Shopping Healthy In The Frozen Food Aisle

If you’re diabetic you know it’s very important to carefully manage your blood sugar. You may have noticed that a few months back I did a video wearing a continuous glucose monitor.

Throughout the week, I ate different foods and kept track of the varying glucose reactions. While I’m not diabetic myself, and everyone’s body is different, I learned a lot about which foods make my insulin spike and which don’t.

I’d like to walk you through my pantry and show you some of the foods I keep stocked that are low-glycemic and don't spike my blood sugar, as well as mention a few foods you definitely want to avoid.

Beans:

Let’s start off in the rice and bean aisle.

Something that I've been keeping in my pantry lately, Siete recently came out with their own refried beans - they're so yummy! I like to make my own too, but in a pinch, it’s great to get refried beans that are made from black beans, avocado oil and no filler ingredients. I tend to add just a little bit of salt, and they’re delicious!

To have those quality Bobby approved ingredients is fantastic, because if you pick up any other one like Amy's - for the most part she makes good plant-based stuff - but once in a while, what kind of oil is she using? You’ll see safflower or sunflower oil, which is not ideal at all.

Siete offers both refried black beans or pinto beans. Both are delicious, but I prefer the black beans.

This is the paleo one: Seven Sundays. It's still not necessarily diabetic or low-carb friendly, because it has 27 grams of total carbs and one gram of fiber, but it's a great paleo cereal.

Here is the keto cereal, which I’ve talked about many times before: Organic Coconut Flakes from Thrive Market. The only ingredients are coconut meat, coconut water and a little bit of palm starch. (Not palm oil, palm starch.)

With fourteen grams of total carbs, including five grams of fiber, we're talking nine net carbs overall. Because it’s made from coconut meat, it contains MCTs: medium chain triglycerides. It’s great for energy and for your brain.

This is great diabetic friendly cereal that won't spike your blood sugar.

Rice:

In my pantry, we have a couple different kinds of rice. My favorite rice that happens to also be diabetic-friendly in moderation, is Organic Wild Rice.

Why wild rice? Not just because it’s a “wild and crazy guy” - but because it's not actually rice. It's an aquatic grass, and the benefit of that is it has no heavy metals. Regular rice can be notorious for heavy metals, but an aquatic grass has none.

Because it's a super complex carbohydrate, the fiber and protein are off the charts. When you eat a complex carbohydrate that's high in fiber, the fiber slows the absorption of sugar into your bloodstream, lowering the glycemic response. So this, along with a good protein, would be fantastic!

That's actually what I did when I was wearing the glucose monitor. I enjoyed this wild rice one night, and saw a very moderate spike in my blood sugar. And then I tested white rice another night, and my glucose spiked much harder.

White rice is your worst enemy, because it’s a simple carbohydrate. Brown rice is better: it still has the fiber and the hull on there, but white rice has that stripped away. What’s left is a simple carbohydrate which spikes your blood sugar in a major way.

Brown rice is a better choice than white rice, but wild rice is where it’s at!

“Brown rice is a better choice than white rice, but wild rice is where it’s at!”

Breakfast:

Let’s talk breakfast. Traditional breakfast is going to be high in carbs. Think about bread with jam or jelly, orange juice, sugar in your coffee, it’s no good.

I eat a pretty hearty breakfast, with three slices of bread, with a little jam on my bread, and if you look at my glycemic response to that, it's minimal to none. Why? I eat keto bread.

This Base Culture bread is gluten-free, paleo and keto. You can use any keto bread you want, even if it's not Bobby approved, and it's still not going to spike your blood sugar. When I tested out my blood sugar with this bread, the spike was minimal.

On a different day, I had a more typical American breakfast, with a bagel, cream cheese, jam, and a cup of orange juice, with a little coconut sugar in my coffee. My glycemic was off to the races! The next day I had a keto truckers breakfast, and I barely had any spike at all.

It really matters how you start your day, so when choosing your breakfast avoid sugar and simple carbohydrates, instead choosing foods that won’t start you off with a spike!