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     Title: What Is an Usa Food Exchange
Categories: Diabetic, Info/help
     Yield: 1 info/help


 What is an USA Food Exchange?

 It's like trading  5 pennies for 1 nickel or 10 dime for a dollar
 bill. Right!  Okay.  In food exchanges, you may exchanges one
 measurement or amount of food for another food in the same group, ie,
 if by change, such as I do...I have a 1/2 grapefruit every
 morning...let's say I ran out! I would look over the fruit exchange
 list to see what was there that I could have from the exchange group
 of the fruit list...then I could choose something from the fruit
 exchange.. Ah! Ha! I see I can sneak one of Bert's orange's. (2 1/2"
 across)= 1/2 cup fresh fruit.

 The Food Exchange System is based on six exchanges lists: Starch/bread
 exchange, meat, vegetables, fruits, milk, and fats.  There is also
 some special lists.  Foods are grouped within each list on the basis
 of similar amounts of carbohydrate, protein, and fat.  For example,
 one fruit exchange is CHO: 15g, PRO: 0g; FAT: 0g; CAL: 60;  This
 equivalent to 1/2 cup of grapefruit juice, but only a 1/3 cup of
 prune juice because prune juice has more sugar then grapefruit juice.
 Keep in mind that there will be some surprises.  Corn, for example,
 is a vegetable, but it appears on the starch/bread list.  That is
 because corn is starchy and its carbohydrate value is much closer to
 bread then to most vegetables. Foods from the starch/bread list is
 sometimes called STARCH EXCHANGE and sometimes called the  BREAD
 EXCHANGE---but they mean the same thing.

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