5 Diabetes-Friendly Recipes to Make you Thankful for Thanksgiving

Ever wish you could just take the day off from diabetes? Especially a holiday like Thanksgiving? The smorgasbord of carb-heavy food is enough to make any person with diabetes run screaming from the table in pure frustration, and I wouldn’t blame you at all if you did.

Instead of screaming in frustration, what if you had some diabetes-friendly Thanksgiving recipes for side dishes (and pie!) to add to your table? If that sounds better than screaming, today’s your day. 🙂

It’s not the turkey, it’s the trimmings

Before we get to those sides, here’s a bit of good news: just like other meats, turkey contains no carbs, so it’s not going to raise your blood sugar. You can eat as much as you can hold without worrying about diabetes.

It’s all those trimmings that will trip you up. Most traditional Thanksgiving side dishes start off as carbs, and then we add even more sugar to them to dress them up. Think about sweet potato casserole: sweet potatoes naturally contain carbs, but when we melt marshmallows on top, now we have a serious sugar load to deal with. Other Thanksgiving sides like cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry relish are heavy on carbs too.

So, what’s a person with diabetes to do?

Diabetes-friendly Thanksgiving side dishes

I’ve rounded up a bunch of diabetes-friendly Thanksgiving recipes from my Registered Dietitian Nutritionist friends. They have minimal added sugar, so they don’t have excessive carbohydrate counts. I hope you enjoy adding them to your Thanksgiving table:

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pistachios and Pomegranate from Kaitlin Williams Eckstein
Simple Orange Cinnamon Acorn Squash Rings from Melissa Traub
Carrot Salad with Dried Cranberries from Katherine Kastner
Harvest Kale Salad with Pumpkin Seed Oil Dressing from Kara Lydon

And we can’t have Thanksgiving without the pumpkin pie:

Healthy Pumpkin Pie from Klara Knezevic

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours

I hope your Thanksgiving turns out just right, no matter what you eat and no matter who you spend your holiday with. Happy Thanksgiving from me to you. 🙂

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Julie Cunningham is a Registered Dietitian and Certified Diabetes Care & Education Specialist. She believes food is the foundation of good health, and that our culture of obsession about body size is damaging to health, happiness, and productivity in far too many people. When not talking or writing about food and health, she can be found in the the mountains of western NC, where she lives with her family and four legged friends.

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