Do Diabetics Need to Limit Carbs?

Reader question: As a type 2 diabetic I look for healthy recipes, & the immune boosting food sounded like a great thing. But when reading the carbs @110 per serving — OMG we are only allowed 60 carbs per meal. This is not at all doable.

I’m sad to learn that you must be operating on outdated dietary information if you limit yourself to so few carbs. Where is your body getting the fuel to run? The American Diabetes Association recommends a “whole foods” diet, not one in which you count carbs.

Limiting carbs is helpful when you’re eating processed foods which lack nutrition anyway. In the natural health world, we’ve seen diabetic patients be able to wean off of insulin by following a “Perfect Whole Foods” diet, as described in the book Recapture Your Health by Dr. Walt Stoll and Jan DeCourtney.

While my recipes are based on whole foods and can be used when following a perfect whole foods diet, some contain items which are fine for normal eaters (like white rice) but stray a bit from the absolutism needed for a diabetic eating regime (substitute for brown rice). My cookbook, Glorious One-Pot Meals: A Revolutionary New Quick and Healthy Approach to Dutch-Oven Cooking, is not directed at diabetics per se; they are just one of the groups of chronic disease sufferers — not mention regular people — that can benefit from eating a whole foods-based diet.