You know that eating healthy meals is an important part of taking care of your diabetes. However, in your hectic life it's all too easy to delay or skip a meal, grab a meal by driving through a fast food restaurant or choose a quick-to-eat healthy snack at a convenience store. If this is the food trap you're in, you'll be pleased to know there's a group of products, called meal replacements that can come to your rescue. Some, in fact, are designed for people with diabetes.

What are meal replacements?
Meal replacements, or meal solutions, are in the form of drinks, shakes, bars or prepackaged easy-to-fix meals. They have two goals. One is to get the job of eating done quickly and easily-a no muss, no fuss approach. Two is to provide you with more nutritious options than those less-than-healthy foods from fast food restaurants and convenience stores.

Meal Solutions-The Advantages
Two well known diabetes nutrition educators, Anne Daly MS, RD, BC-ADM, CDE, Director of Diabetes Education at Springfield Diabetes & Endocrine Center and Linda Delahanty, MS, RD, Chief Dietitian and Director of Nutrition and Behavioral Research at Massachusetts General Hospital's Diabetes Center; suggest meal solutions to the people they counsel. Bottom line states Delahanty, "they make the job of eating a no brainer." Daly adds "they put people on auto pilot with food choices."

These two experts agree that meal solutions have the following list of advantages:

• Convenient to carry
• Limit decisions about what to eat
• Provide better and more nutrition than many food choices in fast food restaurants or convenience markets because many products have added vitamins and minerals
• Help you eat more regularly because the foods are with you
• Require no meal preparation for the "I hate to cook crowd"
• Save time and effort
• Portion controlled
• Limits the amount and variety of food in front of you (this has been shown to limit the amount you eat)
• Products that are sweet satisfy a sweet tooth

which slows down the digestion of carbohydrates. They are called resistant starches-meaning the carbohydrate resists being broken down by the body into glucose. This ingredient can delay or limit how high your blood glucose level rises after you eat the food.

Other meal solutions are so-called "sugar-free." This usually means they contain other types of carbohydrate that don't raise blood glucose as fast as common carbohydrates. These ingredients are in a category of ingredients called sugar alcohols or polyols. They contain about half the amount of carbohydrate at 2 calories per gram rather than 4 calories per gram. These can offer a calorie and carbohydrate savings and can raise blood glucose less.

How to Fit In Meal Solutions
Meal solution products can fit into your eating plan in a variety of ways. You might choose to use one of the bars as a snack one or two times a day. You keep these with you so they are at-the-ready. You may find that this is just what you need to prevent you from eating a less healthy snack and from being so hungry before your next meal that you overeat. Or perhaps you are on the run in the morning and have a hard time fitting in breakfast. Try a shake with a piece of fruit or a few crackers and peanut butter as you drive or take the bus to work.

Both Daly and Delahanty suggest that people use these products to replace one or two meals and snacks a day when you want to lose weight and/or improve your blood glucose control and health. Daly adds, "it's just the jump start some people need and then they are on their way." Both dietitians then suggest that for one meal a day you use a portion controlled meal such as a frozen low calorie entrée you buy in the supermarket with the addition of 2 cups of non-starchy vegetables.

Meal Solutions-The Research
Several studies have shown that meal solutions can help people with diabetes lose weight and control blood glucose levels. In fact, some of these products have and are being used in large diabetes research studies. Delahanty, who has been involved in several large National Institutes of Health diabetes research studies says, "meal solution products were used successfully in the intensive lifestyle group of the Diabetes Prevention Program. We learned that they helped people stay on track and limit their food choices."

With these learnings, Delahanty notes that "meal solution products are being used in the recently launched LOOKAHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) study (www.lookaheadstudy.org). This large and lengthy study is designed to evaluate the long-term health effects (especially heart attacks and strokes) of weight loss in 5,000 people aged 55 to 75 with type 2 who are overweight. Half of the people will be in the study group. They will receive lifestyle education to help them lose 10 percent of their body weight. This group will use meal replacements."