Breakfast for Diabetics: Good and Bad Options for the ‘Most Important Meal of the Day’

title image: breakfast for diabetics

Let’s talk about some of the good choices and some of the bad choices that diabetics can have for breakfast. 

Unfortunately, a lot of type 2 and type 1 diabetics get very bad nutrition advice from mainstream media and from either the American or the Canadian diabetes association. A lot of this nutritional advice has led to individuals with diabetes getting worse.

So, let’s start with some good options for diabetics that they should be eating for breakfast. If your blood sugar spikes up high after a meal, then that meal is not a good meal for diabetics, no matter how much nutrition might be in that meal.

The first good food to eat as a diabetic is eggs. Eggs are full of amino acids and fatty acids that are essential for good nutrition. Essential means your body does not make them, you must get them from your nutrition, the more pastured and natural the egg is, the higher the omega-3 content and the higher the vitamins and minerals.

Another great breakfast option is avocado. Avocados have five hundred milligrams of potassium per one hundred grams, it also only has eight grams of carbohydrates per one hundred grams and is full of vitamins and minerals. 

This next option will make plenty of people very happy, bacon! While bacon has gotten a bad rap, it is actually a very healthy breakfast option, especially for diabetics. You will get a full assortment of essential amino and fatty acids from bacon; pastured bacon will also have the omega-3 fatty acids your body needs. It also has a good vitamin and mineral content; this makes it a great food for diabetics.

The next good food option for a diabetic for breakfast is steak. Any grass fed, grass finished or even the cheapest steak you can buy, will give you the full assortment of essential amino and fatty acids and a great vitamin and mineral content.

The final good food option for diabetics that we will discuss today is full fat Greek yogurt with a good sprinkling of nuts. While this is not a great breakfast, it still has lots of vitamins and minerals and amino and fatty acids.

Let’s turn to some bad food options, many on this list may surprise you as they are often marketed as healthy, nutritional options or additions to your diet. The first example of bad food for breakfast is oatmeal. Oatmeal is made from oats, whether it’s instant or steel cut, it’s made of carbohydrates and made of grain. All carbohydrates break down into glucose fructose, glucose spikes your blood sugar and fructose stores fat in the liver. Both are very bad for anyone but are especially bad for diabetics as there is no meaningful vitamin or mineral content in oats.

The next bad food for diabetics is banana. Bananas have three hundred and fifty milligrams of potassium per one hundred grams but have 22 grams of carbohydrates per one hundred grams. This will spike your blood sugar very high making it a food that diabetics should steer clear of.

Another bad option for diabetics is English muffins. Some nutrition experts think that if a bread is hard to chew or tougher, that somehow makes it a better carbohydrate, but at the end of the day, English muffins are made of wheat. It’s all carbohydrate which breaks down into glucose and fructose, your blood sugar will spike very high, and fat will be stored in your liver, there is no meaningful nutrition in English muffin.

The next bad food is muesli with berries; this is basically raw oats that you can buy with different names. They are usually soaked in skim milk to make them more chewable and most people will add berries as well. This also breaks down into glucose and fructose making it a very bad food for diabetics.

The next bad food for diabetics is cereal with milk, even skim milk. Any cereal that comes out of a box is a terrible food for diabetics, it does not matter what it says on the label or how big the heart healthy label is on the box, it is bad. It’s nothing but a grain that has been ultra processed and ground up, they add a few vitamins and minerals back into it, then you pour milk all over it, which gives you more sugar, this is extremely bad for diabetics.

While sugar is very bad for all of us, diabetics need to be extra cautious when it comes to sugar intake. Taking important steps to remove sugar from your diet will have a significant effect on the quality of health for diabetics and breakfast is an important meal to start with as unfortunately, breakfast is often full of high carb and high sugar options. For the sake of your current and future health, it should be kept out of your diet. Take it from someone with experience, your body will thank you.  

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