Well here we are - the worst diet in US history - wall street journal:
Well, here we go with Wall Street Book Review today June 5, 2014 on a book by Nina Teicholz titled The Big Fat Surprise. The lead states The Worst Diet in US History..
Regarding this low fat diets and crusade about saturated fats was preventing heart disease! ” What was left, as Ms Teicholz adumbrates, was a monstrous thought: What if the crusade against cholesterol had fed the spread of obesity by encouraging a population to retreat from the very foods that would have satiated its hunger more efficiently than the hallowed grains and fruits and vegetables of the great dietary pyramid? What if the low fat mantra had driven a population into feeling constantly hungry? What if you were better off eating meat, eggs, and dairy rather than a diet bloated in carbs and vegetable oils?”
And my question is – why the explosion in type 2 disease since the 1960′s and no success treating it cheaply, easily, and simply. Most-many type 2 diabetics -30 years myself, finally got their mess under control by following a low carb diet , booting and controlling the grains and their products tightly,, with some dietary fats as well as using the Mediterranean diet approach?
jims - The "high fat diet causes high cholesterol which in turn causes heart disease" mantra started in the late '70's, about the same time as the rapid increase in obesity and T2D. It was also a time when Big Food adopted high fructose corn syrup into an overwhelming variety of high carb low fat processed foods.
In the meantime, our so-called "medical advocates" jumped on the low fat low cholesterol bandwagon and together with their Big Food/Big Pharma allies propogated this meme across our popular culture. The "kitchen sink clogged with grease and fat" metaphor was used to draw a false analogy with clogged cardiac arteries. The false message of a high fat, especially saturated fats, got permanently stamped on our collective cultural consciousness.
If that perspective had any merit, then the rates of obesity and T2D should have reversed some time in the '80's. But they didn't, instead those rates exploded. We as a society need to look at the cold hard facts and realize that alphabet soup "advocates" such as the ADA and the AHA may have misled us.
I adopted a high fat low carb diet two years ago. I lost weight and regained control of my diabetes. I felt thoroughly betrayed by those social advocates, my doctors included, that could have had a significant good effect on my health much earlier on in my diabetes history. They deceived me but I now wonder if they also wonder if they didn't deceive themselves.
Fat satiates. We've know this as a species since the dawn of time. Our bodies know this truth and confirm this reality every time we eat the fat it wants. The real lies in the ultra-high carb diet that we've been told is good for us. It's not!
Thanks for that. Most people won’t go behind the WSJ paywall. Your scanned version allowed me to read the article. It’s much as I suspected. Ancel Keys and his deliberate misleading 7 countries study was a massive lie that will not be easy to remove from our collective minds. I still find it hard to locate full fat yogurt in the grocery store. Two percent is the best I can do.
Terry: excellent: As a kid back in 50'6/60's got all that crap about margarine and how the poisoness transfat was better for your health.
The cartoon I like was the cartoon with the picture of the margarine section of the glass refrigerator in grocery stores loaded with packages of real butter and the caption says "margarine replacement- swap out!"
What a farce. No eggs, no butter bad for your health and now good for your health!
I'm right there with you Diabetic Dad! I was misdiagnosed with Type 2 for a year. When I first got the wrong Type 2 diagnosis....I was absolutely appalled. They gave me some Metformin. Told me to test once a day in the morning and they would see me in 6 months!!! By the time they finally realized I wasn't a type 2...I was already in DKA. Needless to say, when you are diagnosed as type 1....you get a whole lot more training about diabetes. I just don't get it. I realize that type 1 and type 2 ARE different....but why in the world aren't they giving type 2's training also!!?? Also, my Diabetes Educator, Endo, and dietician all scoffed at my ideas about low carb. I stayed with them for about 4 months before moving on to my new doctor. My A1C continued to rise with the adivce of the old Endo. Needless to say, I recently wrote each of them a letter which included my 5.1 A1C results and what I have been doing since I have left their practice. I hope, that at the very least, they read it and will perhaps take their blind-fold off to the fact, in my opinion, most diabetics would do much better on a low carb diet with limited amounts of starches, grains, and fruits....(I'm going to duck now before people started stoning me for my thoughts!).
Meeee....you are ahead of the game then if you are listening to what your body tells you about YOU instead of letting a dietician or someone else fill your head with are the "stereo-typical" norms that have been created. I'm glad you are getting re-tested for Celiac. I'm getting that process started myself.
