Diabetic-Diet Books

Some of the recipes end up delicious, but many are complicated with many ingredients and multiple steps. Some of the recipes could have been simplified and been made, served, and tasted just as well, more quickly. I use this cookbook more to get ideas than to follow the recipes, since time is a premium and I don't want to spend so much time just making a simple (or what should be simple) dessert for an everyday dinner. I wouldn't mind the "fuss" if we had company coming, but many are just too complicated for everyday use.

In Prevention's Decadent Desserts For Diabetics, Regina Ragone draws upon her professional experience and expertise as the Food Editor for Prevention Magazine to present 125 desserts that are as delicious as they are "diabetic friendly". From Coconut Cream Bundt Cake; Pear and Cranberry Crisp; Apple Crumble with Toasted-Oat Topping; and Chocolate Mousse; to Spiced Molasses Cookies; Lemon Bars; Coffee Cup Souffles; and Strawberry Shortcakes, Prevention's Decadent Desserts For Diabetics showcases individual dishes that are made with wholesome ingredients (no sugar substitutes or artificial ingredients are needed) and come with a complete nutritional analysis. Enhanced with colorful photography, each selection comprising this very highly recommended addition to the cookbook collection of anyone having to deal with diabetes is thoroughly "kitchen cook friendly" with easy-to-understand directions.

I really wanted to like this book but was disappointed with the contents. All the recipes are the same "run of the mill" foods that you'll find in any "Better Homes and Gardens" cookbook. Apple strudel, chocolate layer cake, and brownies (to name a few). They still use white and brown sugar to make the food but the amount of sugar is cut back a bit. Big deal! I do that already! I guess I was expecting more fruit juice sweetened recipes so that I could get away from all the white sugar that fills our products. Regina's guidelines to healthier eating consists of replacing whole milk with fat free, 1% or 2% milk. Replace full fat cream cheese with low fat counterparts and eat your fruits and veggies. Sorry gang, this is old news!!

This is a concept that doesn't make sense. Ms. Gelles gives recipes to help those with diabetes who also have heart disease and kidney disease. Everyone with diabetes should eat "heart healthy" and if you have kidney disease you need more help than Ms. Gelles can provide in a cookbook. Her writing makes me think she doesn't understand basic concepts of diabetes.

The book emphasizes healthy food choices for diabetics and
people desiring to control their sugar intake. The author
provides a saturated fat index pertaining to almost every
food imaginable. There are sample dishes which are intended
for diabetics. For instance, the author presents the
cucumber feta cheese dip, roasted asparagus tips with curried
shrimp, roasted cod with Moroccan flavors and many others.
An anti-cancer/anti-tumor food group is presented in the form
of mushrooms. For instance, cordy caps increase T-cells and
NK cells. Zhu-ling is an anti-tumor form of mushroom.
Ling-Zhi is a form of Reishi which is anti-herpes. In addition,
garlic is beneficial for its allicin content. This work would
be helpful for anyone trying to control sugar intake.
For this reason alone, the book is well-worth the price charged.

Although written for diabetics, this book has great recipes for everyone. The recipes are clearly written with alternatives for those wishing to cut down on their fat, cholesterol, etc. There's a great chart in the back of the book that gives exact nutritional contents. A wonderful cookbook!

I was excited to get a cookbook with so many recipies...until I looked at them. On first glance, the recipies do not have "real life" ingredients or quantities listed!

For example, "Homesytle Apple Pie", p. 128, serves 8 and is 1 Bread, 2 Fruit & 1.5 Fat/serving. This is within my plan, so I go to make it, then stop at the ingredient: "1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons frozen apple juice concentrate, undiluted". Who is going to buy a whole can of apple juice concentrate, then not be able to use it all? I doubt that there is another recipie I could find to use that up during the week, and day 5 of "Homestyle Apple Pie" would get a bit old.

