AloeSvea
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 2,059
- Type of diabetes
- Type 2
- Treatment type
- Other
It is easier for me to do an old-school quote thing then mucking around with deletions in the quote - I hope this is OK for Sean Raymond and readers? These quotes are in a post above from Sean Raymond to me -
"The ease of access and availability to highly palatable high energy foods continues to increase and it makes sense that as a species which evolved seeking out high calorie foods to survive in an environment where food wasn't guaranteed we will be really attracted to them."
Talking about calories really doesn't do it for me. And for many I take it, who are trying to be healthy-weighted rather than overweight and fat in today's food environment, that 'eat less, move more' dictum really doesn't work, it seems. This is my understanding at any rate.
I do believe the theory that ' a calorie is not just a calorie', and that the body deals with different macronutrients in different ways, which is at the base of our current problems with obesity, when our food environment has gotten so -what I would call corrupted - with excess carbs especially in the form of sugar (oh - in everything!), and bad fats that we can't digest properly and do us serious harm in the amount we are eating them. And let us not forget the sugary drinks.
Yes, insulin plays a big part in fat storage amongst other vital roles. And yes - I brought up the Randle cycle because it is so relevant, of course, when discussing the role of fat and glucose forming food in our diet and insulin resistance.
I thought the fact that the body deals with proteins, fats, and carbs in different ways especially regarding fat storage was in fact - a fact. And not disputed by nutritonists. Is this not the case?
Health professionals don't deal with this, in my experience - how to eat to be healthily weighted. They need to do what they are judged on, which is to tell T2D patients they need to lose weight - it is hardly their concern how their patients do it, has been the idea as far as I can see. Doctors send those with diabetes along to - nutritionists! When the patients want direct help. (and are told to exericse more.) Which is why it is so engaging for us to talk with you (you are a nutritionist in the - British ? healthcare system are you not? which healthcare system doesn't really matter. apologies if I have got it wrong - apparently you made this more clear some years ago in a post?) - we don't often get the chance - and what a chance this is. Yes as long as we are civil - quite right!
It is interesting for me having this exchange with you @Sean_Raymond, as I do not have the opportunity to discuss these things with a professional nutritionist in my present life - not since early in my diagnosis when I engaged most happily on the subject of low-carbing being the first line in combat against insulin-resistance based type two diabetes with those nutrionists I inevitably then came into contact with. I look back fondly on those discussions actually.
In our species' past, it was not just "where food wasn't guaranteed" (hey - it still isn't! Food insecurity is a really big problem in many advanced countries even) (and this following our Covid year 2020 in particular). but where really sweet fruit, and honey, was not commonplace, or even rare, outside of the tropics. I live in the subtropical part of the south pacific, and the only sweet fruit available before trade with Europeans and the ultimate invasion was a berry that had to be worked on for a very long time to make it barely palatable, and the bees here were not honey bees. I'm talking attraction to sweet (ie very high carb) - which for type two diabetics with a sweet tooth (which having a sweet tooth is after all a common part of our species) is more than just discussing a theory about insulin and body fat. It is no coincidence that a major food staple was the sweet potato - 'kuumara', but I take it was not nearly as sweet back then as the imported varieties are now.
"Adding this to more sedentary behaviours is for me most likely the main factors driving the obesity epidemic rather than it being because of a particular macronutrient or hormone. "
Fat storage issues were key to me when I lost a lot of weight after diagnosis, and they are key now in maintaining my normal weight. Fat storage issues are about hormones and macronutrients when it comes to eating, to my mind.
And the healthiness of physical activity is about how it all works together - food for energy - and ultimately - cardio vascular health isn't it? Which when it comes to our living as long as we can as people with blood glucose system chaos/disruption, is where it is at, isn't it.?..
When I discuss food and activity with my non-diabetic friends it is this issue that is very interesting to me - as many of them have some level of cardio vascular disease (I am well middle-aged so so are my friends), at the very least high blood pressure, and are on medications for it. I gently tell them that they already have what I am working so hard to avoid. Many unfortunately believe that the medications they take are curing them of cardiovascular disease - not that they are taking them because they have CVD. I find this a health education tragedy. And that there is absolutely a 'follow the money' aspect to it. Which I do see a wrong-minded focus on cholesterol levels to be a part of that. But that is a huge other discussion, but interesting to me that you brought it up so fullsomely in a large paragraph.
We have not undergone a major genetic shift in just 50 years and I do not believe most people are inherently inflicted with greediness so maybe it is the unconscious aspects of the brain forged in a time of feast and famine that is what drives what are now unhealthy behaviours."
Hmmm - the word "greediness" does not belong, imho, in a discussion with type two diabetics about dealing with the excesses of the current food environment!
Do you talk about greediness to your diabetic clients? Mmmm - I hope not!
We were talking, I thought, about why it is very difficult for folks to not eat high sugared foods and foods that turn into high-glucose in the blood (ie - carbs!) that are cheap and readily available, and that taste delicious to us. My example is usually potato crisps. And "we all scream for ice cream".
I am very aware that the word 'greed' is not really used in current English unless one is citing the seven deadly sins, of which greed is one of them. The sin 'sloth' absolutely, is also, horribly, used in conjunction with greed to sometimes discuss what is at the bottom of T2D in some people's eyes. Awful. ('Overeating and being sedentary' is the 'nice' way to say the combo, which I believe still, as 'nice' as it is - is wrong, and does insulin resistant diabetics a huge wrong.) 'The Seven Deadly Sins' are part of a particular religious belief and rhetoric which I am not a party to.
One did not, and does not, need to be experiencing a famine to want to eat as much of sweet food or starchy salty food devised in a food-lab (the crisps) that we are 'hard-wired' to consume a lot of when finding it, indeed because our genes have not had a major shift in the last 50 years. I was not saying that our genes have shifted - I thought I was making it very clear that our food environment has - not our phyical make-up as a species.
