Skip to main content

Christmas Gifts for Diabetics and Other Low-Carbers

Having been a low-carber for five years and having a mother with type 2 diabetes, a lot of gifts we get are thrown out: food and restaurant gift certificates, in particular. Almost anything that's labeled "Healthy" or "For diabetics," isn't. If the recipient of your gift is strict about their diet, gifts on the no-no list will end up re-gifted or in the trash. Here's some help in making a good choice.

No-nos:


  • Sweets. There's a reason they used to call it sugar diabetes: it's a disease of disregulated blood sugar. Sugary foods are out.
  • Starches. Starches are made of chains of glucose. The chains break apart in the digestive system, turning into glucose--a type of sugar. Bread, crackers, beans, noodles, potatoes, muffins, cornbread--no. 
  • Sugar-free or "for diabetics." "For diabetics" doesn't mean anything--literally. It should probably say "for diabetes," meaning enough of it, in the right person, will cause diabetes. Sugar-free foods can be loaded with carbohydrates, which raise blood sugar. Some products, like bread from Julian's Bakery, have been found to be deliberately mislabeled and are, in fact, high-carb foods.
  • Fruit. Fruit may be natural--so is radon--but it's full of sugar. Cross the fruit basket off your list.
  • Restaurant gift certificate. Maybe. Check the menu to make sure there's something they can eat: eggs or unbreaded meat for the entree. I once got a gift certificate from someone who said, "I don't know if there's anything you can eat there." And the place was at the opposite end of downtown from where I worked. Gee, thanks.
  • Diabetic cookbooks or magazines. These are full of high-carbohydrate recipes that can make you diabetic.
  • A donation to the American Diabetes Association. The ADA is largely funded by pharmaceutical companies that sell diabetes medications. These businesses have nothing to gain by reducing their customer base, which is why the ADA recommends eating a portion of starchy food (a quarter of a dinner plate) at every meal. That's more than enough to give diabetics blood sugar levels that, experienced day after day, are toxic and can lead to blindness and amputation. I'd sooner make a donation to Al Quaeda. 


Better Choices


  • Homemade low-carb goodies. Yes--but make sure they're actually low carb. An apple pie made with Splenda still has a flour crust and fruit. (Remember the part about starches and fruit being bad for blood sugar?) On the other hand, a pumpkin pie made with canned or fresh pumpkin (not "pumpkin pie filling"), Splenda, a nut crust and heavy cream or coconut milk instead of sweetened condensed milk should be low carb. For cookies, breads and pastries, get a recipe book like Cooking with Coconut Flour (and don't use any sugar, honey or maple syrup--use Splenda). You cannot swap regular flour with coconut flour or almond flour; you need a recipe written for those ingredients. A word about sweetness: someone who has been on a low-carb diet for a while has probably seen their taste for sweetness ratcheted down. I typically use half the sweetener called for in recipes, except when making cookies: baked goods need the whole amount for the texture. To get an idea of the right level of sweetness, eat a square of Dove dark chocolate. 
  • A low-carb food basket. A basket of smoked salmon, avocados, hard cheese, olives and nuts--ain't no way this will be regifted.
  • Wine. Maybe. A lot of us enjoy it, but it interferes with some common medications and blood sugar levels for some people. If you're not sure about it, find another gift.
  • Restaurant or coffee shop gift certificate. Again, maybe. Make sure it's a place they'll like to eat or drink and that it's convenient for them to get to. Places with the word "grill" in the name are best: there's something they can eat there and it's hard to screw up a hamburger. But I've seen it done! I've found that my taste sensitivity to everything has gone up, and bad food and coffee aren't merely bad, they're dreadful. Choose carefully.
  • Books and magazines. Low-carb enthusiasts are aware of all the new books out there. But for a newbie, Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution and Blood Sugar 101 are indispensable for diabetics. Dana Carpender has written many low-carb cookbooks with carbohydrate counts for the recipes. Long-term low-carbers are often avid readers--an e-reader or gift certificate to Amazon or Barnes and Noble might be a great gift.
  • Donation to Heifer International. The very poor often subsist on low-nutrient, high-carb, grain-based diets. Heifer International (fka The Heifer Project) provides needy people with livestock and training to care for the animals. The people they serve get the benefit of a more nutritious diet from the animals' milk, eggs and meat, more fertile land, and income from wool and extra food.

Comments

Lowcarb team member said…
Wine is very acceptable in our house and also the 85% or 90% dark chocolate. Just a bar is very acceptable ... low carb and enjoyable.

