Milk is a tricky one for me. It's my favourite comfort food, in full-fat form, and I'm still deciding what to do about that.
To be concrete, last night between about 7pm and 10pm I drank ~500 mill. In the short term this seemed to raise BG from ~6.3 to ~7.7 before going to bed around 11.30pm. Not disastrous, but then I wake up with 6.5, maybe 0.5 - 1.0 higher than I think I would have without the milk. And the effect perists; by midday I'm still around 0.5 higher than where I think it would have been otherwise.
So not a big effect, but long-lasting. Also, I think it's absolutely essential to not fixate totally on BG - it's most likely I'll be knocked off in the end by some CV-related thing, given the increased risks from diabetes, and while avg BG levels contribute to the risks they're not the only factor. So the sat-fats from milk are not great. But my cholesterol is fine and do other nutritional benefits outweigh the fat thing? Etc etc etc.
At the moment my general approach is to try to cut down on portion size for some things I like & replace some things with other things, rather than cut things out, apart from obvious c**p. This seems to be working OK so far, overall. Half as much melon; more green veges; etc.
I'm in no position to advise, really, being a nutrition ignoramus, but the approach which resonates best with me comes from this:
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182351
... claims abound for the competitive merits of various diets relative to one another. Whereas such claims, particularly when attached to commercial interests, emphasize distinctions, the fundamentals of virtually all eating patterns associated with meaningful evidence of health benefit overlap substantially. There have been no rigorous, long-term studies comparing contenders for best diet laurels using methodology that precludes bias and confounding, and for many reasons such studies are unlikely. In the absence of such direct comparisons, claims for the established superiority of any one specific diet over others are exaggerated. The weight of evidence strongly supports a theme of healthful eating while allowing for variations on that theme. A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention and is consistent with the salient components of seemingly distinct dietary approaches.
It's well worth a quick read of the full piece, IMO. The author is a big proponent of the "Mediterranean Diet", which is pretty close to the "official" dietary guidelines in the UK, US, Oz, Canada etc, I think, and therefore subject to many of the same criticisms from people who prefer a lower-carbohydrate approach as I think many here do. So ~50% of calories from carbs, rather than
0% or whatever for low-carb proponents.
Personally, I prefer the Med Diet approach, partly because it's easy & pretty close to what I prefer anyway, so I'm biased. But I think it's worthwhile to look at something like
https://health.usnews.com/best-diet/best-diabetes-diets which I think is a good reflection of the "official" positions, to understand where they come from. Their message as I understand it: healthy eating isn't any different for diabetics than anybody else, fundamentally; just some tweaks around the types of carb you eat & in combination with what.
