Session 1. Diabetes

Aim: To equip participants with knowledge on how a vegan diet helps manage diabetes and lowers insulin dose.

Tools:

• Attendance sheet
• A New Approach to Nutrition for Diabetes DVD
• AV equipment to show DVD
• Extension cord
• Large writing surface and writing tool
• Paper/pens for group members

Welcome and Introductions:

• Pass around attendance sheet.
• Ask participants (one by one) to discuss their successes and challenges of the past week.

Video:

DVD (22:55): “A New Approach to Diabetes and Stories of Success” from A New Approach to Nutrition for Diabetes: Section A, Segment 3

The DVD covers:

• What is diabetes?
• What is meant by type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes?
• Why carbohydrate-rich foods are not the cause of diabetes.
• How fat builds up in muscle cells to cause insulin resistance.

For more information, you may wish to review Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes.

Lecture and Discussion (15 minutes):

• If I have diabetes, can I eat rice and fruits like bananas, mangoes, and grapes? (Yes. Although they have natural sugar, their glycemic index is surprisingly low.)
• If my meal contains a mixture of low-GI and high-GI foods, how do they affect my blood sugar? (The GI of a meal is actually the average of the foods that go into it.)
• How about fruit juices? (Although most fruit juices are missing the fiber that was in the whole fruit, their GI is often surprisingly low. So juices are not forbidden.)

Session 2 >