Diabetic Exchange Lists for weekly menu planning?
Registered Dietitians and other genuine experts, how useful is it to convert DGA "servings" into DEL "exchanges" (AKA Choose Your Foods "choices", CCHO diet)?
Example of why DEL "exchanges" seem more reliable than DGA "servings":
DGA recommends 4 fruit servings (AKA 4 "standard portion sizes", 2 "cup-equivalents") per day (in a 2000kcal/day diet), and fruit serving size is defined as a half-cup, except dry fruit is a quarter-cup. This mostly means that a fruit serving is 15g carb and 60kcal, except for caloric-density outliers such as raisins (31g carb & 120kcal per quarter-cup serving) and watermelon (7.4g carb & 30kcal per half-cup serving). DEL normalizes the outliers by having a broader range of serving sizes (ex: raisins SS=2tbsp=54kcal, watermelon SS=1.25c=57kcal).
Disclaimers: DEL normalizes quantity, but doesn't really address dietary quality/diversity. For example, eating 4 fruit exchanges per day doesn't address the need to "eat the rainbow" of fruit colors. Also, some DEL lists, such as Holzmeister's "Diabetes Carbohydrate & Fat Gram Guide", do a poor job of staying near category means (example: raisins are defined as 34g carb and 129kcal per 3 fruit exchanges).
For weekly menu planning, my idea is to use DEL to combine the best FBDGs (maybe Mediterranean-style DGA, Harvard AHEI, and Greger's Daily Dozen?). Possible fruit example:
-berries 7 exchanges/wk
-other fruit 21 exchanges/wk