There doesn't appear to be one.
The only one with any claim to be medically accepted may be the Newcastle diet.
Any other diet merely treats the symptoms, and if we can keep our BG in the correct range, they all seem to work.
The first trick is to get the patient on any diet, perhaps that is the first thing the medical profession have to consider, instead of what extreme diet should be enforced.
Douglas
I am referring to diet in the wider sense of what one eats in general, not in the narrower sense of what one eats to lose weight, or even deal with diabetes.
What is a healthy diet?
For years we have been told that eggs and butter and cream are evil, to be consumed in moderation. Now we are told that they may actually not be so bad after all. That consumption of food high in cholesterol such as eggs does not actually lead to rises in blood cholesterol levels and that butter a natural product may be better for us than processed low fat spreads.
As for the Mediterranean diet, I am fortunate enough to live in the Mediterranean myself and yes I do believe that it is quite healthy, based as it is on monounsaturated olive oil, pulses, variety of vegetables etc.
Trouble is that even here, the way we now live, means that people move away from this diet in favor of more processed easier solutions.
In the past people prepared and consumed only what was fresh and in season. Lack of funds dictated that meat was consumed only on Sundays and special occasions, while the vast majority of the people were farmers, getting plenty of exercise working manually in the fields.
Today, we are richer, we spent our days stuck in offices to earn enough money to eat rich food that we do not have time to prepare ourselves.
In the past food was scarce and families large so portions were of necessity small. Today you hardly find families with more than two children, I only have the one son myself, and the food plentiful. We are encouraged by constant advertising campaigns to consume more and more products with endless and often conflicting claims to contribute to our health.
How many cereals advertise themselves as being healthy. Yet how few can justify this claim. Most are packed with sugar and/or salt and all spike my blood.
I consider myself a reasonably intelligent, well educated man, yet I find it all confusing.
In the end I try to eat as much unprocessed natural food as possible, plenty of salads for instance, and I restrict my carbs so as to get the readings I want from my glucose meter.
Lately I have started consciously to not go for low fat options and to increase my consumption of eggs, cheese, and olive oil to compensate for the calories lost from the reduced carbs consumption.
But I do so with half a heart. Yes, I am afraid of fats. I suffer from familial hyperchesterolimia, without statins my lipid levels would be sky high, and for this reason fats have been anathema to me for years. At the moment, I am trying to lose weight as well so the dilemma of what to do with fats is not so urgent. But eventually I will have to make a decision.
I suppose that I am just experimenting, until my next blood count results and I am prepared to amend my diet then depending on the outcome.
To be honest though, I resend all this uncertainty and guesswork.
What we should eat to stay healthy is too basic a question for science not to have come up with a conclusive answer by now.
Pavlos
All good learning being different I always think ...
little joke ...
