Diabetes-Friendly Drinks: A Dietitian’s Guide to Beverages That Won’t Spike Blood Sugar

We’re so excited today because we have a very special episode and we’re talking all about beverages and which beverages are good for balancing your blood sugar.

So we’re going to get into coffee.

0:17
We know we have a lot of coffee drinkers who listen to this podcast and what are the best coffee drinks for your blood sugar?

Some considerations.

We’ll also talk about alcohol and things you need to consider if you’re going to be drinking alcohol and you have diabetes or you’re just trying to manage your blood sugar levels.

0:34
And we’ll get into juices versus smoothies and other low sugar drinks you can enjoy to stay hydrated but keep your blood sugars balanced.

Welcome to the Diabetes Digital Podcast.

I’m Wendy.

And I’m Jess, and we’re best friends, registered dietitians and diabetes educators.

0:52
Through our telehealth platform, Diabetes digital.co, we offer accessible and personalized virtual nutrition counseling for people with diabetes and pre diabetes.

Visit Diabetes Digital Co that Co to book your first appointment.

We accept insurance and offer affordable self pay options.

1:09
Now let’s get into today’s episode.

Today we have a very special guest.

It’s one of our very own diabetes digital dietitians.

Her name is Tila Leno and she is a certified registered dietitian nutritionist with years of experience in hospital settings, long term care, WIC and also outpatient.

1:30
She earned her Masters of Science degree at Hunter College.

That’s also where Wendy went, and she’s driven by a passion for food and a commitment to equitable care.

And I figured I would read a couple reviews, Tila, of what your patients have to say about you.

1:45
You have amazing reviews.

So here’s just a couple.

So one said I had no plans to work with a dietitian because I was worried about feeling shame around my diagnosis as well as slipping back into disordered eating practices and ridiculous exercise habits.

They say they love working with you, you’ve set some really small and attainable goals and they’re hoping that those will have a great impact on their A1C in three months.

2:08
And they said we’re not cutting out foods.

We are looking at all facets of life, sleep, stress and what medications they’re taking, perimenopause.

And it was made absolutely clear to me that my pre diabetes is not my fault.

I feel so positive after my meeting with Tila and look forward to working with her again.

2:25
So that’s one.

I loved that one.

And then another person said, they really love your gradual approach.

You don’t make them feel overwhelmed with too much information and too little time.

So Tila is a great dietitian to work with and perfect for this episode.

Welcome to the podcast, Tila.

2:41
Thank you so much, I’m so excited to be here instead of just listening.

Well, thanks for tuning in when you can.

So to get started, why is it crucial for people with diabetes to be mindful of their beverage choices?

2:57
Yes, this is a great question.

So with diabetes, as we know, it’s important to be mindful of the carbohydrates we’re consuming.

And often people are thinking of bread, pasta, greens, starchy foods as things that have carbohydrates.

But sugar is a form of carbohydrate and it’s often added to beverages to enhance their taste.

3:14
Due to the fact that beverages also don’t contain other components to help blood sugar stay stable, like protein, fiber or fat, they tend not to be filling and they’re easy to over consume.

It can be a big source of extra sugar AKA carbohydrates during the day.

Yes, absolutely.

3:32
And I want to start out by talking about coffee because that is something that so many people drink, and nobody’s trying to take coffee away from anybody, right?

But I do think there are some considerations for coffee.

So I’m wondering, how do you explain to your patients how coffee typically effects their blood sugar levels?

3:52
And is there anything that people with diabetes should consider when drinking coffee?

Yes.

So with caffeine it can reduce our sensitivity to insulin for those with pre diabetes or type 2 diabetes.

This is the underlying mechanism we’re trying to reverse.

Caffeine may also raise our stress hormones like cortisol, which is linked to higher blood sugar throughout the day.

4:14
That being said, modest amounts such as the recommended about 200 milligrams per day, maybe having caffeine with your meal can help this effect.

