Last Updated on May 15, 2024
Being diagnosed with diabetes brings plenty of new challenges; one of those is changing your diet. While it’s easier to make simple substitutions for dinner, it can be harder to find healthy options for dessert. But every time your sweet tooth comes calling, don’t answer it by eating two bowls of ice cream.
Melon Salad
Fruit is a healthy way to satisfy your sweet tooth without chowing down on chocolate bars. Fruit is an excellent alternative to candies, ice creams, and other junk foods. But even when eating fruit, don’t forget to account for the natural sugars and carbs.
Making a melon salad is easy and takes almost nothing more than whatever melons you want to include. For a delicious melon salad, combine cantaloupe, honeydew melon, and watermelon balls all into one large bowl. For some added flavor, add in lime juice, honey, and a pinch of minced mint. Most fruits tend to have low glycemic index ratings, meaning that you can enjoy more of it.
Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies
These are as delicious as they sound. This recipe is featured on the DiabeticLiving.com website, but there are still a few different substitutes we would suggest to make the brownies even healthier.
The website suggests that you can substitute the white flour with whole grain corn, or whole grain oat flour. The recipe offers different tips on the ratios if you decide to use a different type of flour. You can also replace a little of the milk chocolate with dark chocolate. You can replace the ¼ cup of butter with a healthy alternative.
Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Truffles
This recipe only requires 6 ingredients and is great for all those holiday parties. You might even have some of these ingredients in your pantry; butter, peanut butter, stevia extract (or your sweetener of choice), vanilla extract, and peanut flour. Be sure to use all natural peanut butter instead of the standard kind that has added sugars. Each truffle has a little more than 4g of carbs, meaning you can have more than one, but don’t go crazy and eat the whole batch.
Swirled Cheesecake Brownies
These brownies are quick and easy to make, and with only 16g of carbohydrates they won’t make your glucose levels skyrocket. This is a simple dessert that combines two favorite sweets: cheesecake and brownies.
There are several healthier substitutes you can make to this recipe to cut down on the added sugar and carbs. Instead of using the standard “all-purpose flour” opt for whole grain flour. Replace the normal sugar with a healthier sugar substitute. These easy replacements will cut down on the carbs without sacrificing any of the sweet taste.
“Five-Star Cookies”
If you don’t know what they are, five-star cookies are comparable to oatmeal raisin cookies, but with a few interesting twists. Not only are these cookies delicious, they are also good for you. One important ingredient substitution to notice in this recipe is the barley flakes. The recipe replaces the traditional oatmeal with these barley flakes for added crispiness. You can also replace the hazelnuts with unsalted cashews. This recipe only has around 60 calories per a cookie and less than 10 carbs. As an added bonus, it will take you 20 minutes to make these cookies.
Better but not the best
Yes, all of these options are better than their junk food alternatives. Have melon salad or the five-star cookies are healthier than eating a package of Oreos, but you shouldn’t eat these desserts with every meal.
