Homemade meals are the best option for everyone including diabetics. Most people shy away from it because of the time and strain cooking and meal prepping may take on them and sometimes even their finances.
Depending on the area you live in, in the City or the Farm, the cost of homemade meals may differ, but its benefits don’t diminish.
In this article, we will mostly be looking at the nutritional values and their benefits to the body, as this would help us decide if and how good vegetable soup when made at home is for diabetics.
Why is Homemade food important for Diabetics?
In recent times, fast-food, restaurants, and even full-service restaurants have become a phenomenon as everyone wants to spend less time cooking and enjoying meals.
However, you can’t always eat your cake and have it, because meals prepared out of home may be high in energy, sodium, and fat, but almost always low or sometimes even lacking micronutrients such as calcium, iron, vitamin C, etc.
Eating out in the long term has been associated with weight gain and maybe obesity in children and even adults, but this can hardly be said about eating meals prepared at home.
Here are some benefits of eating meals prepared for consumption at home:
- According to a study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, people who eat meals prepared by themselves or meals prepared at home have a lower long-term risk of developing type-2 diabetes. This is partially because of less weight gain over time compared to when you eat fast foods.
- These same findings also show that eating meals prepared at home instead of the ones prepared outside like fast foods, may help to reduce the risks of developing diabetes and obesity
- Eating homemade meals can also be cost-effective. Along with helping you not gain so much weight, preparing meals at home can be cheaper if you are on a tight budget.
- Control: When you settle for homemade meals, it brings a sense of freedom. Fast foods don’t allow for the selection of the kind of salt, seasoning, or even water you’d like in your meal, but while meal prepping at home, you have so many options. When cooking at home, you can choose the ingredients you want in or out, you can always customize your meals based on the dietary preferences of the whole family.
Is homemade vegetable soup good for diabetics?
A cup or two of vegetable soup is the suitable range a diabetic could safely consume depending on their carb budget. Each cup contains 11.8 grams of carbs which is not high if your soup is paired with proteins. Homemade vegetable soups are nutrient-dense, but be careful with the salts to keep the sodium content in check.
Read: vegetable soups for diabetics?
As long as you have the required ingredients for your vegetable soup, making it yourself would be one of the best options you can make today and this is why:
- You can enjoy the process of preparing something that would improve your health rather than make you sick, plus cooking as an exercise can help boost your mood( Says Me)
- Homemade vegetable soup has more nutritional value than the store-bought version, as one of the benefits of prepping meals ourselves is the freedom/control that comes with it. cooking your soups means that you would do your best to take out things like starchy vegetables (e.g. potatoes) or reduce the ingredients like sodium, and unhealthy fats that have a high risk of increasing your blood sugar.
- Having homemade vegetable soup as a diabetic also helps you with portioning, and can help you reduce overeating.
- Coking your vegetable soup ensures that you make just enough at once so you may store it for later consumption. This helps curb the risk of blood sugar spikes from having any available junk snack when you’re too hungry and tired, helping you stay healthy, reducing waste, and saving you money.
- Homemade vegetable soup ticks lots of health boxes, as it contains vitamins, fiber, water, proteins, and even some complex nutrients.
- Homemade vegetable soups can be good for diabetics, If you can eat them every day, even better. It also keeps you full for longer, helping you control your meals and reducing the time you may have to eat during the day.
How to Make Homemade Vegetable Soups Healthier For Diabetics
1). Try unprocessed whole foods like grains, beans, and most especially vegetables, for the added vitamins and minerals
2). Fiber slows down the absorption of sugar into the blood, makes you feel full for longer, plus digestion wouldn’t be a problem. So including some more fiber in your meal will do the trick
3). For less fat in your meal, choose to use chicken or beef broth rather than cream, however, if you must use cream, reduce the portion, and also find healthier alternatives.
4). Diabetics are often advised to eat a low to no-sodium diet, so do your best to avoid any added salt, you can to for herbs and spices that add antioxidants, flavour, and even minerals to your meals.
Conclusion
When I think about it, there’s no way I can pinpoint one negative effect of homemade vegetable soups on diabetics. Regardless of how convenient fast foods may have become, I can categorically tell you that they have done more harm than good to our health and finances, so try to make time to prepare your meals, as it can be rewarding. Good luck with that!