Also for habitual coffee drinkers, your daily morning cup isn’t really going to have that big of an impact.

4:29
That being said, with coffee and what can raise blood sugar, there’s a lot of things we add to our coffee which can raise it.

So that’s going to be adding syrups, adding sugar to it.

If we’re doing like heavy amounts of cream, which can make insulin have to work a little bit harder, those are things that are going to affect our blood sugar stability.

4:49
Also, too much caffeine can affect our sleep.

When our sleep is affected, we tend to eat extra during the day.

And not only eat extra, it’s hyper palatable foods.

We might consume more sugar and again, it can affect our insulin sensitivity if we’re lacking on sleep.

5:07
Yeah, I even noticed that within myself, if I don’t sleep, I have more cravings, I’m craving more sweet food.

So it’s so important to get a good night’s sleep.

And and yeah, maybe not having caffeine so late can be helpful for that.

Now, if someone is like, OK, that’s all great.

5:24
But like, what does that translate to at Starbucks?

Do you have any suggestions on an order that somebody can get at a place like Starbucks or things that they can put in their coffee that are not going to have a huge impact on their blood glucose?

5:42
Yeah, absolutely.

So with Starbucks, I like to keep in mind the traditional Grande drink, any Grande drink we have that has syrup, like a Grande vanilla latte, for example, Starbucks standard is 4 pumps of syrup.

Each pump is about 5 grams of carbohydrates.

5:58
I like to ask clients to start with having that amount and tell me what they think of the taste.

Often when they try two pumps instead of four, they say, oh, this was still sweet, it was still satisfying, and then they noticed that they’re not really craving that super sweet version of it.

6:15
I can recommend sometimes trying to do maybe one pump of the regular syrup and one pump of sugar free syrup as well if you really kind of need that sweetness in there also to kind of enhance the flavor.

We have other things we can add to coffee.

Sometimes cinnamon and cinnamon can actually help blood sugar levels later.

6:33
So sweetening coffee with cinnamon or vanilla extract.

We can try cocoa powder and make our own mochas at home.

We can also try stevia, which is a plant derived sugar substitute.

Sometimes I will add coconut milk or Trader Joe’s has a really good coconut milk Creamer that I like that’s really light but still gives it coffee.

6:53
A creamy texture when ordering beverage is too.

I like Americanos because those are espresso topped with water.

So we’re not getting a lot of that extra sugar from that milk filler and then we can add it back in in a form of a lighter splash.

So I always ask clients to try and experiment a little bit with the coffee order.

7:13
Those are such great tips.

I don’t even drink coffee and I’m like, oh, I want to try all these now.

You mentioned syrups a couple times, and I know that there’s a lot of confusion, I would say, around syrups, Like people think because it’s honey or it’s Maple syrup or it’s sugar in the raw that it has no impact or like somehow it’s better than white sugar.

7:38
Can you go into that a little bit?

Yes.

So honey, 100% pure Maple syrup.

These can offer minor nutritional benefits like trace minerals, antioxidants.

Ultimately they’re broken down into glucose and they’re going to raise blood sugar similarly.

7:53
So I would not do a one to one swap and think our blood sugar is not going to rise.

So I would treat them like you would treat white sugar when flavoring the coffee and start with a lighter amount and seeing if that taste is still good to you but they’re going to affect it the same.

Yeah.

8:09
Thanks for clearing that up.

Now moving on to other beverages.

What are some common beverages that might contain hidden sugars?

And how can people identify those?

And maybe they’re not avoiding them completely, but maybe reducing them if that’s part of their overall health goals.

8:28
Like what are some of your tips on that?

Yeah, so lots of beverages that might contain hidden sugars, sport and energy drinks.

So these are our Gatorade red bowls, something for a pick me up.

They will add a lot of sugar back into them.

8:44
I’ve seen prepackaged like juices and smoothies like those Naked juices that can have upwards of 50 grams of carbohydrate.

Sweetened teas that we might order at a restaurant, Lemonade, ginger ale.

