Living with prediabetes or diabetes does not mean you have to break up with pasta. Here are 5 tips to help stop the blood sugar spike at your next pasta dinner.
Cook pasta to an al dente texture
Follow the instructions on the package of your pasta to make sure you are cooking your pasta to an al dente texture (firm to the bite). Compared to overcooked, super soft noodles, al dente pasta is lower in glycemic index (a.k.a. More blood sugar friendly) because it is slower to digest.
Slower digestion results in slower absorption of sugar, thus a more gradual rise in blood sugar.
Keep pasta portions to 1 - 1.5 cups of cooked pasta
Regardless of the type of pasta, it is important to be mindful of portion size. Part of the reason pasta is often a challenging meal for blood sugar, is that rather than a balanced plate, pasta often becomes the whole meal.
Typically, I’d recommend limiting portion size at a meal to 1 - 1.5 cups of cooked pasta. This is equal to about 30 - 45 g of net carbs, which is very reasonable for a meal. If this has you thinking “that's definitely not enough to keep me full”, be sure to follow tips 3 and 4 for a more balanced meal.
Be sure to pair with protein
You can expect a faster rise in blood sugar if eating pasta by itself. Just as with other carbohydrate foods, carbs by itself is not a lot of work for our body to digest.
So as always, we are looking to pair it with some protein to help slow down that absorption of carbs. This could be ground meat or meatballs with spaghetti, chicken in a chicken pesto, cheese, lentils in place of ground meat, or beans (take inspiration from pasta e fagioli).
Include half a plate of vegetables
To round out that balanced plate, be sure to include your 1/2 a plate of non-starchy vegetables.
This could be anything you enjoy. Salads (yes, including storebought salad kits) are a great quick to throw together option that works well in terms of flavour combination with pasta. Cooked vegetables work great if you are not a fan of raw veg. Another option would be to make zoodles your half a plate of vegetables - mix together with your pasta noodles for more volume.
If using store-bought pasta sauce, choose one without added sugar
Store-bought pasta sauces often unintentionally add too much additional carbs. For example, store-bought marinara sauce often contain added sugar as an ingredient.
When grocery shopping, be sure to read the ingredient list to look for options without added sugar. A good example would be Mutti brand tomato sauce - no added sugar but super flavourful!
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