SamJB said:
Hania, the whole point of diabetics going on these diets is to avoid eating things that raise their glucose levels. Bread, no matter what the GI of it is, raises people's glucose levels. Therefore, many diabetics are intolerant to it. No-one "needs" to eat bread, or indeed any carbohydrate at all as you know full well that the body is prefectly capable of createing it by itself. Quinoa is higher in carbs than bread, per 100g.
Dietitians advising people to eat carbs, when they don't need to, is the very reason why many diabetics find it difficult to control their levels.
Regarding vegetables, yes, you are correct and many of us on here adopt a low carb, high veg diet, where we replace the carbohydrate portion with extra vegetables.
People can happily live on low carb diets long term. There was a recent study that showed around half of people sticking to a low carb diet for over 4 years, with excellent results for their HbA1c. I've completed around a year and a half on a low carb diet, my levels have never been better and I intend to stay on it until there's a cure for Type 1. There are many people on here that have stuck to a low carb diets for many years.
I'm on a diet for several reasons, only one of which is to control my bs.
I want to lose weight.
I want to maintain my weight when I have lost it
I want to correct my cholesterol levels to where I would prefer them to be, then keep them there.
I want to maintain my blood pressure, as it's good now, and I want to keep it there.
To aid that, I know which foods I can tolerate.
I know which carbs I can eat, and will not increase my bs beyond an acceptable range.
Even non diabetics experience some increase when eating carbs.
Vegeatables are carbs, and even with them I choose ones I digest well.
At the end of the day, bread is a processed vegetable, it's the amount of processing I have found I can tolerate that lets me have a small amount of rye bread, or burgen, to create a low GL meal.
So I'm good with knowing about carbs and eating them, my HbA1c is 5.4, and is still creeping down.
My other difficulty is low carb diets are not all the same, you mentions low carb, but replace carbs with vegetables, what about low carb high protein, low carb high fat, low carb healthy fat, low carb, saturated fat?
Are they all equally as good for you?
I think that is my dilemma, and no study has a specific diet itemised on it, so many studies are mis quoted, or quoted for entirely different diets to the ones they may have been the subject of.