Obviously soda is not so much the hidden sugar.

9:00
Even alternative milks we may use can have a lot of sugar added into them.

So those nut milks, a lot of people are steering away from cow milk and want to try these alternative milks because they think they’re healthier.

But often times they’re kind of lacking the vitamins and minerals that cow’s milk may have and they have added sugars instead.

9:19
That being said, what’s great about all these drinks is they’re required to have nutrition labels.

So what we can do is check the nutrition label on the back and I asked people, let’s go down to the carbohydrate section and specifically look at the added sugar.

So what the added sugar is sugar added into processing, it’s part of the total carbohydrate content.

9:39
And then take a look at that label and see if it kind of meets what your nutrition goals are and use that to guide your choices.

And for someone who has no idea of like how many grams of added sugars or even carbs they can aim for, do you have any guidelines or recommendations there?

10:00
Yes.

So the recommendations for women is about less than 24g per day and for men it’s 40 grams per day.

What that translates to is 6 teaspoons for women and 10 teaspoons for men.

To put that into context, if we’re having Starbucks drink that has one pump of syrup, that’s about 5 grams, that’s going to be about a fifth of our goal during the day.

10:24
And that’s just with one pump.

So that’s where we can see it’s really easy to exceed added sugars with that.

So that’s the recommendation for added sugars.

If we are kind of looking at a drink as a whole, I would say almost treating it like a carbohydrate exchange serving, so maybe aiming for less than 15 grams of carbs for that drink.

10:42
Yeah, that’s a great idea.

OK.

So getting into juice, I feel like there’s a lot of misconception also about juice.

I want to talk about that and what your thoughts are like it’s juice, especially if it’s like naturally squeezed orange juice.

Does that not have an impact on blood glucose?

10:59
And then also as a follow up to that, like juices versus smoothies, can you get into the differences there too?

Yes.

While juice contains beneficial vitamins and minerals, that’s undisputed.

Juice on its own is going to raise blood sugar.

That’s why if someone’s experiencing hypoglycemia, one of the treatments is having some juice.

11:18
Juice not only lacks the fiber to slow down glucose absorption, it contains higher amounts of sugar than would be found in a piece of fruit.

So what this means is a cup of orange juice is going to be about 3 to four oranges.

We’re a lot more likely to have three to four oranges in juice than we are to sit there and eat three to four oranges.

11:36
I prefer smoothies because that just blends the fiber, it doesn’t remove it from the fruit.

And you can also add things to the smoothie to slow down our blood sugar response.

We can add protein like Greek yogurt.

We can do a protein powder.

We can add a fat like peanut butter or flaxseed to slow down the glucose absorption and then we can blend the fruit in there for the flavor.

11:56
Yeah, good tips.

OK, let’s get into diet drinks because there are diet drinks like Diet Coke, Diet Diet Everything these days.

Some people feel they taste the same, some people feel they don’t.

Should people with diabetes always be choosing diet drinks especially for these sodas?

12:15
Like what is your thoughts?

Yeah, that’s a really good question.

Diet sodas on their own are not going to raise blood sugar immediately, as sugar substitutes for its actual sugar are used to give them the sweet taste.

However, I don’t encourage liberal use of them.

There are animal studies showing that they can alter the diversity of the gut microbiome.

12:32
Additionally, there was a larger scale study that showed there’s still an increased risk of type 2 diabetes with the high consumption of diet drinks, and there is mixed evidence showing that frequent consumption of diet sodas can increase appetite and cravings, and it can also alter the glycemic response of the other foods we eat afterward.

12:49
All that to say though, if you are trying to make the switch, if you want to drink less soda, I would recommend starting with diet soda as a swab and then trying to reduce your intake of sodas overall from there.

So that means not making soda the main beverage of choice for your beverages and your choice of hydration during the day and trying seltzer flavored water other beverages I.

13:12
Love seltzer that’s like my my nightcap or I’ll order it when I go out.

