The GoCoCo Table — the diabetic place to be

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Welcome to the rest of your table.

More than 1,200,000 people already use GoCoCo to find food they can eat. This is where that community gets a table — a magazine-shaped home for people living with type 2 diabetes and prediabetes, and for the people who cook beside them. Food is still pleasure here. Numbers are just information. And nobody reads a label alone.

No lectures. No shame. Unsubscribe any Tuesday.

Our columnists write what the pamphlet didn't say

Every piece in this magazine is written by one of three editors — a clinical eye, a patient in his first ninety days, and the woman who cooks for a man with a new diagnosis. Different chairs at the same table. One rule for all three: every claim carries its source.

The Medical Eye

The Science of the Plate

by Julie Ruelle, RD

Why the same thirty grams of carbohydrate can behave like two different foods.

A slice of white bread and a bowl of lentils can carry similar carbohydrate counts and still write completely different stories on a glucose meter. The difference is mostly fiber, and it is worth understanding once, calmly, because it will quietly reorganize your grocery cart. Fiber slows the rate at which carbohydrate is digested and absorbed, which flattens the rise in blood glucose after a meal (ADA). The lentils arrive gradually. The white bread arrives all at once.

This is why "avoid sugar" is incomplete advice. Refined starches — white bread, white rice, many breakfast cereals — behave much like sugar once digestion begins. What protects you is not the absence of sweetness; it is the presence of structure: intact grains, skins, seeds, beans. A practical starting point is the plate method — half the plate non-starchy vegetables, a quarter protein, a quarter carbohydrate, ideally the fibrous kind (ADA).

One more honest thing: responses vary from person to person, and your meter will teach you your own patterns better than any column can. Bring what you learn to your care team — that conversation is where general science becomes your plan.

Cited · ADA Standards of Care · reviewed before publication

The Co-Founder

Why We Built This

by Bertrand Amaraggi

The gap between the front of the box and the back of it.

Walk any cereal aisle and count the boxes that call themselves healthy. Now turn them over and read the back. That gap — between what the front of a package promises and what its ingredient list actually does — is why GoCoCo exists. Nobody should need a chemistry degree to buy breakfast, least of all someone who just left a doctor's office with a diagnosis and a pamphlet.

We built GoCoCo to do one job: help people with diabetes or excess weight reduce ultra-processed foods. Not with rules, not with guilt — with information at the exact moment it is useful. You scan a product at the shelf and get a score before it is in your cart. You photograph your plate and see what is actually on it. The work happens in the store and in the kitchen, in seconds, where the decisions really get made.

What I did not expect when we started was the letters. People write to tell us the scanner caught something they had trusted for years, or that the first week after diagnosis felt survivable because the shelf finally made sense. More than 1,200,000 people now use GoCoCo to find food they can eat. This page is the next step — a table where that community can sit down together. Pull up a chair.

The mission, plainly · the science desk reviews every claim

A diary, not advice · his plan is his care team's

The Everyday

The Family Table

by Lindsay Rubino

One pot, two diets, and the rice question every family answers.

The rice question arrives at almost every table eventually. In the families we hear from, rice — or tortillas, or bread — is not a side dish; it is the center of gravity, the recipe a grandmother taught and a mother passed on. A diagnosis lands in the middle of that inheritance, and the pamphlet from the clinic has nothing to say about it. The answer gets worked out at the stove, the way families work everything out.

The families who make it work rarely banish the staple. They change its proportions — a smaller mound, more vegetables folded through, beans doing more of the work they have always quietly done. Some blend riced cauliflower into the pot and report that nobody files a complaint. The point is never a separate, sadder plate for one person while everyone else eats like before. One pot. One table. Adjusted, not divided.

The harder recipe is the talking. "Should you be eating that?" is a sentence that has never once helped anyone. What helps, people tell us again and again: stocking the kitchen so the easy choice is a good one, walking together after dinner, and letting the numbers belong to the person they measure. Cooking with love and policing with it are not the same act. The families at ease have learned to keep the first and drop the second.

The family angle · support without policing

The community already exists. Hear it.

These are real App Store reviews of GoCoCo, reprinted exactly as the official site displays them. The Table did not have to invent its community — it has been eating better for years.

Love this helps me control my diabetes. Things I thought were healthy were actually not

mrsjrobins · App Store · ★★★★★ · Jan 18, 2026

I use it while grocery shopping and at home to scan products and ensure they're safe for me to eat while keeping my blood sugar levels in check.

Reason4rob · App Store · ★★★★★ · Apr 10, 2025

This app consistently helps me understand food content so that I can control my diabetes. A huge help!

Thomas S Redmond · App Store · ★★★★★ · May 25, 2026

This app is great in helping me in deciding the foods l can eat and those I should avoid

Oaklandsraider · App Store · ★★★★★ · Jun 24, 2026

This month's market page

Real shelves, real stores, no brand worship — categories you can find in any aisle, scored the way the GoCoCo scanner scores them. The verdicts are the editors'.

