To snack or not to snack? Helpful tips for snacking with diabetes.

Is snacking a good idea for people with diabetes? We get some expert and helpful tips on snacking with diabetes.

Snacking with diabetes

My average blood sugar over the past few months was higher than it should have been, so I’m trying really hard not to eat the wrong foods. Any tips for healthy snacks?

Getting creative with your snacks can really help make your daily meal plan more exciting. We all get into a rut with our meal choices, and adding different (healthy) snacks can improve variety, colour, flavour and even add valuable nutrients to your daily intake.

“Not every person with diabetes needs to snack,” says dietician Genevieve Jardine. “Some people are happy with three square meals a day, while others prefer small snacks throughout the day. Your unique eating style largely depends on your own natural eating patterns, medication, blood sugar control, and how active you are.”

Remember: If you go for more than 4 or 5 hours between meals you may need to snack in order to prevent your blood sugar from dropping too low. But snacking on the wrong kind of food can cause blood sugar levels to rise and also cause unwanted weight gain.

So what does healthy snacking with diabetes look like?

• Snacking is a good chance to increase your vegetable or fruit intake (remember, the aim is 5 servings of vegetables a day).
• Plate your snack to help control portion size. Don’t eat straight out of a bag, box or packet – or straight from the fridge!
• Portion your snacks into snack-size packets, or buy suitable snack portions.

Ask yourself: are you actually hungry? Don’t snack because you’re bored, stressed or worried.

In my experience, when meals are properly balanced, snacks are not needed unless there is a significant delay in meals. On the other hand, some people enjoy snacking. They feel better both mentally and emotionally when snacks are provided. In this case, they can be included into the meal plan.

Genevieve Jardine, Dietician

Healthy snack ideas:

• One piece of fruit (carb 15g, fat 0g, 300kj)
• 100ml low-fat flavoured yogurt (carb 16g, fat 2g, 400kj)
• 2 cups popped popcorn sprinkled with fat-free parmesan cheese (carb 15g, fat 7g, 636kj)
• 30g lean biltong (carb 0.7 g, fat 2g, 346kj)
• 3 Provitas or 2 Ryvitas with cottage cheese, tomato and gherkin (carb 20g, fat 2g, 382kj)
• ½ an apple with 20g sliced low-fat cheese (carb 8g, fat 5g, 430kj)
• Raw veggies (carrot sticks, cucumber, baby tomatoes, gherkins, baby corn, snap peas) with cottage cheese, hummus or avocado dip (carb 8g, fat 7g, 540kj)
• 30g nuts/seeds (carb 3g, fat 14g, 735kj)
  

Tip: Nuts and seeds are high in fat and kilojoules. However, the type of fat is much healthier than that found in a chocolate bar.

Unhealthy snack choices:

• 50g bar of chocolate (carb 30g, fat 12g and 1120kj)
• 30g packet of potato crisps (carb 24g, fat 12g, 766kj)
• 300ml bottle of drinking yoghurt (carb 45g, fat 5.6g, 1140kj)
• 25g packet of sweets (carb 18g, fat 0g, 316kj)
  

How to deal with snacking with diabetes

“I find how the snack is made up very important. Having some protein with a carbohydrate always helps maintain glucose control and curbs cravings. For example, a small fruit with cheese, 2 crackers with egg, or plain yoghurt. I try to keep people’s food preferences in mind when planning snacks to make the options easy and tasty for them.”

The best way to work around snacking is to have the person test their blood sugar levels regularly and at different time of day and night to establish what their blood sugar levels are doing, and then prescribe snacks accordingly.

Ajita Ratanjee, Dietician

Snacking for exercise:

Remember that exercise can also cause low blood glucose. It is important to check blood glucose before and after you exercise. People react differently to exercise depending on the type, duration and intensity: some people see a rapid drop and others an increase in blood sugar levels, so it is important to test and see what your individual response is.

3 different types of people with diabetes

There are so many different scenarios this can be applied to, dietician Louise Ferreira says.

1. An overweight person living with Type 2 diabetes

This person might choose to avoid snacking for behavioural issues – sometimes having stricter boundaries can help prevent overeating. For the person who tends to overeat at meal times if they are too hungry, a small snack could help prevent this. Clinically, I think that spreading carb intake throughout the day is a good idea – it gives the pancreas less glucose to deal with at any given time. It all depends on the individual pattern.

2. A person with Type 2 diabetes trying to gain weight

Yes! Snack!  Get those calories in and spread the carbs out!  If needing to gain weight, but blood sugar is high, then low carb and high protein/fat snacks would work (after sorting out medication).

3.  A person with Type 1 diabetes

This gets a bit more complicated and is very individual.  Carbs need insulin and most people don’t enjoy many injections a day. So, having carby snacks often tempts someone to eat without covering the carbs with insulin.  A carb free snack like cheese or biltong is a great idea to help those people.  

It can be dangerous to keep injecting insulin for carbs without letting that insulin work its way out of the system – it can cause insulin stacking and this can drop blood sugar and cause a hypo. When you already have insulin on board (within 2 to 4 hours of injecting), you’ll need less for the snack.  Pumps and smart glucometers take this into account, but for those doing manual calculations, there might be a problem.  So the easiest option here is carb free snacks without insulin.

A summary of snacking with diabetes

• What does the patient’s blood sugar profile look like?
• Have they told you their goals?
• What are their behaviour patterns?
• Once you know these things, you can decide on the best possible plan…

What do you think? Let’s talk about it!