Reversing Type 2 Diabetes

[Defren]

So, you eat three times more carbs than any other mammal
You eat a tiny quantity of fat, compared to any other mammal.
Then you wonder why you all get fat!

Keep on munching those healthy wholegrains kids!

I prefer not to. I have almond flour and flaxseed I use for baking, with coconut flour on order. I am also going to order peanut flour, and they will be my preferred ingredients for baking. I would never touch wheat or soya (I know soya is not a grain) as I am convinced they are detrimental to my health. I would never dream of touching a ready meal or take away again either. I like my meals cooked from scratch.

I have even stopped buying meat, fruit and veg from the supermarket. I now go out of my way to buy from the greengrocer and the butchers. If we had a fishmonger I wouldn't buy fresh fish from the supermarket either, but as we don't, I am left with little choice.

Since diagnosis I am hyper aware of all food I eat, and how safe I feel it is.

 

[lucylocket61]

But.....I'm not an animal..................I am a human.......... :?:

 

[borofergie]

But.....I'm not an animal..................I am a human.......... :?:

You are a mammal, one with a slightly bigger brain, but a mammal none-the-less.

 

[lucylocket61]

So why am I expected to eat like a slightly carnivorous sheep???

(not offence Grazer)

 

[borofergie]

Stephen on your original answer to me. I agree it is quite persuasive IF you can show pre 1960 carbs were starchy and not grains as you suggest. If you can't show that then your argument is less provable as you would have expected to see high obesity and T2 rates in the 40's and 50's when carb intakes were likewise higher.

As a proxy, let's look at US flour consumption, our diet is sufficiently similar to the yanks for the same sort of trend to apply in the UK:

You know that this is true. No-one ate pizza, pasta, and bloody ciabatta before the 60s, (Spaghetti Bolognase was an exotic foreign treat in my house in the 70s).

 

[xyzzy]

You been on the gin as well mate? Your graphs are well strange. Think you've got the legend mucked up.

...and you can't just go "All mammals". How do you reckon a ruminant like a cow eats the majority of its intake as fat.

Anyway this one might interest you Stephen from 2009. It compares modern day with 50000 yrs ago

http://www.ajcn.org/content/91/2/295.full.pdf+html

Includes the quote

As recently observed in Nature, ‘‘It is difficult to refute the assertion that if modern populations returned to a hunter-gatherer state then obesity and diabetes would not be the major public health threats that they now are’’

 

[borofergie]

So why am I expected to eat like a slightly carnivorous sheep???

(not offence Grazer)

Because for 99% of your evolutionary past you were just another mammal. You ate meat, some plants, a bit of fruit, some plant roots and some tubers. You didn't evolve to eat refined carbohydrates like grain or sugar (which only came into our food system 6000-10000 years ago).

Your metabolism is not adapted to eat a 50% carbohydrate diet.

 

[Defren]

So why am I expected to eat like a slightly carnivorous sheep???

(not offence Grazer)

Because for 99% of your evolutionary past you were just another mammal. You ate meat, some plants, a bit of fruit, some plant roots and some tubers. You didn't evolve to eat refined carbohydrates like grain or sugar (which only came into our food system 6000-10000 years ago).

Your metabolism is not adapted to eat a 50% carbohydrate diet.

+1

 

[lucylocket61]

Oh. I see. I believe in Creation, not evolution.

so, to avoid any sidetracking or contentiousness, I will respectfully bow out of the discussion.

 

[borofergie]

...and you can't just go "All mammals". How do you reckon a ruminant like a cow eats the majority of its intake as fat.

I thought you'd ask me that BlindDog

Ruminants have evolved special organs for bacterial digestion of plant foods. In those organs, bacteria scavenge every carb calorie, leaving none for the animal. As by-product of this carb digestion, the bacteria release volatile short-chain fats. These fats are transported to the liver, which uses them for energy and for fabrication of sugars and fats for the rest of the body.

http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/ ... index.html

After processing by the digestive tract, ruminant macronutrient rations are:
0% carbs
17% protein
83% fat

Unless you have two stomachs, I suggest that you try again...

 

[borofergie]

Oh. I see. I believe in Creation, not evolution.

That works too - when God sat down with Abraham He only asked for "a morsel of bread":implicit proof that God supports low-carb: http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/can- ... -diet/9381

 

[xyzzy]

The most elegant and simple explanation for the cause of obesity in our population is the epidemic of fast food, sugary drinks and a modern lifestyle. Again show me that is not the reason rather than "low fat" being the reason.