If I have dibbles & dabbles of all these ingredients (Neufchatel cheese? p. 129; 1/4 cup chopped Avacado--what do you do with the other 3/4 vegetable? Tofu?, 1/2 14oz Can No Salt Tomatoes?) I will be looking at things that I can't use, and just waste precious space in the refrigerator or pantry until I can find another recipie that calls for these tiny amounts again or let the ingredients spoil. I already have that problem with basic celery and all the other veggies I have to buy!

I normally plan my meals so I can use the 1/2 can of corn or beans in a different meal, and I have leftovers like most people. 4-8 Servings is normally not a problem, and I can freeze leftovers. It is frustrating to see a recipie that serves 20 (Applesauce Spice Cake, p.122) that can't even be easily divided in half so you don't make as much. This book is going into the "Maybe for a Pot Luck Idea" stack, but I'm almost afraid to use it because I haven't tasted it myself. Many Diabetic recipies are often bland or taste really bad, so why would I want to torture my co-workers with "healthy" food, too?

This cookbook looked like a good idea, but save your money unless you have a big refigerator and lots of small containers and want to spend a lot of time going through everything. The pictures look good, the recipie titles sound yummy, but the ingredients are not realistic. I may try some of the chicken dishes, but at least half of this book isn't usable.

So far, the cookbooks I've gone to for most of the "good, we'll use this again" recipies are the Diabetic 4 Ingredient Or Less Cookbook or one of the many cookbooks from JoAnna M. Lund. It is hard enough being Diabetic, and trying to cook for someone who isn't. I don't need to have a full refrigerator with nothing to eat, too.

Of all the diabetic cookbooks that I have tried, this is my favorite. The dishes are generally easy to make and extremely tasty. Even my family raves about the meals that I have made from this book. Ms. Cain has definitely made my adjustment to life with diabetes much easier.

These are easy, delicious recipes using ingredients that are readily available at any supermarket. Highly recommend.

Easy and quick recipes for newly diagnosed diabetics or anyone wishing to monitor their carbohydrate and fat intake. Useful food exchange and serving size information for each item.

I like the fact that the recipes start at lowest carb amount, to highest. (It also has an index for those who want by ingredient or alphabetical). The recipes I have had all had vegetables. I had chicken with green beans, stew with cabbage, and lentil (that included carrots, and green beans in the recipe) soup.

My family and I have enjoyed every recipe I have used so far from this book.

the majority of recipes that are low carb are not using veggies, just meat. And most have you pre-cooking it prior to putting it into the slow cooker. I want some that all I need to do is dump everything into it and when I get home in the evening I have supper ready, no muss, no fuss. They also use thickeners like flour and corn starch quite often, but these are better left out, you can add your veggies instead and still have less carbs than if you had used the thickeners! Several recipes suggest putting the meal over rice or potatoes, but don't add those carbs into the counts because they are not put into the slow cooker, you would have to fix them seperate. Gee folks, I already knew how to modify existing recipes, I wanted something for us diabetics!

Diabetes is controlled through a combination of medication, exercise, weight control, and diet. Indeed, if caught earlier enough, some forms of diabetes can be controlled through exercise and diet without the need for insulin injections. The Everything Diabetes Cookbook is the most "user friendly" of all the diabetes oriented culinary references and offers more than three hundred nutritious recipes and imaginative menu ideas that will please the palate and grace any meal from simple family dining, to celebratory dinners, to holiday party snacks. From Hawaiian-Style Bread; Crab Cakes with Sesame Crust; Nutty Greek Snapper Soup; and Sweet Potato Crisps; to Cranberry-Turkey Sausage; Broccoli-Cauliflower Slaw; Apple Cookies with a Kick; and Peachy Ginger Ale, The Everything Diabetes Cookbook has wonderful selections offering a true culinary diversity completely appropriate for diabetic menu planning all year round.

