Type 2 Diabetes - It is NOT your fault!

[ianf0ster]

Are you suggesting that the "5 a Day" campaign led to obesity and diabetes? Only about 25% of adults in England actually eat 5 a day and I suspect they are less likely to be the ones eating the cakes, biscuits, deserts, chocolate, having a lot of takeaways and drinking a lot of beer that I mentioned. NHS dietary advice, at least in the booklet that accompanied my DESMOND course, also mentions serving size which is often forgotten. They might suggest wholegrains, fresh fruit and vegetables but they don't say to eat vast portions.

Yes I am suggesting exactly that. Since as you say it is the more 'health conscious' people who were likely to take up the 5 a Day.
Both my wife and I were such people as were many of our friends. The NHS, the Government, our Doctors, the media etc were all telling us to eat High Carb and Low Fat. Fat supposedly made you fat, clogged your arteries and even helped give you T2D (if you dared add table sugar to any foods).

Purely because of all this 'expert advice and opinion' (later discovered to be without any scientific evidence whatsoever), I ate that way for between 10 and 20yrs during which time I had Angina, a 3x Bypass and then T2D (subsequently reversed due to this site and 4 months LCHF). In order to eat according to such advice, I had to give up food that I enjoyed such as Cheese, Eggs, Beef, Pork, full-fat yogurt etc.

So yes I feel that such official advice not only created more Obesity, HyperTension, T2D and CVD, but actually killed a significant number of people - one of whom could easily been me !

The DESMOND course is only for those who already have at least pre-diabetes - so a little too late, even if we can assume that it gives good advice. Many/most don't i.e. carbs with every meal and cake and biscuits at break time on the actual course !

 

[zand]

I would add to your list of bad official advice the advice to drink diet drinks. I religiously followed the advice to switch from sugary ones to diet versions not knowing that they cause fatty liver, insulin resistance and years down the line...obesity. Friends who drank them only occasionally whilst sticking to sugary ones the rest of the time weren't so badly affected as me.

 

[Concordjan]

Good post, I'm a TOFI also... I wonder how many of us are on this forum?

Sorry to show my ignorance but what’s TOFI?

 

[KK123]

Sorry to show my ignorance but what’s TOFI?

Thin Outside Fat inside. (Generally used to describe a person who is thin but has a 'fatty' liver).

 

[Concordjan]

Oh thank you, must be me too.

 

[Listlad]

I just wonder though that as we quaffed down the extra doughnut or two, the extra slice of cake or wolfed back the 2nd bar of chocolate, did we do that with just a hint of awareness that it might not be a wise thing to do?

 

[Concordjan]

Never really ate the extra doughnut etc, always the eatwell plate, 5 a day, with just the occasional treat. This was always considered healthy and the main problem is it still is! Still what my dn says I should be eating

 

[Listlad]

Never really ate the extra doughnut etc, always the eatwell plate, 5 a day, with just the occasional treat. This was always considered healthy and the main problem is it still is! Still what my dn says I should be eating

I ate the five a day and increased it to seven a day in my quest to eat more healthily. These pieces comprised fruit, dried fruit and fruit juice in the main.

 

[Member496333]

Never really ate the extra doughnut etc, always the eatwell plate, 5 a day, with just the occasional treat. This was always considered healthy and the main problem is it still is! Still what my dn says I should be eating

Same. I was never really into sweets or junk food. I ate the usual low-fat diet of pasta, rice, whole grains, fruit etc. All recommended by dietary guidelines, and all massively insulinogenic.

 

[Resurgam]

I used to come home weeping from another bruising interview at the clinic, make myself a wicked salad with eggs and cheese, creamy coleslaw and olive oil and vinegar dressing - then next morning it was back to the cereal and skimmed milk as in the diet sheet - a baked potato or sandwich with low fat spread and something even healthier for dinner - probably with beans. The following week I would be even heavier, and would once again be accused of not following the dietsheet, even of being delusional because I ought to be losing weight.
When visiting after the birth of my first child the midwife opened up the tin in which I kept my sewing supplies expecting to find biscuits even after I apologized for not eating them so had none in the house. I have even been questioned about when the local take aways open as a trick question after saying I don't eat fast food - because I have to be trying to mislead.

 

[Mr_Pot]

Same. I was never really into sweets or junk food. I ate the usual low-fat diet of pasta, rice, whole grains, fruit etc. All recommended by dietary guidelines, and all massively insulinogenic.