Like I say I think its a far more complex thing than just blaming "low fat".

...and of course none of the above excuses the low fat brigade trying to kill me as a diet only T2.

Of course sugary foods play a huge part, I don't think anyone would deny that. I will go back to what I said earlier. If we look at our parents and grandparents diets, most meals if not all meals were home cooked, made with fresh ingredients. Things like bread and dripping were a treat. I can clearly remember bread proving in a huge bowl beside the open fire. This was the norm, bought bread really quite rare. As a child, daily it was an evening meal of meat and vegetables followed by a desert of some sort usually made with fruit.

Carbohydrates and low fat were alien terms to people then, and in general the populace was of a healthy weight. Seeing an overweight person would make you stop and stare (very rude I agree) as it was something rarely seen. Children, myself included were never indoors. At the weekend and holidays I would have breakfast and be out playing, run in at lunch time, grab an apple or sandwich and be out again, then come home for a proper dinner, and be allowed to run that of until bath time. I might have a piece of fruit for supper. No carbs, and no low fat.

I am certain if you are honest, you will recognise a lot of what I have said, as it was the norm back then.

Yes I don't think anyone can particularly deny that the prevalence of obesity was a lot better back then. I also agree that the increase in T2 that goes with that rise in obesity is likely related to a swap to low fat but high "wrong" carb diets. All I am really saying is the culprit is more to do with carbs than it is to do with low fat and that a lot of people fall into the high carb bit because of highly processed high energy cheap foods and sugar or what I am terming low food quality. So its the quality of the carbs that matters. If everyone ate good quality food (like the rich) then I would suggest levels of obesity and T2 would be less as most good quality foods are likely to be less energy dense and their carb content is more likely good carbs like those found in fruit and veg as opposed to bad carbs like pasties, Big Macs, full sugar Coke and Chinese takeaways.

 

[xyzzy]

...and you can't just go "All mammals". How do you reckon a ruminant like a cow eats the majority of its intake as fat.

I thought you'd ask me that BlindDog

Ruminants have evolved special organs for bacterial digestion of plant foods. In those organs, bacteria scavenge every carb calorie, leaving none for the animal. As by-product of this carb digestion, the bacteria release volatile short-chain fats. These fats are transported to the liver, which uses them for energy and for fabrication of sugars and fats for the rest of the body.

http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/ ... index.html

After processing by the digestive tract, ruminant macronutrient rations are:
0% carbs
17% protein
83% fat

Unless you have two stomachs, I suggest that you try again...

One thing I hate is a smartarse :lol: :lol: :lol:

Stupid stupid cows.

How does the paleo theory explain what goes on in China and India as their T2 rates are even worse than the West? I don't buy, although I might concede its my prejudice, that your average Chinese agricultural worker who goes to the city changes their cultural dietary habits to Western ones.

 

[RoyG]

Personally I am sick and tiered of going into supermarket and everything is low fat, trying to find a yoghurt in ASDA was like finding a needle in haystack and the full fat cream is shoved to the back of shelf, its as if they don't want to sell it. One point about mass produced food is it's cheap and people have not got the Money to be buying fresh produce and Organic stuff, just look at the difference between normal eggs and organic free range nearly double the price. So I don't know how you can fix that one? As the supermarket chains choose what the masses eat and fix the costs, we all know the local shops have all but vanished.

 

[phoenix]

several points.
1) methodology of the National Food Survey explained here. http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/file ... 111213.pdf
Although they use till receipts to back up expenditure on food they also use diaries. Until 1994 food bought and eaten out of the home was not included and it is only since 2000 that the data for this is considered more reliable.