I was very disappointed in this book. It's great for low fat cooking, but not to manage your blood sugar. Her recipes don't use sugar substitues, soy flour, whole wheat flour, fat free cheese or cream and whole wheat pastas (higher fiber foods that are slower to absorb in the bloodstream). Recipe in book required that I alter to reduce the sugars, increase protien and fiber. I alter regular cookbook recipes, and I was hoping that this book would be different. One recipe doubles the carbs/sugars for oatmeal by adding lots of dried fruits. Perhaps sugar substitute, a splash of vanilla and cinnamon, 1/2 cup fresh fruit and a couple tablespoons half n half. This would have less sugar/carbs, but more fiber/protein and the small amount of fat will slow the conversion and absorbtion of sugars into the blood stream. So many other recipes have all-pupose flour, potato flour or potato starch, sugar, honey, and even instant rice. Her zucchini bread has 2 1/2 cups of sugar as well as regular flour...wow! Like I said, really disappointing. It's Low fat focused, not so low sugar. I don't think it's for a diabetic who's really trying to control sugars via diet. It would get 4 stars from me as a NON-Diabetic/Regular diet cookbook.

Okay. Granted. If you eat a cupcake from the supermarket with that blue icing made from crisco and one pound of confectioner's sugar and then you eat something from this book it'll probably taste like cardboard.

BUT THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT!

The point is that we've trained ourselves to like the taste of such overly sugar-filled desserts that we're all becoming diabetic! I just made the Orange Cranberry Muffins and they are delicious! They are soft and moist and have a nice orange flavor with the tartness of the cranberries. Now, yes, they aren't sweet as I'm used to eating "sweet" things, but they're refreshingly yummy and healthful, especially since I replaced the white flour with whole wheat (adding 4 tablespoons of milk).

PLUS, she gives you recipes for tons of jams, spreads, toppings, custards, puddings that you can make and serve with the muffins for breakfast. And it's all refined sugar free and no artificial sweetners, just natural fruit. So if the muffin is too un-sweet for you or if you're just getting used to the taste, make some of her delicious jams and have a muffin with jam for breakfast!

When she says sweet she doesn't mean sugar sweet she means the natural flavor of fruit sweet. And I think we should all wean ourselves off that overly-sweet flavor and learn to appreciate nature's sweetness.

Buy this, experiment with it, and slowly get used to the flavor of all natural sweetness.

The only criticism that I would make is that the recipes have very large yields. That's okay for the cakes and muffins because I just freeze whatever I don't want at that moment but that's not possible to do with the pies and cookies so keep that in mind.

The muffin recipe using applesauce is especially delicious actually quite sweet considering it has no added sugar. I made the pineapple carrot cake and the "natural" flavor was very intense. I think it would be better if some raisins were added to the batter to add a little burst of sweetness in every few bites.

A co-worker of mine who tried 2 recipes and took them to a party of 20 people, came back with only one square missing from each pan. Everyone said "yuk". She gave me the book to keep. I thought that she was so sweet to "give" this book to me. I tried the Hawaiian Cake and some others. They were indeed "yuk". It's in my recycle trash can now. Someone wrote the apple pie makes it worth buying. You don't need a cookbook to make a delicious fruit pie. These are nearly no brainers, as the fruit adds the sweetness. I don't recommend buying this at all.

Tried the apple almond cake. Came out like a giant bisquit and wasn't even close to being sweet, not even a hint. I had to add brown sugar to the icing so it would at least pretend to be a dessert.

Sorry but I just cannot recommend this one. I was really excited about it while reading it, too... I'm so disappointed.

I bought this cookbook a few years ago because a friend and I were trying to eat healthier. We made the peach cake and it was inedible, tasted like dog food with peaches. We were afraid to try much else. We started laughing about it over time and calling the author "Karen Barfie." One of the worst cookbooks I've ever used.

The cheesecake (I used a pear puree -- one of the purees that were recommended) came out rubbery and not sweet at all. I was so disappointed... This was so bad that I didn't want to risk trying anything else. I guess I'll keep looking for other sugar-free cookbooks.