"The ease of access and availability to highly palatable high energy foods continues to increase and it makes sense that as a species which evolved seeking out high calorie foods to survive in an environment where food wasn't guaranteed we will be really attracted to them."
Talking about calories really doesn't do it for me. And for many I take it, who are trying to be healthy-weighted rather than overweight and fat in today's food environment, that 'eat less, move more' dictum really doesn't work, it seems. This is my understanding at any rate.
I do believe the theory that ' a calorie is not just a calorie', and that the body deals with different macronutrients in different ways, which is at the base of our current problems with obesity, when our food environment has gotten so -what I would call corrupted - with excess carbs especially in the form of sugar (oh - in everything!), and bad fats that we can't digest properly and do us serious harm in the amount we are eating them. And let us not forget the sugary drinks.
Yes, insulin plays a big part in fat storage amongst other vital roles. And yes - I brought up the Randle cycle because it is so relevant, of course, when discussing the role of fat and glucose forming food in our diet and insulin resistance.
I thought the fact that the body deals with proteins, fats, and carbs in different ways especially regarding fat storage was in fact - a fact. And not disputed by nutritonists. Is this not the case?
Health professionals don't deal with this, in my experience - how to eat to be healthily weighted. They need to do what they are judged on, which is to tell T2D patients they need to lose weight - it is hardly their concern how their patients do it, has been the idea as far as I can see. Doctors send those with diabetes along to - nutritionists! When the patients want direct help. (and are told to exericse more.) Which is why it is so engaging for us to talk with you (you are a nutritionist in the - British ? healthcare system are you not? which healthcare system doesn't really matter. apologies if I have got it wrong - apparently you made this more clear some years ago in a post?) - we don't often get the chance - and what a chance this is. Yes as long as we are civil - quite right!
It is interesting for me having this exchange with you @Sean_Raymond, as I do not have the opportunity to discuss these things with a professional nutritionist in my present life - not since early in my diagnosis when I engaged most happily on the subject of low-carbing being the first line in combat against insulin-resistance based type two diabetes with those nutrionists I inevitably then came into contact with. I look back fondly on those discussions actually.
In our species' past, it was not just "where food wasn't guaranteed" (hey - it still isn't! Food insecurity is a really big problem in many advanced countries even) (and this following our Covid year 2020 in particular). but where really sweet fruit, and honey, was not commonplace, or even rare, outside of the tropics. I live in the subtropical part of the south pacific, and the only sweet fruit available before trade with Europeans and the ultimate invasion was a berry that had to be worked on for a very long time to make it barely palatable, and the bees here were not honey bees. I'm talking attraction to sweet (ie very high carb) - which for type two diabetics with a sweet tooth (which having a sweet tooth is after all a common part of our species) is more than just discussing a theory about insulin and body fat. It is no coincidence that a major food staple was the sweet potato - 'kuumara', but I take it was not nearly as sweet back then as the imported varieties are now.
"Adding this to more sedentary behaviours is for me most likely the main factors driving the obesity epidemic rather than it being because of a particular macronutrient or hormone. "
Fat storage issues were key to me when I lost a lot of weight after diagnosis, and they are key now in maintaining my normal weight. Fat storage issues are about hormones and macronutrients when it comes to eating, to my mind.
And the healthiness of physical activity is about how it all works together - food for energy - and ultimately - cardio vascular health isn't it? Which when it comes to our living as long as we can as people with blood glucose system chaos/disruption, is where it is at, isn't it.?..
When I discuss food and activity with my non-diabetic friends it is this issue that is very interesting to me - as many of them have some level of cardio vascular disease (I am well middle-aged so so are my friends), at the very least high blood pressure, and are on medications for it. I gently tell them that they already have what I am working so hard to avoid. Many unfortunately believe that the medications they take are curing them of cardiovascular disease - not that they are taking them because they have CVD. I find this a health education tragedy. And that there is absolutely a 'follow the money' aspect to it. Which I do see a wrong-minded focus on cholesterol levels to be a part of that. But that is a huge other discussion, but interesting to me that you brought it up so fullsomely in a large paragraph.
We have not undergone a major genetic shift in just 50 years and I do not believe most people are inherently inflicted with greediness so maybe it is the unconscious aspects of the brain forged in a time of feast and famine that is what drives what are now unhealthy behaviours."
Hmmm - the word "greediness" does not belong, imho, in a discussion with type two diabetics about dealing with the excesses of the current food environment!
Do you talk about greediness to your diabetic clients? Mmmm - I hope not!
We were talking, I thought, about why it is very difficult for folks to not eat high sugared foods and foods that turn into high-glucose in the blood (ie - carbs!) that are cheap and readily available, and that taste delicious to us. My example is usually potato crisps. And "we all scream for ice cream".
I am very aware that the word 'greed' is not really used in current English unless one is citing the seven deadly sins, of which greed is one of them. The sin 'sloth' absolutely, is also, horribly, used in conjunction with greed to sometimes discuss what is at the bottom of T2D in some people's eyes. Awful. ('Overeating and being sedentary' is the 'nice' way to say the combo, which I believe still, as 'nice' as it is - is wrong, and does insulin resistant diabetics a huge wrong.) 'The Seven Deadly Sins' are part of a particular religious belief and rhetoric which I am not a party to.
One did not, and does not, need to be experiencing a famine to want to eat as much of sweet food or starchy salty food devised in a food-lab (the crisps) that we are 'hard-wired' to consume a lot of when finding it, indeed because our genes have not had a major shift in the last 50 years. I was not saying that our genes have shifted - I thought I was making it very clear that our food environment has - not our phyical make-up as a species.