Speaker: Why is portion size important?

Kathy Reily: Portion size is very important in managing nutrition for diabetes because, really we like to say that you can still eat just about anything that you have eaten either before your diagnosis or during the years of managing diabetes. Our focus is not to take away everything that you eat, but to just reduce the portion size, so that you can still eat some of the same foods, but just smaller amounts. Over the years, as our obesity epidemic has grown and the incidence of diabetes has increased in the United States, we do know that portion sizes have increased as well. So we are generally recommending eating some of same foods, many of same foods, but just reducing the total amount and at the same time you will be reducing calories and leavening carbohydrate, so it should have a positive affect on the blood sugar.