It’s like the best.

Yeah.

And it feel like if you do, my drink of choice is like a seltzer.

And I’ll ask them to put it in a champagne glass.

Sometimes they’re like, no girl, you’re doing too much, but sometimes they will.

13:30
And then I’ll say, can you top it off with some pineapple juice?

And it feels like you’re drinking and you’re, but then you don’t have like the feeling sick after you drink alcohol.

You’re you’re staying hydrated.

So I think that’s a great tip.

Yeah, absolutely.

Waterloo has a rose flavored seltzer that is really really good.

13:49
OK, I got to try that.

OK, so alcohol kind of started talking about that a little bit.

A lot of people don’t realize how alcohol does impact blood glucose.

I think they don’t think it does.

14:05
So what are your thoughts on that?

And also, what should people with diabetes be aware of when choosing alcoholic beverages?

Yeah, that’s a really good question.

And something I like to always go over with my clients in the first session is, are you drinking alcohol?

Just so I can explain this to them.

14:22
So alcohol inhibits the liver from releasing glucose to raise blood sugar levels.

The liver is, you know, releasing blood sugar when it starts dropping to make sure we maintain the energy levels we need to function and to make sure our brain is having enough.

Because alcohol is like technically a toxin, our liver is going to focus strictly on metabolizing alcohol and not release glucose.

14:44
This can mean our blood sugar levels can drop and they could drop hours later after having alcohol.

It can be especially dangerous if we’re on insulin therapies or using sulfon areas.

So for people who are on those medications who do run the risk of going hypoglycemic, I always, you know, tell them make sure if you are drinking, try and have a drink with alongside food.

15:08
Don’t drink on an empty stomach.

Also, make sure there’s someone who knows that you have diabetes and that knows what to do in case of a low.

That would mean carrying glucose tabs on you and looking out for the symptoms of low blood sugar.

That could be slurred speech, drowsiness, confusion.

15:25
And this is especially dangerous because these can be confused with having a buzz and with the regular effects of drinking.

So making sure there’s someone that knows what to look for, maybe they can see your CGM readings in case that kind of lack of coordination does start happening.

15:41
This doesn’t mean we can’t ever enjoy alcohol.

I say, you know, one to two drinks over the course of a couple hours, making sure I have a meal that has that protein, fat and fiber.

And it’s also cheaper to just nurse our drinks for longer now.

So, you know, that’s the benefit too.

Recession.

Yeah, those are amazing tips.

15:59
I’m also curious your thoughts on like the things that we put in the drinks, right?

Because oftentimes it’s not just alcohol, but you’re adding the syrups and all these other things.

So it kind of has like many different possible effects.

What do you recommend around that and like kind of the things people add to the drinks?

16:18
Yeah, so on the other side of the coin, while I’m more concerned about the lows, too much sugar and alcohol can also negatively impact blood sugar.

It can raise it.

So a lot of these flavored drinks we’re having, you know, daiquiris, pina colada as a vodka cranberry, this is a lot of added sugar to the drink.

Again, maybe upwards of 304050 grams.

16:36
So you know, if we’re having alcohol, I recommend trying trying a light beer, having some wine.

There’s also hard seltzers like White Claws, high noons that have a low carbohydrate content.

If you just do want to enjoy something alongside others, you can try having your spirit mixed with seltzer and maybe just a splash of that juice versus having the juice be the base.

16:58
Or maybe a Bloody Mary with brunch that is based from tomato juice.

And then also I like non alcoholic spirits.

Zen beers are more and more becoming popular.

There’s Athletic Brewing as a brand I really like.

They make a light IPA.

Ritual is like a non alcoholic spirit that I find is really tasty and really makes me feel like I’m having a cocktail but I’m just not in the mood for alcohol and its effects the next day.

17:23
Yeah, I love it and I’m so happy that they are coming out with more non alcoholic stuff because I yeah, also just as I get older, I just can’t even tolerate it anymore.

