Cafe! (au lait?)

One of the first things the nutritionists tell you after learning you're type 1 diabetic is that your list of beverage options is greatly reduced. No more fruit juice (unless you're treating hypoglcemia (too much insulin)), no more flavored waters, sports drinks, and especially no soda. As American's we seem to be a little obsessed with our 'beverages'. This is easily represented in the use of our nation's colors and pride in the marketing of two of the major soda companies. Although Bloomberg is getting quite a bit of resistance about his soda ban in NYC, I frankly think it's brilliant, for the very reason of it's the first thing they tell you to eliminate from a diabetic diet in order to survive. The amount of sugar in these beverages is so high.  In the case of fruit juice, the juice has been stripped of the fruit's fiber, which helps to slow down digestion, so it hits the blood stream immediately and breaks down into glucose. This causes a sugar spike.

Besides the fact that these types of drinks are available everywhere, once you decide you aren't going to drink them, they are actually pretty easy to live without. So, what do I drink instead? Water, water with a twist of lime or lemon, sparkling water, coffee, coffee with almond milk, tea, vegetable juices, wine and a select number of cocktails (more indepth on alcohol to come).

Let's talk about coffee and tea. I love them both. Coffee a little more. It's my treat, and I enjoy it in many ways; espresso, drip, percolated, french pressed..... When I'm out I drink it black because I have noticed that everyone wants to "sweeten" everything. At the Starbucks counter I even have to go so far as to order the coffee "unsweetened". This I find annoying because it illustrates that the norm is now to add sugar. Coffee does not come with sugar, they are not removing the sugar from my coffee, they are just not adding it. Even the soy milk (at Starbucks and many other cafes) is sweetened, which means if I order a soy latte I have to bolus for it, and having to take insulin to enjoy my coffee just ruins it for me, so I drink it black. If you like lattes inquire about what is being added to the coffee and if the soy milk is sweetened. You may be wondering what about cow's milk? The information on the state of our dairy industry is so adverse that it's turned me off of milk completely. Although I tried being a vegan for several months, it was pretty tough with my low carb diet, so I'm back to eating plain greek yogurt and cage-free eggs, but still turned off by milk and the unnecessary hormones that may accompany it. At home I add a little bit of almond milk or almond extract and drink it in a fancy cup.
Cheers! Gina