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Conflicting Ideologies

BloodThirsty

Well-Known Member
Messages
157
I am not unduly surprised that the NHS continues to promote the Eatwell Guide... a stale old paradigm that is effectively a rehash of the Food Guide Pyramid.
Ancel Keys got it wrong in the 80's and Good Old Auntie NHS continues to propound his theories on saturated fats and cholesterol, despite much contradictory literature from contemporary but lesser known researchers.

However, what does surprise me is that two UK organisations that each profess to be the official voice of diabetics hold such opposing views.
Take for instance this meal plan from www.diabetes.org.uk

Breakfast

a bowl of cereal with semi-skimmed milk
2 slices of wholegrain toast with spread and/or jam
a fat-free yogurt and fruit.
More ideas for a healthy breakfast.

Lunch

a chicken or ham salad sandwich...
a small pasta salad...
soup and a roll...
...with a piece of fruit and a diet or fat-free yogurt
Tips for healthy lunchtime swaps.

Dinner

lasagne and salad
roast chicken with potatoes and vegetables
beef stir-fry, vegetables and rice
chicken tortillas and salad
salmon and noodles
curry and rice

Fortunately www.diabetes.co.uk actively supports a low carb programme, but this does beg the question how diabetic sufferers following a similar regimen to the above can have any chance of putting their condition into remission.
 
Diabetes Australia endorses low carb diet as an option.
Does the NHS or its associated bodies and health professionals have links/sponsorships etc with Big Food?
 
What constantly astounds me is the lack of simple logic. I know that this is a far more nuanced problem than 'carbs raise bg so avoid high carb' but what really irritates is that the vast majority of HCPs understand but choose to follow the dogma anyway.
 
Yep, ridiculous isn’t it?

Eat fewer things that raise your sugar levels, and you’ll have better sugar levels.

Not a difficult concept, is it?
 
If you see my post re DuK food labelling workshops you'll understand my frustration with DuK 's belief that diabetes is caused by obesity hence if only we obsess about calories and eat low calorie healthy wholegrains all will be well!
HCPs do lack courage but most likelylack knowledge, resources and support but there is spotty good practice and the NICE guidelines DO allow for an individual approach to a patients' lifestyle.
 
The problem is that that is a healthy menu, just not good for T2s. And prolonged adherence to that diet may well result in T2 if you are unfortunate. It is heart breaking to see the continued promotion of the Eat Well diet to T2s by DOUK and HCPs.
 
Whilst I agree, this appears not to be a great message to spout, please remember not everyone with diabetes has type 2.
Unfortunately, someone with type 1 is very very very very unlikely to put "their condition into remission".
And many people with type 1 are able to manage their condition without eating a low carb diet.
 
kitedoc said:
Diabetes Australia endorses low carb diet as an option.
Does the NHS or its associated bodies and health professionals have links/sponsorships etc with Big Food?
Click to expand...
Pubic Health England from whom we get handed down the Eatbadly Guide seem to have some conflicted individuals on the panel.. the NHS then follows their advice.
 
kitedoc said:
Diabetes Australia endorses low carb diet as an option
Click to expand...
But isn't that a very very recent change.. and when you say "endorses" does it really or just doesn't say it will kill you? Genuine question I'm not so au fait with the Aussie guidelines..
 

I agree with you but if you have seen Dr. Unwin's graphic showing the amount of carbs as teaspoons of sugar in a so called healthy breakfast of wholemeal toast, orange juice, cereal etc and then weigh that up against how many teaspoons equates to what the human body would normally have then it seems to me that that is not a healthy breakfast for anyone whether they have any type of Diabetes or none.
 
I do not disagree with you.
I am just asking for everyone to remember all types of diabetes, the different ways of treating them and the different possible outcomes.
I appreciate approximately 90% of people with diabetes have type 2 so expect 90% of contributors on this forum to have type 2.
But when threads are posted in general sub forums, please remember the other 10% of us ... we don't bite, we're just different
 
The meal plan detailed in the OP is specifically for those with T2 diabetes.

Under the heading I have Type 2 diabetes – what can I eat?
 
My friend has been told he is prediabetic and has been invited to join an NHS "Healthier You" programme/course. It'll be interesting to see what guidance he gets
 
But what irks is that Diabetes UK is not shifting its viewpoint. There is so much anecdotal evidence that LCHF can facilitate T2 remission that I am amazed that DUK has not started a similar programme to that on this site.