In 1940 there would have been little food eaten out of the home, from 1980 onwards I suspect this would account for more and more of the calories consumed in some households.
Averages cover a multidude of 'sins' from the elderly couple eating very little to those consuming large amounts
I would like to know why they changed things in 2000 was it just a change of overall administration or something else.
( For a brief time I worked for the OPCS on one of the other major surveys. I know just how much care and attention to detail went into the survey, both in the conducting of the interviews and the coding of the data. )

2) the graph posted by XYZZ comes from here which also looks at the calories expended ie exercise over the period: sorry about the title http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... 5-0041.pdf

3) monkeys and chimps diet is "a low fat, high fiber diet compared to humans. The chimpanzees' diet was higher in digestible carbohydrates when there was an increase in ripe fruit availability. In addition, the chimpanzees maintained a fairly low and constant protein intake, due to their focus on fruit, with pith as a fallback food" http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/co ... nklin.html
4) going right back to Defrens list xyzz mentioned many of the points. I wrote a post about just the first 2 last night but couldn't send it.
The article claims:
"Of course the Pima Indians got fat: they went from eating a diet low in carbohydrates to a diet comprised of very insulinogenic carbohydrates (e.g. refined flour, sugar, etc)"
That is totally false. The Pima traditionally ate a very high carb diet (70%) until stuck on US reservations when the diet changed to foods that were government provided which contained a lot of calories but little nutrition. On their traditional diets they did not become fat, nor do their near cousins who still live a traditional lifestyle in S, America .http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/16/1/369

The example of obesity in Jamaica in the 1960s is interesting. (another of Taube's examples) There are several papers that describe the types of foods eaten in this period, again high energy, nutritionally poor foods . ( sweetened condensed milk as an 'early' weaning food) This group tended to be calorie rich but protein and nutrient poor. Moreover fatness was culturally desireable with young women using pills to try to put on weight rather than lose it.
I haven't put any references in for diet, they are easily looked up but this article from a study in the eighties shows a very different perspective on health, food and fatness.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&l ... bo&f=false

 

[noblehead]

''However, average recorded energy intake in Britain has declined substantially as obesity rates have escalated. The implication is that levels of physical activity, and hence energy needs, have declined even faster. Evidence suggests that modern inactive lifestyles are at least as important as diet in the aetiology of obesity and possibly represent the dominant factor.''


Of course lifestyle factors need to be taken into consideration. When I was a lad in the 60's hardly anyone in my street owned a car and most people would walk or cycle to work, Women would walk to the local shops everyday rather than do a weekly shop traveling by car, we as kids would walk to school there and back...in total 6 miles everyday, in our free-time we would be playing outdoors and not sitting in watching telly or playing video games as they do today. Manual work, gardening without the aid of electrical appliances and taking part in local sports are all examples of how we are less active now than we were to our parents and our grandparents.

 

[borofergie]

3) monkeys and chimps diet is "a low fat, high fiber diet compared to humans. The chimpanzees' diet was higher in digestible carbohydrates when there was an increase in ripe fruit availability. In addition, the chimpanzees maintained a fairly low and constant protein intake, due to their focus on fruit, with pith as a fallback food" http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/co ... nklin.html

Like other mammals, primates eat a wide range of diets: tarsiers are carnivores, gorillas nearly herbviorous. But once again, by the time the diet leaves the digestive tract all primates eat remarkably similar diets.

Gorillas evolved in the forest and focussed their diet on foliage - leaves, shoots and stems - and fruit. To digest such a fruit they need bacteria. To house such bacteria, gorillas have a very long and large colon, much larger than that of humans.

A 1997 Journal of Nutrition article analyzed the diet of gorillas. It turns out that 58% of gorillas calories come from short chain fats released in the colon by fermentation of plant fiber. As a result, gorilla macronutrient ratios are approximately 16% carb, 20% protein, 64% fat

You can do the same analysis for chimpanzees:
"The real chimpanzee diet – Fat, Glucose, Protein and a little Fructose"
http://www.paleostyle.com/?p=2001
The fruit that chimps eat is lower in fructose and much higher in fibre that fruit that we buy in the supermarket. Like gorillas. chimps have an orsized colon for converting this fibre to short chain fatty acids.

In summary, the chimp diet is 50-55% fats, 24-29% glucose and 21% protein

Jaminet also notes in his book, that chimps preferentially eat brain and bone marrow over other meat, becuase of its high fat content.

 

[Unbeliever]

''However, average recorded energy intake in Britain has declined substantially as obesity rates have escalated. The implication is that levels of physical activity, and hence energy needs, have declined even faster. Evidence suggests that modern inactive lifestyles are at least as important as diet in the aetiology of obesity and possibly represent the dominant factor.''


Of course lifestyle factors need to be taken into consideration. When I was a lad in the 60's hardly anyone in my street owned a car and most people would walk or cycle to work, Women would walk to the local shops everyday rather than do a weekly shop traveling by car, we as kids would walk to school there and back...in total 6 miles everyday, in our free-time we would be playing outdoors and not sitting in watching telly or playing video games as they do today. Manual work, gardening without the aid of electrical appliances and taking part in local sports are all examples of how we are less active now than we were to our parents and our grandparents.

