Oh gosh. Diet is little like religion. We have the high church which maintains a monopoly on dietary education. You can read my "roast" of the high church here (please any health professionals take this as a humorous chiding). But seriously there are many paths and everyone should be free to choose their path. And it is not all about diabetes. We must weigh a number of factors beyond being healthy, safe and enjoyable. Some people care about eating animals. Others want to eat sustainably.
My advice (of course in a list of 10) would be to:
- Listen to healthcare professionals but understand there are serious problems with their dietary advice
- If you can't have a useful conversation with your healthcare professional about nutrition don't waste your time arguing, find someone else you can work with
- Become a smart patient, give significant weight to well respected books and highly cited scientific articles, these are invaluable sources of information
- Learn to evaluate dietary advice objectively, there is significant contradictory advice, low carb/high carb, vegan/paleo etc.
- Beware the scam. No diet will cure you and if it seems based on "magic" you should probably run away
- You probably shouldn't call it a diet, it is really a lifestyle. If you can't keep it up forever in the long-term it won't be useful
- Learn to be a good cook. You will control what goes in your food, save money and be in control
- And spend extra money for better ingredients. Food is your medicine. If you cook and use good ingredients you can eat lobster and caviar at home for the same price as eating out
- Nobody eats themselves into having diabetes so don't ever believe you can eat your way out
- Get the "ground truth" about what to eat by talking to other people with diabetes, come to TuDiabetes