So are you saying historically, type ones feared unstable blood sugar and so limited their diet in the absence of modern dosing techniques.....?
it makes sense....
Yes. Back in the pre-historic days when I was diagnosed it was not possible to measure the bg at home. Even at the hospital it could take hours to get the result. And the 'therapy' you had to follow was strict adherence to a fixed intake of a daily fixed amount of insulin units no matter what you did. And all you ate during the day was put on a scale and scrutinized down to the last gram before you could start eating anything. So yep, I had aka the same breakfast day in and day out for more than 15 years.
And I bet you many diabetics of my generation can still remember precisely the time for each daily food intake, what it was supposed to be, how many grams of food in total and how many grams of carbs it contained. You essentially had to eat to feed your insulin. All executed with military precision.
...Except, as we all know today, it gave terrible bg levels never the less. And typically resulted in severe complications within just a 8-12 year timeframe from initial diagnosis.... But back then the hospital staff praised you for exceptional good control as long as you just didn't have ketones in your urine. Little did we know....
So due to this strict control and no diversion (if you complied to it, which most of us tiny skinny type1 kids did) we typically also remained tiny and skinny as we grew up.
Thank God we got better gadgets in our hands, the medical world started to understand how we could exchange and swap food items on our diet with others of equal carbs, we got bg readers for home use and fast acting insulin with a reasonable predictable effect curve.
Suddenly enabling us to start eating very flexible, eat when we were hungry and skip other meals if not. Or take that forbidden food and indulge ourselves in diverse palate pleasures which previously were dictated to be absolute no-gos!
So now we can shoot insulin to counter and match our chosen food and lifestyle and no longer do it the other way around.
But the previously indoctrinated discipline will probably still linger in the back of our heads...