If you’re planning on celebrating Diwali this year and live with diabetes, you can still enjoy the delicious foods on offer and join in with the celebrations.
Known as the festival of lights, Diwali is a great time to get together with friends and family and enjoy lots of tasty traditional dishes. If you are living with diabetes, you might find it helpful to plan what foods and drinks you will have in advance.
Diwali will be celebrated on Sunday, 8 November, 2026. And we’ve picked out some of our favourite flavourful and healthy recipes below for celebrating the festival of lights, so you can spend less time worrying about food and diabetes, and more time enjoying the fun.
We're also sharing some of our top tips for managing your diabetes during the festivities.
Diwali recipes
Baked mini spinach and onion bhaji with coriander dip
These mini spinach and onion bhajis would make the ideal snack or go perfectly alongside a homemade curry.
Shared by one of our supporters, these veggie samosas are a perfect addition to your celebrations. With no frying, or making the pastry from scratch, these are our easy and healthier version, perfect for any buffet.
A classic South Asian dessert, kheer pudding is super simple to make and boasts deliciously fragrant flavours. Add spices of your choice, such as nutmeg or cinnamon, to make it even more flavoursome.
Channa dahl would be the perfect staple dish for your festivities and lentils are a source of protein, iron and fibre. Nutritious and tasty, this recipe is a must-do.
Roasted cauliflower, paneer and chickpea curry
The crispiness of the spicy cauliflower against the freshness of the paneer is a winning combo in this delicious veggie curry. You can swap the chickpeas with beans of your choice or add in different veggies to mix things up.
Saag aloo (spinach and potatoes)
A classic Indian dish, saag aloo features potatoes cooked in fragrant spices and spinach to create a wonderfully delicious sidedish.
How to have a healthier Diwali
Throughout the day, it’s best to eat slowly-absorbed starchy foods that have a lower glycaemic index, such as fruit and vegetables, wholegrain basmati rice, chickpeas, beans and dhal.
These high fibre foods can help keep your blood sugar levels more stable during the celebrations, but be mindful of the portion sizes of carbohydrate. The total amount of carbohydrates you eat has the biggest effect on blood sugar levels.
Keep in mind, drinking alcohol interferes with your blood sugar levels and can make low blood sugar, also known as hypoglycaemia or hypos more likely.
If you’re eating more sweet foods than usual your blood sugar levels can rise, making you feel thirsty, tired and needing to wee more often. Watch out for these signs of high blood sugar levels. Very high or or persistently high blood sugar can make you feel thirsty, tired and needing to wee more often. So make sure you stay well hydrated on sugar free drinks.
You can also make some small changes to make traditional recipes healthier, such as:
- using vegetable oil instead of ghee
- using spices and herbs to replace salt
- adding extra vegetables to dishes, such as bhindi (okra) or aubergine to curries
- using wholemeal flour instead of white flour to make chapatti or thepla
- using a small portion of dried fruits or ripe bananas to sweeten the recipe instead
- replacing sugar with low or no calorie sweeteners.
If you adapt a recipe using sweeteners instead of sugar, check the sweetener brand to help you work out how much to use. Start with less and adjust gradually.
Try to keep an eye on portion sizes and experiment with making healthier versions of traditional dishes. For example, when making puddings and other sweet treats, you could reduce the amount of ghee or swap whole milk for semi-skimmed milk to reduce the calorie and saturated fat content.
Make a selection of salads such as avocado salad, tomato and onion salad or cucumber salad. Offer a street food experience with spicy soya sticks, chana masala chat, oat tikki and rajma tikki.
Popular flavours such as cardamom, cinnamon, rose water, saffron and nutmeg are great aromas in the kitchen and in your special occasion dishes. You can use these as much as you like as they will have no effect on your blood sugar, cholesterol or blood pressure.
If you monitor your sugar levels, don’t forget to check more during the festivities so you can spot changes in your blood sugar and stop them going too high or too low. Don’t worry too much if you have one or two high sugar readings. This shouldn’t affect your long-term diabetes management, but you should aim to avoid repeatedly having high readings.
The other important thing to remember is to stay active, as this will also help you to manage your blood sugar levels.