I don’t have many days to to cover, Yeah.

17:40
I’m just like, this feels like poison, but everyone’s different and like, I don’t want to yuck anyone’s Yum because I know that there’s like Wendy, she loves drinking and like, I don’t think it makes her feel as bad.

So I think it’s just figuring out what works for you, your health goals, all of those different things.

17:58
I was also going to add, there was a brand of alcohol that it tasted pretty good.

I gave it to my mother-in-law.

It’s called Fit Vine, I believe, and it’s was created by somebody, I believe with type 1 diabetes.

So it does have like a lower carbohydrate content and it is a wine and you can find it at places like Sprouts.

18:17
So check that out if you’re looking for a wine with lower sugar.

OK, so we’re going to kind of start to wrap up the conversation and I want to talk about practical tips that people can really take home starting from today.

So what are some tips for people with diabetes to enjoy their favorite beverages while keeping their blood sugar levels at Target?

18:39
Just anything general that you can share.

Yeah.

So if you’re someone that you know, really has to have your soda daily, I recommend trying changing the size.

So that can mean going from a 12 ounce can to an 8 oz can, alternating it with water.

18:54
Again, having that drink alongside a meal that has protein, fiber and fat to slow down that glucose absorption.

The timing of the beverage can help as well.

So we tend to be more active earlier in the day, throughout the day.

So rather than having it at night before we’re going to bed, having it a little bit early and kind of timing it with if we know we can incorporate some movement later could be just right away things we could start tomorrow.

19:21
Also consider the amount of sugar your beverage has by reading the nutrition facts label on the back and factor it in into the amount of carbohydrate servings that maybe you and your dietitian decided is appropriate per meal.

But making sure you’re increasing your intake of non starchy veggies with meals so you’re still satiated and feel full.

19:38
Whatever your personal goals are.

Love that, and for people who are trying to stay hydrated but they don’t like water or they need some variety or they’re like 5 to 10 samples of specific drinks that you recommend that can still give that hydration but without it just being plain water.

19:59
Oh yeah, definitely trying iced tea or iced green tea with lemon, especially in the summertime if you’re a hot beverage drinker.

Hot tea and flavoring it with cinnamon and a splash of milk.

Try infusing your water not just with fruit, but I like cucumber and mint personally for that really refreshing beverage.

20:18
Having plain seltzer flavored seltzer, adding fresh grated ginger to give us more of that ginger ale like flavor.

You could do a small splash of juice again.

Seltzer with like a splash of cranberry juice and a lime feels like a fun cocktail.

20:34
We could try an 8 oz serving of whole milk or soy milk that’s going to have protein in it.

Trying the matcha powder mixed with the nut milk that we’re checking has less added sugar.

And I do like the alternate sodas that are out there on the market right now like Poppy or Ollipop.

20:50
They have probiotics.

They don’t really have enough like a supplement so don’t really drink them for that, but they have apple cider vinegar which can slow down blood sugar response and they’re just a more flavored bubbly drink then maybe plain seltzer and those usually come in at about 5 grams per beverage which is really reasonable.

21:07
Oh nice, I see those all over Instagram so and I’ve still never tried them so I definitely going to try the lollipop and I never heard that ginger tip that is brilliant.

I’m going to try that as well.

This was amazing, Tila, and I’m sure there are so many people who are listening who want to work with you.

21:25
So can you let the folks know how they can work with you as their dietitian?

Yes, absolutely.

So you can work with me by going to diabetesdigital.co and taking your quiz and then you would be matched with me.

I work with pre diabetes and diabetes.

21:41
I also work on people who are maybe looking to transition more into plant based diets.

I look forward to working with you.

I love it.

Thank you so much, Tila.

That was amazing.

Thank you so much, I was so happy to be here.

Thanks for joining us for today’s episode.

21:58
If you’re interested in nutrition counseling with one of our expert dietitians to help improve your pre diabetes or diabetes, visit us at diabetesdigital.co.

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22:17
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