Scanning a product barcode with the GoCoCo app, and the score it returns on the shelf — At the shelf — a barcode, scanned; a score, returned. This is where the picks below come from.

Walmart

Plain Greek yogurt

instead of fruit-on-the-bottom cups

"Protein first thing in the morning; add your own berries and the sugar math changes entirely." — Julie

9/10

Kroger

100% whole-grain bread, 3g+ fiber a slice

instead of "wheat" bread with 1g

"Fiber is the number to read. The word 'wheat' on the front is decoration." — Julie

8/10

Costco

Frozen riced cauliflower

folded into a full pot of white rice

"Half the carbs of a rice night without touching the ritual. My pot, my rules." — Lindsay

9/10

Target

Unsalted mixed nuts

instead of the office vending machine

"The three o'clock snack that doesn't ask my meter for forgiveness." — Laura

8/10

Aldi

Nut butter, no added sugar

instead of the one with a dessert label

"Two ingredients. A good label reads like a haiku." — Julie

8/10

Walmart

Unsweetened sparkling water

instead of soda, diet or otherwise

"The soda shape and the soda sound, without the soda math." — Laura

9/10

Three dinners worth setting the table for

Composed for flavor first, carbohydrate awareness second — because a meal you don't enjoy is a meal plan you won't keep. Per-serving carbohydrate estimates shown; your portions and your meter will refine them.

A photographed meal with each food named by the GoCoCo app: egg, tomatoes, corn and more — At the plate — one photograph, every food named. The app reads the meal; the Table sets it.

Tuesday

Sheet-pan salmon with charred broccoli & lemon

One pan, twenty minutes, and the kind of dinner that makes the week feel handled. Olive oil, garlic, a proper amount of lemon.

14g carbs est. RD reviewed

Thursday

White-bean & kale soup with parmesan broth

Beans bring the fiber that slows the carbohydrate down — the rare dish that is both comfort food and good counsel.

28g carbs est. RD reviewed

Saturday

Chicken fajita bowl on cilantro-lime cauliflower rice

Peppers, onions, proper seasoning, and Lindsay's one-pot philosophy: the whole family eats this one, no separate plates.

22g carbs est. RD reviewed

The questions everyone asks in week one

Sent in by readers, answered with sources. Medical questions in this community are always answered this way — by the clinical desk, in writing, with citations. Never by the crowd.

Q.01Is fruit off-limits now?

No — and this may be the most common misunderstanding of the first month. Whole fruit arrives with fiber, water, and structure, which slow the absorption of its sugars; fruit juice arrives without them, which is why juice behaves more like soda than like an orange. Berries in particular pair modest carbohydrate with high fiber, which is why they appear so often on diabetes-friendly menus (ADA)¹.

Portion still matters — a banana is not a problem, five bananas are a pattern — but the instinct to fear the fruit bowl is one you can retire. Your meter, checked after a serving of the fruit you actually love, will tell you more than any list. Bring the pattern to your care team.

— Julie Ruelle, RD

Q.02What does "ultra-processed" actually mean?

It is not a synonym for "junk food," though the two often overlap. Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations — products assembled from refined ingredients and additives you would not find in a home kitchen, engineered for shelf life and intense palatability. Research has associated diets high in ultra-processed foods with higher risk of type 2 diabetes and poorer metabolic outcomes (CDC)².

The practical cue is the ingredient list, not the front of the package: the longer the list and the harder it is to pronounce, the more processed the product tends to be. This is exactly what the GoCoCo scanner estimates on a shelf — but your own eye, trained on labels for two weeks, becomes remarkably good at it too.

— Julie Ruelle, RD

Q.03Do I need to count every carb?

For many people with type 2 diabetes who are not on insulin, strict gram-counting is not required — what matters more is awareness and consistency: knowing which foods carry carbohydrate, keeping portions steady, and spacing them through the day. The plate method exists precisely so that eating well doesn't demand arithmetic at every meal (ADA)³.

Some people do need closer counting — it depends on your medications and your plan. That is a conversation for your care team, and the honest answer to most "do I have to…" questions in week one is: ask them, and let this community handle the groceries in the meantime.

— Julie Ruelle, RD

1, 3 — American Diabetes Association, Standards of Care & nutrition consensus guidance. 2 — CDC diabetes & nutrition resources; observational research on ultra-processed dietary patterns.
Educational content, not medical advice. Diagnosis, medication, and targets belong to your care team.

The GoCoCo glucose screen: readings over a day shown against a target range — Numbers as information, not verdicts — a day of readings against a target range, in the app.

You just got the news.Welcome to the rest of your table.

Our columnists write what the pamphlet didn't say

The Science of the Plate

Why We Built This

The Family Table

GoCoCo was developed with registered dietitians — and this magazine holds itself to their bar.

The community already exists. Hear it.

This month's market page

Three dinners worth setting the table for

The questions everyone asks in week one

You just got the news.
Welcome to the rest of your table.