All the best Jan
Lori Miller said…
I like a glass of wine now and then, and some 70% dark chocolate.

Popular posts from this blog

Mince Meat Pie Recipe, low carb

The star of Christmas dinner this year was made of unlikely ingredients. Fruit and beef tongue sound high carb or unpalatable, but mince meat pie was so popular 250 years ago that it was in many cookbooks from the time--and it wasn't just for Christmas. My version cuts the carbs by using tart cooking apples, cranberries, monk fruit sweetener and a nut flour crust. The main flavors are orange and slightly tart fruit; the meat and fat make it filling. Have it for dessert or with coffee or tea for breakfast. Make some soup with the collagen-filled broth and discover how tender and tasty the rest of the beef tongue is. Worth the time and effort. IMPORTANT--start this recipe the day before. Links in the recipe go to hard-to-find ingredients and directly to the cookbook with the recipe for the pie crust. (I made the almond flour variation of the crust.) Recipe 1 beef tongue (I get mine here ; look for farms or ranches in your area that sell directly to consumers) 2 Granny Smith apples 1 ...

Is the NIH Privately Helping Patients with COVID Vax Injuries?

In a recent letter from several attorneys general (AGs) demanding an explanation as to why so few vaccine-injured people have received so little compensation, the AGs asked a curious question: We have been told by constituents that NIH [National Institutes of Health] is privately helping patients across the country with COVID-19 vaccine–related injuries and is even bringing patients to NIH for study and treatment. Is that correct? Why have these activities not been better publicized? What sorts of studies of these patients is NIH currently conducting? What treatments is NIH administering? Photo from Pixabay . Most of the letter focused on compensation for COVID-19 vaccine injuries. As you know, vaccine manufacturers in the US have immunity from lawsuits, but people suffering from vaccine injuries can be compensated by the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). But among the 10,000 COVID vaccine related claims, only 20 claimants have received compensation. "And but for...

My New Favorite Sweetener

If you're looking for a low-carb sweetener with no aftertaste, no franken-ingredients, and that doesn't upset your stomach, try monk fruit (also known as luo han guo). This is what Quest bars were sweetened with when they first came out. Monk fruit is Dr. Davis approved. You can buy monk fruit in powdered or liquid form; both are super-concentrated. They might seem expensive, but you use the powder by the spoonful (even in baking recipes) and the liquid by the drop. The baking recipes I've made with the powder have turned out well. Available from Amazon . Beware monk fruit sweeteners with erythritol.  The package of powdered monk fruit sweetener I bought says, "Use 1/8 teaspoon to create the same sweet taste as 1 teaspoon of sugar." But it's so sweet that I use 1/10 the amount. To replace a cup of sugar, I would use 5 teaspoons of monk fruit sweetener. Tip: hand-stir this in before using the beaters. It's such a fine powder that it flies up and out of the ...

How would Dr. Oz Treat the DTs?

"You let me in your house with a hammer." -"Candy Shop" by Andrew Bird Low-carb proponent Gary Taubes appeared on the Dr. Oz Show March 7. In one entertaining segment, Dr. Oz spent a day eating a low-carb diet and complained of the greasiness of the sausage, feeling tired, constipation and bad breath. That's a drag, but when I stopped drinking Coke in 2007, I felt even worse: stomach ache, headache, tiredness, and mental fog. Should I have gone back to drinking Coke? If you quit a bad alcohol habit and start seeing snakes, do you need a drink? If my legs hurt from working out Monday night for the first time in two months (which they do), maybe I should resume my exercise hiatus indefinitely. I respect Dr. Oz for having Gary Taubes on his show and letting him share his ideas. I'd respect Oz even more if he looked into low-carb diets more carefully. What he didn't seem to consider regarding his one-day low-carb diet was that he spent a day...

What Difference Does it Make Why it Works?

This is the question someone asked me the other day in regards to the good results I've had on low-carb. Beyond just satisfying your curiosity, having a lattice work of mental models, as Charlie Munger puts it, can save you a lot of trouble. Without mental models of (in this case) human digestion, evolution, nutrition research, journalism, medical education, and even politics, all I'd have is just something that works for acid reflux. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Something that works might only work in certain situations, could be unpredictable, could have unintended consequences, or could just be a placebo effect. Knowing how something works reduces the danger.  As Munger's partner Warren Buffett put it, "Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing." Yet how often are people overconfident when they only know a thing or two? The web is full of bros who cut down on the beer and pizza, got some exercise and lost 40 pounds--and you can, too! ...