6 Colorful Diabetes-Fighting Foods

• By Chris Iliades, MD | Medically reviewed by Lindsey Marcellin, MD, MPH 

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  If you have diabetes, it’s time to expand your diet vocabulary. Lesson one: anthocyanins. Anthocyanins are powerful antioxidants — you can easily spot foods that have them because they impart deep colors like red, purple, and blue. And their role in a smart diabetic diet is becoming crystal clear. New research shows that highly pigmented, anthocyanin-containing foods can help slow the rate of blood sugar production and help keep glucose levels on an even keel. Here are six of the tastiest choices to add to your shopping list.
  

  Tart Cherries

  Anthocyanins give cherries their cheery, deep-red color. Research from the University of Michigan has found that eating a cup and a half of frozen cherries can increase your antioxidant activity for about 12 hours, while previous studies showed that cherries may reduce the type of belly fat linked to type 2 diabetes and lower your risk for heart disease, making them a fab fruit for diabetics. When you hit the supermarket, keep in mind that experts suggest fresh cherries may be even better for you — frozen cherries can lose about 50 percent of their anthocyanin
  

  Black Beans

  The American Diabetes Association recommends including beans in your diabetic diet because they are high in fiber — which helps keep blood sugar levels stable — and high in protein. And the antioxidants in beans are just one more healthy reason to make them part of your meals. The beans highest in antioxidants also have the richest hues from anthocyanin pigments, especially black beans. These dark beans also contain polyphenols, which prevent cholesterol from forming plaque and clogging blood vessels, and in turn decrease your risk for diabetes-related blood vessel inflammation and heart disease.
  

  Boysenberries

  Anthocyanins are responsible for the lush purple color of boysenberries, loganberries, and all the other dark blackberries. That means these berries are great at absorbing damage-causingfree radicals and good for diabetes. Free radical zapping can be measured with a calculation called oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC). Studies show that the ORAC numbers for boysenberries and other members of the blackberry family are among the highest of any fruits tested, and according to the Defeat Diabetes Foundation, eating foods with high ORAC scores can raise the antioxidants in your blood by 25 percent. Blackberry varieties are also high in vitamin C and fiber — and are low in calories
  

  Blueberries

  Being blue is happy news when it comes to berries, according to a recent study done at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., and published in the Journal of Nutrition. Researchers found that people who were overweight and had insulin resistance, a condition that usually precedes diabetes, improved their insulin sensitivity and decreased their risk of getting type 2 diabetes by eating blueberry smoothies for six weeks. Those are results almost anyone could live with, so fire up that blender!
  

  Sweet Potatoes

  Purple-skinned sweet potatoes tend to be high in healthy anthocyanins. But even the more typical orange-skinned North American sweet potato packs a nutritional punch. A diabetic diet powerhouse, sweet potatoes have fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants, and are a low-glycemic food, meaning they release sugar slowly into your bloodstream. Researchers at the North Carolina State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences also identified a protein in the average sweet potato that’s similar to Caiapo, a dietary supplement that's made from the peel of white-skinned sweet potatoes found in Japan. Caiapo has been used for many years to treat diabetes; some studies suggest this dietary supplement could be used instead of drugs to lower blood sugar and decrease insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes
  

  Blue Corn

  Another side dish plus free radical scavenger for your diabetic diet is blue corn. Blue corn is actually purple — in fact, the anthocyanins in this corn give it one of the deepest purple colors in all of nature. Testing shows that the levels of antioxidants in blue corn are even higher than those found in blueberries. Animal studies suggest that blue corn antioxidants help protect against obesity and diabetes. So the next time you’re craving tortilla chips, forget the white and yellow ones and favor the blue — just make sure they're baked, not fried
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  Tart Cherries