This is very true Nigel, Nowadays to ensure you get a decen amount of physical exercise it is necessary to find the ime o exercise , it is no longer a normal par of everyday life as it once was. The pace of life would not allow for it.
I notice it particularly in young women busily juggling work and children in a way which would not be possible in the past.
Many are very large iand hardly surprisingly. They are under a great deal of pressure o do evrythg and unless they have adequate suppor somethig,. sometimes has to give and often it is heir own health. They have to drive everywhere , They just do not always have time to prepare proper meals because of the demands upon them.
The same thing applies o many other classes of people. The government should be loooking at lifestyles.
Overweight does NOT mean lazy. Sometimes it means exacly the opposite.
Even when people do not gain noticeable weight I am sure lack of physical activity affects them. I

Our modern lifestyle and some of the policies of previous governments have led to his pass. Maybe some of those genetically inclined to become diabetic in later life have developed T2 symptoms earlier because of it .

I love the way that the general population is always held to blame for whatever ills befall i as a result of ryng o cope with the society it finds iself in and in which it had no part in formulating.

if the diseases resulting from our lifestleds threaten our prosperity then "they " will have to look at changing lifestle.
I can't remeber which politician once said that his government was "Not in the business of social enginneering" but I remeber hinking what rubbish that was. They are all in that business , That is what hey do. Any government that doesn't does nothing.

 

[xyzzy]

The government should be loooking at lifestyles

Agree unbeliever where lifestyle is far more than just a belief that its all to do with amounts of physical activity people do. Here's the big mystery graph as far as I'm concerned. It comes from the same 1995 study Phoenix and I gave links to and is the elephant in the room that no one wants to mention.



This shows obesity rates as a function of social class. As you can see the relationship between class and obesity is dramatic YET on that same graph both fat and calorific intakes of people across class boundaries is roughly the same. In the modern world, certainly in the last 50 years when the major epidemics in obesity and T2 have been occurring, I simply don't believe that the rich do any more activity than the poor in fact, if anything, you would expect it to be the other way round.

So this tends to me to implicate the make up of the food people are eating to get their calories and to me the obvious thing is food quality with the rich able to afford high quality fresh unprocessed foods and the poor having to get their calories from highly processed cheap food which as Phoenix suggests are full of very insulinogenic carbohydrates. These foods encourage the laying down of fat even though as the graph suggests their calorific content is comparable against high quality fresh unprocessed foods that richer people consume.

In this way the graph also shows that stereotypical idea of an overweight T2 as someone who has caused the condition themselves is completely wrong as obesity seems to be far more related to income than activity or calorific intake. To me it shows that many people become obese and end up T2 because they had very little choice in the matter because they can't afford any different kind of life style.

An analysis of the diets across social class would in my view be very useful. My guess is it would show that richer people eat closer to an old style pre 1980's diet or even closer to Stephens paleo diet.

 

[Unbeliever]

I wouldn't be at all surprised. Some of the studies I have read touching on the social class issue cite the difficulty of access to fresh produce for people in certain areas --often inner city as one of the reasons why diabetes bears some correlaion o social lass.
i always feel that although this point is very valid it is , as always more complicated han that.

Innner city areas often have very mixed population. I don't necessarily mean racially although that is another point but there are sudents, those who wish to live nearer to their work or others who may only live in the city during the week to name just a few .

There are no longer small fresh food outlets available in many places and apart from those who cannot afford ransport there may be many others whose busy lifesyle forces hem to tale he line of least resistance in their food choices.

Some areas are also unsafe at certain times and for certain people so this will force some into a sedentay lifesle as well as a poor diret.

I understand that in some areas special efforts are being made o make fresh fruit and veg available to people in this situaion.

I read a few days ago of a scheme o do this in an area outside a nearby city which is a vas estate of mixed social and private housing but where residents for differing reasons are particularly badly placed o access fresh food.

I agree lifesyle changes are not ust related to physical activity .It is a question of balance and allowing people the time and space to
choose a healthier lifestyle/ Plus the necessary information of course.
There ,as always is he rub. There are ALWAYS vested interests and hose who stand to lose by social change in any direction.