Whooo hoooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Someone to back up what I'm finding to be true in my own life!!! THANK YOU JIM!!! I'm not completely off my rocker, as everyone seems to think, with my low carb...throw the food pyramid to the curb attitude!!! :-)
yes, what works for you is the important thing. Wheat works for me (lucky me!), as does a well rounded diet that includes all of the food groups. I do not indulge on sugared soft drinks, candy bars, or make cookies but that is because I don't want to get fat and I don't like to waste calories or money on unhealthy options. I don't have the time or the hunger to make cookies but if I did, I'd use my grannies recipes - LOL. If wheat is unhealthy for you, then for sure don't eat it. But the ADA, and the USDA do not "push" you to eat them. In fact they don't even offer the food pyramid as the nutrition model any longer. It's fine to criticize and share your trouble, but it's not fine to misrepresent the facts. Would you think they were okay and cut them some slack if they put almond coconut cookies for diabetics on the list?
Congrats on your A1c, I saw a different number in another reply. I get an excellent one also and still enjoy whole grain choices. Good luck with your celiac test, and enjoy your indulgences.
I don’t think wheat itself is as much the problem as is the fact that wheat is ground to a fine powder (flour, etc) in virtually every usage that exists for it. I am certain if I went out to a wheat field and ate a handful of wheat right out of the ground it would be pretty manageable to my blood sugar. When its already been ground down by a machine to make into a processes food, the machine has already broken it down and essentially done your stomachs job for you, so it absorbs super fast— which is probably not good for anyone… I consider “whole wheat” to be a misnomer for those reasons, anything that’s been ground into a powder is obviously no longer whole. I would agree that processed wheat products spike my blood sugar as fast as a regular soda would
I just downloaded and started reading "The Big Fat Surprise". Oh my goodness!! I am just appalled at how much as been swept under the rug!!! Politics and greed have shaped our current food pyramid. Combine politics and greed together and you get the biggest health crisis in history! Obesity, diabetes, cancer, ....hmmm....well maybe we wouldn't have all those things if they wouldn't have genetically modified our foods and stripped our foods of the natural fats that we need! Back in the 1800's people weren't keeling over from diabetes, cancer, and heart attacks...what were they eating? They weren't eating a lot of grains and veggies. Think about it....they could only grow those things for part of the year in most places. They sure weren't eating a lot of fruit in most places. The were eating good old meat because it was easily accessible. ARG!!
I feel conned and that I have been fed a "BIG FAT LIE" all my life. Eat low fat. Don't eat butter. Don't eat red meat. Ummm...my ancestors ate plenty of red meat and meat in general....they weren't all obese and dying from things like Betes and cancer. I walked through the grocery store earlier and wanted to tear down all the shelves of boxed CRAP that we have been led to believe is "ok" by the USDA, the media, our schools....it's everywhere.
Exactly my experience. Wheat seems to really put my suars into the hyper level. It also make me feel really unwell. I suspect something more complex is occuring that we know - immune system? antibodies? an unknown factor in wheat. Ive replaced wheat and rice with Quinoa. No elevations in BSL and I feel great.
Thanks Mark for adding your experience. I too, definitely, suspect there is more to it than we know. I'm just grateful to have figured it out! At least when we have knowledge about how are body is reacting to different things then we can make the changes necessary to live the best life possible.
The Ada makes my head spin. I’m really not sure they have it right at all so question what they say and continue to do what works best for you on any given day ,because what they don’t tell you is it dependes on which way the wind is blowing on that given day …lol everyday is different and I find I can eat the same thing every day insuline accordingly and crash two times a week and be fine the other 5 days . Just do the best you can
I've cut out all grain products from my diet (including wheat and rice based grains) for the past 8 months or more now. My A1C has dropped a whole percentage point on average and it was actually considered a "good" A1c before doing so.
I do find that grains of any kind, whether slices of bread with a sandwich, a tortilla, or a bowl of rice will not only shoot my BG high, but keep it there for the afternoon. I'd been a pumper for over 12 years and bolused accordingly, but still could not avoid such highs after a meal very easily. I also found that the highs experienced after eating grains keep your BG higher for longer than other more simple sugars such as fruit juice (haven't had soda for years, so can't comment on that). I've found that if I drink a glass of juice and bolus for it, it will get back to normal rather quickly with a small spike in BG, but if I were to have the same number of carbs in pieces of bread, there's a good chance I'd be high the rest of the afternoon, even after bolusing with Novolog.
I too am bothered that most large medical organizations officially push eating a "healthy" amount of grains - which I would question are even healthy for non-diabetics. I don't think this is to intentionally hurt people, I think it's just a bit of ignorance and heavily influenced by the Western diet and its obsession with carbohydrates. Nonetheless, I think as more non-diabetics start to realize that they are eating too many carbohydrates, especially in the form of grains, this shift in mentality will help diabetics reduce their intake of carbs and magically they'll start feeling better. (Cause if you haven't tried a low-carb diet as a T1 Diabetic, it's quite magical and even scary the first few days as you frantically have to lower your basal dosages to prevent an increase in hypos).
