Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
A great first step to eating healthier is having healthier foods and ingredients stocked and ready for action. Here are my top 10 pantry items for building a diabetes-friendly eating habit.
This is part 2 in my series of answering one of our viewer’s requests for suggestions on preparing quick snacks and meals ahead of time. In today’s episode, I’m going to give you my recommendations for what to have stocked in your pantry or kitchen cabinets. I want to make sure this is not overwhelming so in a future episode, I will go over my top picks for the foods to keep in stock in your refrigerator and freezer.
Table of contents
Best Foods for Diabetes
Ready?
Keep in Your Food Pantry/Kitchen Cabinet:
- Canned vegetables, no added salt for those with high blood pressure, and canned fruit no sugar added
- Oatmeal (whole grain oats and/or steel-cut oats)
- Canned beans
- Whole-grain crackers
- Popcorn
- Olive oil and cooking spray
- Spices (cinnamon, garlic powder, onion powder, fresh ground pepper, vanilla)
- Canned or packaged fish like tuna or salmon – show tuna creations
- And for those who take diabetes medications that may drop your blood sugar below 70 or if your blood sugar tends to drop below 70, we must add some fast-acting carb sources to our pantry list. Such as a juice box, hard candy, smarties, honey, regular sugar, I’ve been using squeeze applesauce as a quick way to get carbs into my system when I’m low.
Be Sure To Check Out – Diabetes Snacks For a Month (Part 1)
Planning and Preparing – Staple Items
As you can start to see, when we have some of these staple items on hand, it will be easier to prepare quick snacks or meals. Make sure to scroll through all the recipes I have on video and if we missed an ingredient, add it to your shopping list.
There are a number of other staple items that have a fairly long shelf life. Like chia seeds, cocoa powder, low-calorie sweeteners, polenta, and tomato sauce. I’m mentioning these items to include if you are a fan of my chia pudding recipe or low carb peanut butter cookies OR Have you tried the polenta lasagna recipe yet? It’s delicious and makes 8 servings so you can have leftovers for several meals during the week. Polenta has a fairly long shelf life too.
Be Sure To Check Out – Chocolate Chia Pudding, Diabetes-Friendly Peanut Butter Cookies, and Polenta Lasagna
Planning and preparing are my keys to successful diabetes management. I also find it easier for grocery shopping if I have my list of go to’s.
Hope this is helpful. Do you have any staple items that weren’t on my list? Please share below.
Until next time, cheers to your health.
Don’t forget to take a look at our most frequently asked questions.
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