Angela Dowden: Enjoying sweetness with a diabetic diet
If you are someone living with diabetes, you may not be able to enjoy as many sweet treats. That’s because sugar can cause surges in your blood glucose, which can make your diabetes harder to manage. So it’s great to know that if you really enjoy having some sweetness in your diet you can do so more often by using a sugar substitute like Canderel.
As a replacement for sugar, Canderel is virtually calorie free, making it easier for you to manage your calorie intake and your weight if you need to. Simple ways that diabetics can make their diet more pleasurable with a delicious sweet taste include sprinkling Canderel over cereal or fruit, or using it to sweeten drinks.
And when you fancy the occasional cake, biscuit or pudding, you can do so much more safely by substituting some or all of the sugar with Canderel. For perfect results, just replace sugar spoon for spoon with Canderel in your favourite recipe, or divide the weight (g) of sugar by 10 to get the weight of Canderel that you need to use.
Don’t forget that whilst Canderel helps to reduce calorie and sugar content, it doesn’t automatically make foods ‘healthy’. For example cakes and puddings made with Canderel may still have high levels of saturated fat and refined carbohydrates from other ingredients. But as long as you mostly regard sweet foods as treats – something to be enjoyed in moderation – diabetics can enjoy those sweetened with Canderel with a greater peace of mind.
Some ways to sweeten your diabetic diet with Canderel
- Transform a bowl of berries into a luxury treat by topping with a little single or half cream and a sprinkle of Canderel granules (just 2 calories per teaspoon).
- Or add skimmed milk and Canderel granules to custard powder to make low calorie custard that's calcium-rich and great with chopped bananas.
- Treat yourself to these wonderful Chocolate sultana brownies once in a while. They only have 170 calories each!
- Offer to make pudding when you’re invited round to a friend’s house for dinner. These Raspberry panacottas will delight those with diabetes and non-diabetics alike!
- With zero calories a Canderel tablet (one is equivalent to a teaspoon of sugar) is perfect for diabetics who like a sweetened cuppa.