You must have had a large amount of that diet to get the complications you did. I never did low fat but I had a pretty high carb diet with lots of fruit for 68 years until I was diagnosed at a routine health check, I have never had any symptoms. While the official diet advice doesn't help it is certainly not the only cause.

 

[ianf0ster]

You must have had a large amount of that diet to get the complications you did. I never did low fat but I had a pretty high carb diet with lots of fruit for 68 years until I was diagnosed at a routine health check, I have never had any symptoms. While the official diet advice doesn't help it is certainly not the only cause.

Just to be clear, I didn't say that the official diet advice was the only cause.
My point is that when the official advice has been making thousands of (health conscious) people ill, and probably killing at least hundreds of them then there is no blame. shame or guilt to place on any individual for making similar mistakes with their 'way of eating'!

 

[Member496333]

You must have had a large amount of that diet to get the complications you did. I never did low fat but I had a pretty high carb diet with lots of fruit for 68 years until I was diagnosed at a routine health check, I have never had any symptoms. While the official diet advice doesn't help it is certainly not the only cause.

That is what I ate. I can’t get fat so had no safety buffer and just became very badly hyperinsulinemic. Carbs are carbs and once you’re on Diabetes Street the body doesn’t really care where they’re coming from. The effect is the same. In fact refined grains and flours have a higher glucose concentration than sugar, so it’s not that surprising. As we already know, you don’t have to eat shovels full of sugar in order to get type 2 diabetes.

 

[lucylocket61]

You must have had a large amount of that diet to get the complications you did. I never did low fat but I had a pretty high carb diet with lots of fruit for 68 years until I was diagnosed at a routine health check, I have never had any symptoms. While the official diet advice doesn't help it is certainly not the only cause.

Different people have different thresholds for damage. Some can eat far more carbs daily before any damage is done. Others can get damage at low levels of carb intake. Guidelines are just averages.

I never ate a lot of carbs, ever. Not compared to average intakes quoted these days by medical people. But I did eat a lot of fruit, fruit juice (pure, unsweetened) so maybe I am more sensitive to fructose than others? I dieted for 35 years, at least, maybe longer, under 1000 cals a day often, so wasnt eating loads of sugary stuff either.

One thing the 5 a day does is increase carb intake in the form of fruit, and veg like peas, sweetcorn, root veg.

Some of us need only small amounts of carbs above our personal safe threshold to get type 2, and complications.

 

[Listlad]

But I did eat a lot of fruit, fruit juice (pure, unsweetened) so maybe I am more sensitive to fructose than others?

One thing the 5 a day does is increase carb intake in the form of fruit, and veg like peas, sweetcorn, root veg.
.

This was definitely one key area where I was going wrong, even several years after I hit the Type 2 levels. I do recall wondering if I should eat less fruit and more vedge but nobody seemed to know the answer to that including the medical professionals whose care I was under. So now it isn’t 7 a day or 5 a day but more like 2 or 3 a day where at least one if not 2 pieces are above ground vedge in the main. I don’t drink fruit juice anymore at all. And have cut dried fruit right out.

 

[Daphne917]

Same. I was never really into sweets or junk food. I ate the usual low-fat diet of pasta, rice, whole grains, fruit etc. All recommended by dietary guidelines, and all massively insulinogenic.

I used to take a fruit basket to work with me and gradually get through it - between 3 to 5 per day inc bananas and grapes and, when available, fresh dates and figs. I also ate a lot of pasta, rice, whole grain cereals and jacket potatoes because they were ‘healthy’.

 

[Member496333]

I used to take a fruit basket to work with me and gradually get through it - between 3 to 5 per day inc bananas and grapes and, when available, fresh dates and figs. I also ate a lot of pasta, rice, whole grain cereals and jacket potatoes because they were ‘healthy’.

Yeah I don't think it's all that uncommon to develop T2 this way, or certainly make it worse. The real problem with sugar is not so much the glucose, but its 50% fructose component acting directly on the liver. Fruit is just as bad.

 

[Mike d]

I don't miss fruit at all ....

 

[Guzzler]

Just an opinion. It was not that we were necessarily eating to gluttony on the modern western diet (although it is now widely accepted that this way of eating promotes hunger) it is that we were eating a diet that is inappropriate for our species. In short, the modern western diet is not 'normal' though has become normalised.

To infer sloth and gluttony as a cause misses the point completely wrt human physiology.

And I don't miss fruit either.

 

[Listlad]

The way I see it is that the modern western diet is driven from two directions and not one. In other words it is both supply pushed and demand pulled. It might make us feel better but we surely cannot shove all of the blame onto someone else?