People with diabetes can still eat mooncakes, if they learn to eat smart and properly control their blood-sugar levels, a physician said yesterday.
As many people with diabetes or “the three highs” — high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar — often ask doctors whether they are allowed to eat mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival, ShuTien Clinic’s Metabolism Department director Hung Chien-te (洪建德) said yes, but added several provisos.
If people with diabetes pay attention to the glycemic index (GI) and the calories they eat, and take their prescribed medication, they can eat mooncakes to celebrate the holiday, but excessive eating is not suitable for people with diabetes or the three highs, or anyone for that matter, Hung said.
“A food’s GI is defined as the incremental area under the two-hour blood-glucose response curve after a healthy person consumes 50 grams of the available carbohydrates,” Hung said, adding that a diet with a lower GI can help control blood-glucose levels in people with diabetes.
He said the calories in a mooncake are mainly from starch (flour), sugar and fat (oil), and as both starch and sugar affect blood-sugar levels, carbohydrates should also be factored in.
A person with diabetes should obtain 40 to 60 percent of their total daily caloric intake from carbohydrates, so, for example, a man with diabetes who needs a daily intake of 2,000 calories per day would need to consume about 275 grams (about 1,100 calories) of carbohydrates per day, he said.
Hung said that if such a man consumed a piece of mooncake weighing 67.5g to 75g — about 350 calories — then he would have to not eat a bowl of rice — about 200g and 320 calories — that day.
However, he urged people with diabetes, but who “have poor control over their blood-sugar levels, do not take their medication regularly, do not know their glycated hemoglobin level,” people with the three highs and on a controlled diet, or people with eating disorders, to avoid eating mooncakes.
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