I guess I didn't realize it was published in 1991. (17 years ago). $10.17 down the tubes. I guess I trusted when I should have researched a little more. My bad for not paying attention.

If you are on some kind of Healthy plan and are thinking of using this book to help you plan your eating when you are not at home, think again. The last revision of the book was in 1991 and several of the Restarurants and Brands listed no longer exist. Of those that do, watch out. This book includes listings for menu items which no longer exist, or which were changes within the last few years.

Unless this book is updated, this is not a good resource.

I found this book to be very helpful in finding the exchanges for various foods. I wish it would have been a bit smaller in actually dimensions (like a paperback book), but other than that it is extremely helpful.

Let me start by saying this book has been a big help in my diet. However, I did not realize just how old the book was. It does not have many of the latest food obviously. I would have gotten a newer book if I noticed the publishing date.

Almost nothing in this book is current enough to be helpful. You are much better off using the online sites of the food manufacturers and restaurants and, if necessary, doing the math to figure out how the carbs, proteins, and fats translate into food exchanges.

Don't waste your money.

This recipe books represents the worst of both worlds--sugar in every recipe, but the resulting products are completely tasteless. My first attempt, the double chocolate cake, looked like a flattened elephant dropping after baking, and probably didn't taste much better--I threw it away. I tried a second recipe, replaced the full cup of sugar with Splenda, and still had to add more Splenda plus a bit of regular sugar to make it remotely edible (but still bad). I've had many ready-made sugar-free products that taste vastly better than anything in this book. If I could give this zero stars, I would. Ugh!

I like this book and the recipes were really easy to follow. My mom is a diabetic and I could fix things for her the she would eat. I reccomend this book for anyone who is or knows someone who is a diabetic.

This is supposed to be a diabetic cookbook. There is too much sugar in the recipes. Also, the book is outdated and calls for ingredients that are no longer available.

This is a great book for anyone watching their sugar or fat intake !

This book is surely NOT for diabetics. Every single recipe calls for sugar, sugar, sugar! I returned the book.

I have yet to make anything from the recipe section of this book, so I cannot rate the results. However, the first part of the book gives a great overview for those newly diagnosed with diabetes. Being someone who loves to cook, I also like that the information given has taught me how to adjust my old favorites to fit my new lifestyle. A good purchase thus far.

I wanted a diabetic cookbook because my husband and my mother (who lives with us) are trying to eat healthier. I thought following some of the diabetic recipes would be a good healthy, sensible way to eat. I didn't realize that about 1/2 of this entire book is information about diabetes.... the other half is recipes. We don't need all the technical information on diabetes. If you are looking for info on diabetes, then this is definitely the book for you. But if you are looking for healthy diabetic recipes only, this is NOT the book. I wish I had known before I had purchased this book that it is an information first/recipes second book.

There is nothing wrong with the recipes in this book but they are boring. I could (and have) put them together without the expense of this book. If you are new to diabetic cooking, this book may be helpful. However, if you are an old hand, forget it!

I bought this book hoping I could eat a little better, since I have "elevated blood sugar levels" but I think most recipes in this book would give me "elevated cholesterol levels" instead. At its publishing date I'm sure it was better than what most people were using to cook with, but we now know that margarine is full of the bad stuff that clogs our arteries, and just about every recipe seemed to have that as an ingredient. So if you're looking for healthy cooking, this isn't the place to start. I suggest finding a book with a publishing date of the last few years, that would have taken into consideration trans fats and our need to eliminate them.

I was recently diagnosed with gestational diabetes. My nutritionist basically told me to watch my carbs, but dont limit my fat/salt/etc at this time. I bought this along with a Betty Crocker Diabetic Cookbook Everyday Meals Easy as 1-2-3. I am glad I bought the other one. It has pictures and is much easier to navigate. In my case the New Diabetic cookbook spends too much time on diabetes information and isn't as appealing for meals. Great for someone else, just not me!