Anyone have lunch box idears.

Pasta salad
Quiche
potato salad
flask of soup
leafy salad with chicken etc

All made from scratch and I can give you some good low fat recipes for the above.

I take my lunch to work every day as I have a problem with processed foods (hidden sugar) and I get very bored with sandwiches

I will compile a list of recipes for you and email them if that's ok?

For me, pasta salads or potato saladwould be just about the worst thing I could eat!
All that starch means huge fluctuations in blood sugars, big doses of insulin and I could do without either of those things. Leafy salads by all means, but what's the point of pasta and spuds?

Any kind of meat or fish works with salad, even something like tinned mackerel, which I love. Also, how about packets of nuts, cheeses etc.? There's no need to worry about fat, because it's the sugar that harms diabetics, not the fat.

All the best,

fergus

Hi Fergus, I see what you are saying but whitevanman stated that he has a sandwich everyday for his lunch and he was bored of it, so I was giving other ideas which are similar to sandwiches.

I have gone lower carb since joining this forum and have found that my blood sugars are better, however I have not gone completely carb free as I habitually eat carbohydrates and quite like them.

It is difficult to get out of old habits and these things need to be done gradually, rather than just cut carbs out completely, I think it is a good idea to reduce carbohydrate intake slowly.

Your results are great from your low carb diet and you are an inspiration to me, in that it can be done.

With all due respect to everyone here, there's no way we're going to agree on a uniform diet strategy; except for nuts for a snack, I can see fergusc and I disagreeing on basically everything :roll:

Yeah, I think it is a great idea, diabetes and carbohydrate counting is a lot to get your head around when newly diagnosed, i would have loved someone to tell me how many carbs were in a meal at the beginning as I had no idea even how to work it out.

I agree that different people need different insulin:carb ratio, mine goes from 1unit:10g carb up to 2:10 depending on the time of day, this is the individual bit that you need to work out for yourself.

I realise that a diabetic diet is the one that everyone should be following, a well rounded and healthy diet, and I am also not suggesting that everyone follow a "diet" it was more to help whitevanman out with ideas for his lunch, with bread it is easy to calculate - read the packet! However, if you are eating pasta, cous cous, quinoa, potatoes etc, you need to be able to calculate it. this is not easy to do at first especially when things are given in dry weight and wet weight.

I would like a lunch box ideas forum - maybe some of the low carbers can add stuff too.

Also admin, I don't think we would ever agree on a "sample menu" but having a wee looksie at stuff other people eat for lunch may help us out. Maybe we could have a "stuff other people pack for their lunch with approximate carb counts provided forum" :mrgreen: :mrgreen: yep, get that terminology right!

Hi Whitevanman,

Don't worry - your question, and your problem looking for some variety in your lunches, is a perfectly valid one and a problem that I suspect a lot of people have. One thing I have done in the past is to prepare a pasta salad the night before, something like penne pasta or spirals, some bits of shredded chicken, some chopped peppers and onion, add a coating of a salad dressing (could be a spicy dressing or something more bland), mix the whole lot together and you end up with something you would pay around £4 in a supermarket, but at a fraction of that cost. Instead of chicken you could use some leftover cold roast meat, ham, chopped bacon, cold sausages sliced, etc. As you said, keeping it cool during the day isn't a problem for you.

If the pasta is too high in carbs for you, then you could try Dreamfields pasta, as that has only 6 grams carb per portion. In fact you might find that making it with Dreamfields is actually too low in carbs, but you could always have some fruit for dessert which would push up the total carbs for the meal. The other problem with Dreamfields can be getting hold of it as they don't have many retail outlets and its expensive to buy direct from them online.