How to plan healthy meals with Diabetes?

So I think the most important thing around meal planning is that it has to be practical, it has to suit the needs of your work and your work and family balance and your lifestyle. Some of the websites that we advise people around have really structured meal plans around people's cultural needs, their dietary needs, their religious needs, and also in terms of your budgets. So if you're looking at following a healthy diet on a low budget, you can plan this around thinking about foods, meal preparation, looking at foods which are more cost effective from local markets, local supermarkets, which have fresh fruits and vegetables at much cost more, more cost effective, and even going for protein foods which are in tins. So things like tinned beans, legumes, pulses, which can be part of a healthy balanced diet and very, very cost effective as well. Moving on to more cultural diets, a lot of people get confused about what they can and cannot eat if they're from South Asian background or an African or Caribbean background. They often find diabetes quite a bit of a challenge. So what we have done is we've produced lots of meal plans for the South Asian community, the African community, the Caribbean community and the Arabic community where we know diabetes is very prevalent. And we've broken up their commonly eaten foods into low carbohydrate diets, offering very intermittent advice as well. And this information can be found on the No Diabetes website. And also to share with you that the Diabetes UK has got lots of recipes on foods which are more beneficial for people living with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. And these are very simple, easy follow recipes that you can follow to put into place into your meal plans. What we have to remember that meal plans need to be very, very realistic and simple, not overcomplicate things. And even if you are eating as a family, ultimately, it is the amount of carbohydrate that is going to impact your blood glucose. So depending on whatever you choose to eat as a family or as an individual, the main advice is is that the portion control is really, really important. Especially when we're eating out in celebrations, festivals, restaurants, you're going out for a special night out, try to have foods which are more protein-based, more vegetables, more stews and soups. Reduce your quantity of carbohydrates because we know when we're eating out, the portion of carbohydrates can be quite large, much larger than what we would have at home. and it's really useful to plan your meals before you go out. Know where you're eating, know the carbohydrate values. Some of the nutritional values can be found online. If you know where you're going to be eating, particularly restaurants, don't forget to count those extra carbohydrates where you're snacking before your meals, in between, any fruit juices, any alcoholic drinks. These are all going to add up. And that's why meal planning is really, really important, whether you are at home or eating out or celebrating. it's really useful to know what you're going to eat. And somebody living with type one diabetes, it's even more important because for them, it's really useful to know how much carbohydrate they're going to be eating throughout the day so that they can plan their insulin regimes or they know that they have enough insulin with them. So just doing that a little bit extra work beforehand, knowing how much you're going to eat, where you're going to eat, looking up online, if you can find any websites that will have the nutritional values is all going to lead to better management of your diabetes.