Introduction
Fruits are a delicious way to satisfy your hunger pangs, cravings for sweet foods and fulfill your daily nutritional requirements. But if you are a diabetic you need to be a little more cautious of what foods you include in your diet. A majority of fruits have sugar in them. This doesn’t mean that a diabetic can’t eat fruit.
There are a few specific fruits that produces positive impact on controlling sugar in the blood. Such fruits have low GI index and are loaded with fiber. In this article, we will learn whether or not inclusion of oranges is appropriate in a diabetic meal plan.
Fruits and diabetes
Replacing sweet foods with fruits, is a good way to lower the chances of obesity, and diseases linked to it such as stroke, and heart attack. If you are a diabetic, you have to be careful of what you put on the plate, even if it is fruit. Fruits with high GI score and sugar content are not advised for diabetics.
Such foods get absorbed quickly and cause drastic increase in blood glucose levels. This can deteriorate the condition of a diabetic. Orange is one of the fruits that ranks low on the GI scale. Low sodium, low sugar, and low GI value of orange proves to be beneficial for the health of the diabetic.
Nutritional value
Oranges have high amounts of Fibre, folate, potassium, and vitamin C, that aids in forming a healthy diabetic meal plan. It also has abundance of vitamin D, and calcium in it. This fruit takes the longest time to breakdown and digest in the body. This results in a slow surge of sugar in the blood that ensures that the blood sugar remains stable for a longer time period. Orange is considered to be an excellent way to manage diabetes.
Oranges and GI
Oranges are one of those fruits that have a GI value under 55. The flavonols, phenolic acid, and flavanones present in the fruit, shows wonderful protective abilities in diabetes. Citrus fruits like oranges inhibits the transportation of glucose in the body via the liver, and the intestine.
The glycemic index of “raw oranges” is around 40 to 43. It is a relative ranking of carbs in foods in the way they impact blood sugar levels. Carbs that have GI value of 55 or below are gets slowly digested, assimilated and metabolized by the body and doesn’t cause any abrupt increase in blood sugar. Diabetics are often advised to consume more of such low GI fruits to fill their meal plan.
How to eat oranges for maximum benefit?
The mode of consuming any fruit will determine whether it will work good on your body or not. To get the best benefit from its consumption, you should learn the right way to eat it. The first and foremost tip is to eat it in the raw form, as a whole. Don’t eat it in the form of juice as it has plenty of sugar and very less fiber. The processed form of orange in the form of juice that you get it in tin form are high GI foods that can cause sudden spike in your blood sugar levels.
An unsweetened orange juice has GI index of 50 as it has less fiber, than a raw orange whose GI value is 40. So, to get maximum gains from the fruit, you should eat it raw and whole than in any other form.
Other tips to eat orange in diabetes
- Always eat seasonal and fresh produce of oranges
- Don’t eat it with your main meal. Eat it in between snacks, and meals
- Eating it with olives, and nuts helps to balance out the glycemic load.
- Sprinkle a little cinnamon, or flax seeds on it, also aids in balancing blood glucose.
- Do not eat it in cooked form as it will provides less nutrition to your body.
- Don’t consume it in juice form as it robs away its fiber and raise blood sugar levels.
Conclusion
Selection of the right fruit is not that hard, that one thinks. The key is to select fruits that have low GI, and high in fiber content and eat them in moderation. You don’t need any fancy fruit to control this disorder, eating local, fresh, and in season produce are the best choice for you. Being a low GI, low sugar, and high fiber fruit, oranges are an ideal inclusion to the diet. So, you can enjoy eating oranges without any worries.