7 Healthier Pasta Tips for People With Type 2 Diabetes

If you’re living with type 2 diabetes, you may have heard that pasta is something you need to avoid. But if you love this comfort food and are willing to make a handful of tweaks to your dish, saying goodbye to this feel-good fare may not be necessary.

Though it’s higher in carbohydrates than some other foods, pasta can fit into a healthy meal plan for someone with diabetes, says South Carolina–based Toby Smithson, RDN, CDCES, senior manager of nutrition and wellness for the American Diabetes Association. You simply need to watch your portion sizes and prepare this dish mindfully to help keep your blood sugar, weight, and overall health and nutrition on track.

1. Choose Whole-Grain (or Bean) Pasta

One easy way to make your pasta dish more nutritious is to swap out traditional noodles for a higher-fiber variety. “Whole-grain pasta can be a great option because it offers more fiber, which can help blunt blood sugar spikes,” says Smithson.

2. Make Vegetables the Star of Your Bowl

To make your pasta bowl more diabetes-friendly, add color from the produce aisle.

Centering your pasta dish around nonstarchy, naturally low-calorie vegetables can easily increase the amount of vitamins and minerals on your plate, says Smithson.

“Nonstarchy vegetables are [also] high in fiber and have few carbohydrates, which means [a lesser] effect on blood sugar,” says Anderson-Haynes. She recommends filling roughly half of your plate or bowl with options like kale, collard greens, arugula, broccoli, asparagus, cucumber, spinach, carrots, or mushrooms.

3. Swap Creamy Sauce for an Oil- or Tomato-Based Sauce

Like other “white” foods worth swapping out of your diet (white bread, white rice, and yes, white pasta), ditch white sauce when preparing a more diabetes-friendly meal.

Smithson suggests choosing sauces with an olive oil and fresh garlic base, both of which offer potential heart-health benefits.

Red pasta sauces like marinara or classic tomato are other great options, “as they are lower in overall fat and calories” than cream-based sauces, says Jana Mowrer, RDN, CDCES, a nutritionist in private practice based in Fresno, California. Just stick to a one-half- to three-quarter-cup serving size, she adds.

When buying a packaged red sauce, choose a jar that contains no added sugar and, ideally, no more than 10 grams (g) of carbohydrates and 400 milligrams (mg) of sodium per half-cup serving, says Mowrer.

4. Experiment With Vegetable Noodles

If you can’t handle wheat, or you’d like to slash the carbohydrate content of your pasta dish even more, try crafting noodles out of vegetables. If you don’t have a spiralizer or mandoline — two kitchen tools used to spiralize produce by hand — you can use a vegetable peeler. Simply place the peeled vegetable strips in boiling water for 20 seconds, and then transfer the “noodles” into a bowl of ice, says Smithson. “For ease of preparation, it’s fine to purchase spiralized vegetable noodles,” she adds.

As long as they’re not made from squash or sweet potatoes, which are starchy, spirals made from vegetables will be your lowest-carbohydrate option, says Smithson. Plus, vegetable noodles are typically lower in calories and rich in vitamins and minerals.

Bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, and beets make for other good low-carb vegetable noodle options.

5. Practice Portion Control

Being mindful about portion sizes is key to enjoying pasta when you’re managing type 2 diabetes. “The goal is to keep blood sugar levels from spiking too high,” says Mowrer.

6. Feature a Lean Protein

By combining a protein source with a carb-heavy dish like pasta, you can avoid a rapid blood sugar spike (and subsequent crash), because protein is slower to digest than carbohydrates, says Smithson. Plus, adding protein makes your pasta more satisfying, which may prevent you from overloading your plate with carbohydrates, says Anderson-Haynes.

7. Go Easy on the Cheese

While people with diabetes don’t need to say goodbye to cheese, moderation and choosing the right type are two keys to keeping your bowl of pasta healthy.

A single serving of cheese is only 1 ounce (oz), or roughly the length of your thumb from tip to base. Try your best to stick to this thumb-sized serving, says Mowrer.