Do you have any other ideas? I am also a vegetarian but cannot live on tomatoes and avocadoes alone (it seems that potatoes are banned as well).

Those special foods for diabetics taste like cardboard and chalk.
R. Renz, by email

Your doctor seems to be very out of touch: for a start, you don’t need to avoid everything containing sugar. As a type 2 diabetic, your diet should be similar to that for anyone wanting to live healthily.

First, check how your weight compares with the ideal; type 2 diabetes can sometimes be caused by being too heavy, and as soon as you lose excess weight, blood sugar levels can improve. A healthy-eating weight-loss plan will be fine for your condition — as I said, you don’t need to do anything different from the way an overweight non-diabetic person would do things.

I’m generally not a fan of so-called wonder diets, but you could glean a lot of useful information from the GI (glycaemic index) diets, as these are all based around the impact that certain foods have on blood-sugar levels. We’d all be much better off by including more low or medium-GI foods and fewer high in our daily diet. As a taster, see the list below, which will help you begin to choose the right sort of foods. You wi ll notice that white and wholemeal bread appear on the high-GI list but they are still fine to eat, as the glycaemic response to a specific food will change according to what else it is eaten with, ie, the fat or protein content and size of the meal. So as long as you eat wholemeal or white bread as part of a meal — for instance, a lean protein sandwich such as hoummos and cucumber — the bread should not be a problem for your blood-sugar levels.

People with diabetes tend to have increased risk of heart disease, so it’s important to keep your diet generally healthy. Just make sure that as a vegetarian you don’t consume too much saturated fat from foods such as cheese or butter.

Finally, you don’t need diabetic products — they are expensive, don’t generally taste very good, and if eaten in excess, their sugar substitutes may lead to diarrhoea and tummy problems.
www.diabetes.org.uk

Low GI foods: apples, pears, peaches, grapefruits, plums, cherries, dried apricots; avocados; green, leafy vegetables, most other vegetables (but see below); lentils, beans; soya products.

Medium: grapes, oranges, fresh dates, mangoes, kiwi fruits; raw carrots, sweetcorn, peas, potatoes (apart from mashed); white and wholegrain pasta; porridge, oatmeal; whole-grain rye bread (including pumpernickel); brown and white rice.

High: bananas, watermelons, figs, dried dates, raisins; honey; sugar; chocolate; mashed potatoes, cooked carrots, squashes, parsnips, swede; white and wholemeal bread; rye-based crispbreads; couscous, ricecakes, wholegrain cereals (including bran flakes); popcorn.

Send your nutritional problems to jane.clarke@thetimes.co.uk or to Jane Clarke, times2, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT. Her replies cannot apply to individual cases and should be taken in a general context. Consult your GP with any health or specific conditions. Jane cannot enter into personal correspondence.