Diabetes Dilemma | Give Up or Eat 12 Commonly Consumed Indian Sweets?
For many of you, the scariest part of having type 2 diabetes means giving up your favourite mithai (maybe forever)! But here’s the secret – you don’t have to give it all up – if you can control yourself i.e. eat them in moderation and balance your other meals.
For people with diabetes, it is the total number of carbs that they consume in every meal or snack that matters the most. To manage your blood sugar levels, you should carefully monitor your overall carb intake and not just your sweet intake.
Apart from carbs, if you have diabetes, you also need to be wary of the total calories you consume in every meal. People with diabetes should count their calories to keep their weight in check. As delicious as they may be, indulging in high-calorie foods regularly is bad for your health.
Does that mean life is all about bland, tasteless food? Not at all! With a few healthy swaps and a little bit of strategizing, you can enjoy these sugary and high-calorie foods – albeit occasionally.
Indian dessert database | Understand the food you eat
Instead of relying on hearsay that tells you to give up your favourite mithais (or foods in general), let the data speak. First, understand the nutritional values of the food and then assess its impact on your blood sugars. With this information at hand, you can then decide what to eat and what to skip.
To make things easy for you to understand, we’ve compiled a list of the 12 most commonly eaten Indian desserts along with their nutritional values using the Fitterfly Food Database – India’s largest food database comprising of over 16,000 (and counting) foods from around the country.
| Dessert | Portion size | Calories (kcal) | Carbs (in gms) | Fat (in gms) | Overall Rating (Fair to Worse) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ladoos | |||||
| Desi ghee motichoor ladoos | 2 pieces | 285 | 37 | 14 | Worse |
| Jaggery dry fruit ladoos | 2 pieces | 274 | 10 | 25 | Poor |
| White steamed modak | 1 piece | 53 | 8 | 2 | Fair |
| Barfi | |||||
| Badam Kaju barfi | 2 pieces | 404 | 21 | 32 | Worse |
| Khoya chocolate barfi | 1 piece | 91 | 9 | 5 | Fair |
| Cream & cakes | |||||
| Nutty mango ice cream | 1 medium scoop | 78 | 6 | 6 | Fair |
| Chocolate cake | 1 slice | 162 | 23 | 6 | Poor |
| Seasonal delights | |||||
| Gajar ka halwa | 1 small bowl | 213 | 14 | 16 | Poor |
| All-time favourites | |||||
| Kheer | 1 medium bowl | 175 | 28 | 5 | Poor |
| Gulab jamun | 2 pieces | 247 | 21 | 16 | Poor |
| Rasmalai | 2 pieces | 168 | 25 | 6 | Poor |
| Imarti | 1 medium bowl | 128 | 6 | 11 | Fair |
As you can see from the table above, the best dessert option for you is the one with low calorie and carb content. These include mango ice-cream, steamed modak, and khoya barfi but, again, the trick here is to avoid going overboard in its consumption.
That’s for the nutritional information but what about the impact of these sweets on your blood sugars? To understand that, you need a Continuous Glucose Monitoring System (CGMS) – a sticker like painless blood sugar monitoring device that tracks 1300+ blood sugar readings in 14 days.
So if we check the readings two hours after you’ve had a bowl of gajar ka halwa, we’ll know the exact impact of this sinful dish on your blood sugars. And mind you, this graph might look completely different for two people because no two people have the same blood sugar response to any food or activity. This is known as the personalized glycemic response.
To continue eating the foods (or desserts) you love while keeping your blood sugars in check, you need both the nutritional values and the CGMS readings. If this sounds too complicated, don’t worry, let the experts at Diabefly Pro help you.
Our coaches will do all the hard work and analysis and tell you exactly what to eat and how much to eat – so that you can enjoy your food without worrying!
Dessert-friendly guidelines
Eliminating the sweets from your diet may backfire, and you may end up craving more. Here are some friendly ways to consume these sugary delights from our experts at Diabefly Pro.
- Plan ahead:This is not only for desserts but for all your meals. You can maintain a food diary on your smartphones where you log in your every meal to know your exact calories and carbs consumed.It will allow you to plan and factor into your calculation of what you will eat on days when you will have your lip-smacking pudding.
- Don’t get fooled by sugar-free foods:They might not have sugar, but they contain sugar-substitutes and other carbohydrate-containing ingredients. So better watch out!
- Be mindful of sugary beverages:It contains hundreds of calories which you may gulp in one go. Soft carbonated beverages, energy drinks, fruit juices, cold coffee, bottled tea etc. can quench your thirst, but they are an unnecessary burden on the calorie-meter.
- Swap your carbs:If you plan to eat a carb-rich dessert after dinner, then skip the starch in your meal. Swapping your carbs will help you in managing your blood sugars more effectively.
- Serving size – it really matters:Ideally, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommends that people with diabetes consume 45-60 gms of carbs per meal. So, check out the carb content of your favourite slice of cake before relishing it!
With the Holi festival around the corner, indulging in these sugary treats like gujiya and ladoos is bound to happen! And why not? Sweets can be a part of your healthy, lifelong eating pattern.
But, for the least harm, you should do it in moderation so that you can enjoy life to the fullest. Get a diabetes-friendly diet from an expert Diabefly Coach personalized for the unique you and your sweet tooth cravings.
Sign up today for a scientific and expert-driven Diabetes Management Program – Diabefly Pro or you can call us at +91-22-4897 1077 (ext. No. 1). To understand how Diabefly Pro works watch the video here.
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