You may recall that a couple of months ago there was a BBC presentation wherein Professor Ron Taylor of Newcastle University placed 11 patients on 600 calories a day for two months... and three months later 7 remained free of diabetes. This study was funded by Diabetes UK.

The results were hailed as a radical change in understanding T2 diabetes, but were totally predictable. Most of the participants lost a considerable amount of weight and their blood sugars plummeted. Surprise! Surprise!

I appreciate that I sound like an LCHF evangelist but it is surely unreasonable to suggest that people can adopt a long term diet based on 600 calories of liquid. Unless of course the implication is that two months on such a diet places T2 into permanent remission which is clearly b*******s.
 

ND was never touted as being long term. The misgivings I have about ND are the re feeding aspects, I have heard that a diet lower in carbs should follow the initial phase but I have also heard that eating two thirds the amount of food that one was eating before embarking on the programme (no macros mentioned) for the rest of one's life would/should keep you in remission. I'm unsure about this because two thirds of food says two thirds of satiety to me. And it smacks of 'eat less move more' which hasn't worked in the past so why would it work simply because it is presented on headed paper?
 
BloodThirsty said:
Ancel Keys got it wrong in the 80's
Click to expand...
Sorry for being pedantic, but his "Seven Countries Study" goes back even further than the 80s, it goes back to 1958. To all intents and purposes, what we know as the ‘eatwell’ plate has been around since 1994 (Zoe Harcombe), with it's most recent tinkering being in 2016 (might need verifying).
The interesting thing about cholesterol is that Ancel Keys said that eating cholesterol did not affect total cholesterol in the body. I'm not defending Ancel Keys but you might like to look at the lambasting he received from Yerushalmy and Hilleboe. Keys' initial study met with a lot of skepticism. Then when you look at the 22 countries that people talk about when mentioning Keys' cherry picking just 7 countries there is a distinct possibility that the correlation suggested in the smaller sample actually becomes causation in the bigger sample.
I'm not a scientist or a statistician, but the whole story is interesting and goes much further than him cherry picking his data.
I'm pretty sure that the current suggested carb intake is as a result of what Ancel Keys wrote possibly helped by Yerushalmy and Hilleboe rather than hindered.
I also think that the "Eatwell plate" works well for people who don't have insulin resistance, those who are not type II, and that really should be a caveat added to this piece of advice that isn't going to disappear soon. I know several type IIs in my small group of friends. None of whom have taken the low carb route and to be honest, none of them are getting any better, they just keep taking the tablets and eating the carbs, not good.
I've also got a theory that if you were to speak to anybody of an average build, they would never have heard of the NHS guidelines, why should they?
 
I cannot agree that the meal detailed by the OP is anywhere near healthy in the context of modern foods. I think a generation ago it may have worked and persons who ate this way on maybe 3 meals a day could on the whole "survive" this, at least until their late 60's or 70's when they might get what was called late onset diabetes. In the UK around 50% of newly diagnosed Type 2's are under 35 years of age. I have emboldened this because this for me is almost extinction level numbers who cannot handle carbs, so why do "we" pretend it is normal. I think the carb weaknesses are being passed from parents, so younger people are starting from a position of less tolerance, like a baby born with drug addiction due to a parental choice.

Now around two thirds of persons have metabolic issues (circa 60% plus obese / overweight, across the globe, around 10 - 11% diabetes and significant pre-diabetes), so by definition this means a third can handle the above. I do not believe that eating meals which the general consensus says is a "spike" (7.8 mmol) level is good even for non-diabetics. A bowl of cereal is a disaster zone, as no one eats the minuscule serving (I think usually 30 grams); most cereals normally have a carb ratio per 100 grams of at least 70% - this is a joke and a sugar bomb, let alone the pasta franken food (9 square feet of wheat to make 4 cups of flour -what!).

The below site is has a bit of a Christian religious tint (but in my view not too pushy). There are lot's of tests of foods on pre-diabetic persons, non-diabetics that could be indicative of for example what a single regular bagel does compared to 3 low carb variants
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmKsQWqGmDPIWgrVqGYbc3w/videos
 
Not pedantic at all.
A young number cruncher named Denise Minger wrote a compulsive book called "Death by Food Pyramid" in which she revisits the various conclusions arising from Keys' work and beyond.
This book presents a fascinating history of how we got where we are today in terms of dogma and misinformation and is highly recommended.
 
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