Reading all your responses makes me so despondent for diabetics. In the UK they believe there are possibly 4 million with diabetes, and maybe 1 million are undiagnosed. This is costing the health service billions. So surely it is in the interests of the medical profession to get as informed as possible to ultimately reduce the numbers. But ... it is not in the interests of the drug companies who will lose billions if people become informed and use diet to put their diabetes in remission. So I think that perhaps drug companies put pressure on doctors to prescribe - and of course doctors do not have the time to give lifestyle advice, it is quicker to prescribe. But this is not moral or ethical.
My other point is that many people do not want to change their WOE and/or do not have the knowledge they need to make informed choices. This chap that I spoke to yesterday didn't have a clue, and didn't want to (or couldn't comprehend) consider a different WOE. "Potatoes are a big part of my diet, meat and two veg man, me". So what can you do with people like that? Well, I believe if doctors told diabetics that they are "carbohydrate-intolerant" (just as they tell coeliacs they are gluten-intolerant) and that eating carbs could ultimately kill them, perhaps more people would make the changes necessary. But then it comes back to Big Pharma again .....
Nannoo_bird, I think the challenge HCPs have is which NHS bankrupting epidemic they spend their personal "spare" time learning about. Their jobs don't routinely allow swathes of time to read, search the internet and do so many of the things we have, and how do they priorities diabetes over, high lipids, stress, back pain, mental illness, obesity, to name just a few.
I can't imagine after a crammed day of 10 minute appointments with largely disengaged, apathetic patients they just feel revved up for the challenge.
Make no mistake, but my health is mine, so I must take a good deal of responsibility to learn about how to manage it best, for me. Not all T2s need to fellow a strict diet. Some do manage on moderation, where perhaps their pre-diagnosis way of living was immoderate in dietary terms. Fair play to those to whom that applies.
It's terribly sad, but the words of the Endo still ring in my ears, "Most people don't want to change". How many times a day, day in and day out, would your beat your head against a brick wall until you had to?