them in your salads. Just use these herbs and spices to strengthen the flavor to make them taste better. Well, of course, we're going to talk about cauliflower. And cauliflower is a great source of vitamin A, C, K, as well as folate, potassium, manganese, and even choline in a single serving, which is one cup of uncooked or half-cooked. Not to mention that it has 2.5 grams of fiber and it only has 25 calories. Super low in carbs. In other words, it is good for your diabetes, right? So because cauliflower has a mild flavor when cooked properly, it can be used in almost any cuisine. You can even make a steak. There's something called cauliflower steak. Even replacing starchy foods like bread, rice, and potatoes, cauliflower has so many applications and there's so many ways to eat. You can have cauliflower rice, you can have cauliflower pizza, you can have cauliflower this, cauliflower that. There's so many great recipes online as well. Cabbage. Now, if you want to start eating cabbage, keep it simple by drizzling some olive oil, some crushed black pepper, and minced garlic over roasted chopped cabbage. Toast shredded cabbage into a salad of fresh greens. That's also possible. Near the end of cooking, add chopped cabbage to any soup or stew. That will be a great addition, a lot of fiber. Mustard greens. Now, on a diabetic diet, vegetables should make half of your plate, right? However, to avoid the boredom, try novel vegetables like mustard greens. In a chopped salad, mustard greens can be mixed in. You can make a smoothie out of them and making soups and stews using them is also a great alternative as well. To balance the flavor, you can stir fry the greens with a healthy fat and an asset like lemon juice and use some salt to balance the flavor if you do not have the salt sensitivity, if you don't have blood pressure, swelling issues and so forth. As a side dish, you can roast mustard greens with garlic and spices as well. Bean sprouts. I hope you have tried this before. Now, how do you serve it? I enjoy serving my bean sprouts stir fry as a side dish to almost any main course. Scooping up the sprouts with a bite of cauliflower or conjac rice makes it even more delicious. Tomatoes. Again, I have an entire video about this right here. But the glycemic index of tomatoes is great. Of a fresh whole tomato is super low. It is slowly released sugar into the bloodstream. I less likely to cause blood sugar increase. Now, one reason for that is because they're high in fiber, right? And these two variables can help a person feel satisfied and longer for a long time. People with diabetes who ate roughly 7 ounces or 200 grams of fresh tomato per day or 1 to 2 medium sized tomatoes per day, let's say, had reduced blood pressure after 8 weeks according to a research published in 2010. Now, remember, blood pressure is as important as blood sugar. So yes, pay attention how food affects your blood pressure. Well, how to best eat the tomatoes? You can always add them to your salads by, you know, roast the raw tomatoes. But cooking tomatoes slowly in olive oil with a strong spice concentrates and tastes them make better and tastes them better and removes the majority of the water. So and then you can drizzle your tomatoes with a little olive oil and season generously with salt and pepper. Then you're going to realize that tomatoes actually taste better. You can actually then roast for an hour or two at 200 degree oven and that will be an awesome dish as well as a side dish. So guys, you heard it all. These are the vegetables that will really help you control your diabetes so much better either directly or indirectly. Some of them will help you to produce insulin better. Some of them will help you to prevent the sudden spikes. So try these a little quick recipes that I gave and tell me what you think and write in the comments below. Give a thumbs up, like and share and we'll see in the next video guys. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this channel so far and I hope you subscribed already. If you didn't do it and if you did watch this video right there I think that will help you to