what the heck to eat?

[Patricia]

As some of you know, my son is 13, diagnosed last November.

We eat together as a family almost always. We love our food, and almost everything is homemade. Pre-diagnosis standard meals were lots of variations on pastas, chicken in white sauce on rice, sausage and mash, sometimes burger and chips, beef stroganoff, roast meals, lots of fish. We've never done puddings really. At a pinch we might do a pizza with garlic bread, quiche, savoury tart, etc. We always have vegetables with the meal.

What I'm wondering is, what can we have for evening meals that is actually *satisfying* now?! What do you fill up on, alongside the meat or fish? Rice and pasta require a split dose for my son, and even then are likely to send him high before bed, which can sometimes throw him off the next day. Even baked spuds are coming into this range too, with a split dose there being best and sending him high sometimes regardless. We also wonder if mash is doing the same. Bread is an option, but it's not really a meal...

The children really don't like things like cous cous, barley, bulgar wheat etc, nor do either of them enjoy salad, though my son will tolerate a bit on the side.

Here we have growing children, all of us slim with fast metabolisms and can eat for England -- but we find ourselves so limited when trying to cook for my son and therefore all of us.

We are really, really racking our brains.

What do you eat? What are some typical good evening meals for you? And how do you handle it? I read posts about the 'odd treat' of bread and pasta etc and I'm thinking 'we can't live like that!'. We both work, so one of us can't stay at home and cook up concoctions etc... What do you do?

 

[aymes]

I don't know if I can be much help as most of my meals are along the lines of your 'pre diagnosis' meals, focussing on potatoes, rice, pastas etc. Have you tried using lower GI versions of the foods such as sweet potatoes rather than white, brown rice/pasta etc, that should reduce the 'spike' to a certain extent....?

 

[Admin]

It may take a while to get used to the taste - but sweet potatoes are great - you can treat them like normal potatoes - except don't use the skin! I really like them baked 🙂. I have always used brown rice /pasta as I prefer the taste - but again it is something over time you just get used to. My hubby refuses to eat brown pasta! so we have white now - but I really don't do many meals involving pasta. For instance you can make a lasagne using aubergines instead of pasta - or alternate pasta and aubergine layers. Perhaps look at a GI diet book or even a low carb recipe book not for the diet, but for recipes with lower carbs and alternates to what we consider 'staples' in our diets. I tend to eat pretty normally - I just tend to eat far more veg and just a small amount of pasta/potatoes. I used to eat bowls of pasta and vegetables - now I just do a huge bowl of vegetables with homemade sauce - even hubby loves it! I think it is a case of thinking of it as new and exciting rather than a huge change that will affect you forever - that always seems a bit daunting!

 

[Adrienne]

Hi

You are experiencing the same problem every child does on injections. A pump comes into it's own with food like this, you can do different types of delivering the insulin to cover pasta etc.

I really urge you to join the email group I mentioned and when you ask that same question you will be inundated with replies.

When my daughter was on injections we just used to have pasta, rice and she would always go high hours later because of it but there is nothing you can really do apart from a further correction injection.

Mashed potato might be better for you as it works a bit like sugar in that it spikes pretty immediately and has no long lasting effect. Baked potatoes I too, find a nightmare as do most of my friends. When you add cheese and beans in the mixture even those pumping have a problem.

Sweet potatoes are delicious as has been said. If you find mash is ok then you are alright for cottage pie etc.

When on MDI I found that a high GI diet was better. A low GI diet means the food absorbs slower. So I didn't follow the GI at all and just went when whatever food was best. For breakfasts we found that a low GI was good as she would invariably hypo by 12 noon, so we opted for porridge oats or weetabix etc. For lunch and tea any GI was ok and you just needed to deal with the fallout later ie the pasta spike, the rice spike. Some people find that Basmati rice is ok. We do. Basmati rice doesn't start to work for a while so injecting after eating is a good idea which then helps if there is a spike later.

Hope I have helped a bit. 🙂

 

[Patricia]

Hugely helpful Adrienne. Don't feel so useless now! Bring on the pump. Also, we were thinking that high GI is better, though this goes 'against' what they say in some ways. But it's the slow burning stuff that does him in, actually -- except, as you say, for breakfast. Unbelievably, he has 7 hours between b'fast and lunch at his school -- eek! -- so managing that has been incredibly difficult.

Slow burning must be good for people whose reactions are more predictable and routine. It's just so hard with everything going on with teens. Would rather know the spike is coming and try to meet it with injections at the moment....

Yes: would appreciate way into email group.

 

[Adrienne]

Hi

I totally agree with you. When on 2 injections then low GI is the way to go, definitely but when on MDI it doesn't work as well as you don't need a spike hours later as you will be having more food and more insulin later!!!!!

I've private messaged you, hope you get it, not sure how that happens!

 

[randomange]

Hi Patricia

I eat quite a lot of rice and pasta and I used to have the same problems as your son - both of them required a second injection about two hours after eating to prevent a rise in blood glucose, and rice usually required a couple of extra units on top of that - usually ended up being guesswork! What I found really helpful was switching to wholewheat pasta and basmati rice. I'm not really sure how it works with regards to GI (I'm not particularly clued up on that), but I've found that I can now cover them with one injection before the meal, using the same ratios that work for other things. 🙂

 

[diagonall]

Another option would be using a different insulin that has a longer acting profile.
There's a mum on another board who does this with her son, for pasta/rice/pizza meals.

 

[sofaraway]

I was thinking the same Sue, would save on the split injections. I knew a guy who used actrapid for evening meal.

 

[Patricia]

Wow, never heard of using another insulin! I'll ask about this... It really is a bit of a problem; we scramble around and every five or six days sort of scratch our heads and feel sorry for ourselves, being HUGE pasta devotees...

The additional difficulty with splitting the dose is that we really can't send him to bed without having gone two more hours after the second dose, so that his sugars are stabilised etc... This means we have to eat before six o'clock, which is also just out of the question for us almost every night...

Thank you for answers. So helpful.

 

[Caroline Wilson]

Have you tried wholemeal pasta and whole grain rice? The carbs are slower release. It also may pay to tlk to a dietician too.

Also I think all mums of type 1 children are wonderfull. It is difficult enough to get some kids to eat at the best of times, so it must be more so when you know what you give them can be good or bad for them!