Grain Based Diet Dangerous for Everyone, But Especially For Diabetics

Diabetes mellitus, is a chronic disorder of carbohydrate metabolism.  Diabetes impairs the body’s ability to use food properly such that blood sugars are not oxidized to produce energy. This is due to a malfunction of the hormone insulin which is produced in the beta cells of the pancreas.

Insulin is a hormone that helps to regulate blood sugar levels by taking excess glucose out of the bloodstream and putting it into body cells, either to be used as fuel or to be stored as glycogen and fat. An accumulation of sugar in the blood leads to a build up in the blood called hyperglycemia and then to its appearance in the urine. Symptoms include thirst, excessive production of urine and weight loss.

In people with diabetes, either the pancreas doesn’t make sufficient insulin or the body is unable to use insulin properly. For either reason diabetes is characterized by raised levels of sugar in the bloodstream as blood glucose is not controlled. This can ultimately lead to diverse problems including blindness, gangrene, kidney disease, nerve damage and impotence

Although diabetes cannot be cured, it can be controlled. And research has shown that maintaining good control of blood glucose levels can prevent long-term complications of diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes is not found in the animal kingdom either in meat or plant eating animals, where those animals live in their natural habitat. Neither does type 1 diabetes exist amongst peoples who have not had extensive contact with the industrialized societies: the Inuit, Maasai, and Hunza, and other indigenous peoples whose diets are typically low in carbohydrates. (1) While not a single case of type 1 diabetes has been found among the meat- and fat-eating Inuit population of Alaska, there have been cases of the maturity onset type of diabetes. (2) These appear to be the result of increasing carbohydrates in the modern Inuit diet.

As diabetes is wholly restricted to peoples of Western industrialized civilization, it cannot have a genetic origin, although family dietary traits and lifestyle can play a major part in its appearance within families.

Type 1 is caused by any condition that damages the pancreas’s beta cells. One major cause today may be maternal diet. If a pregnant woman eats too much carbohydrate, this will raise her insulin levels. It is not thought that insulin itself crosses the placenta from mother to unborn child. However, insulin produces antibodies that do. (3) Once in the fetus these increase glycogen and fat deposits resulting in an abnormally large baby. It may also predispose that baby to type 1 diabetes.

That diabetes is a result of environmental and lifestyle factors is demonstrated when people emigrate and adopt the eating habits of their new country: Populations who migrate to westernized countries with more sedentary lifestyles have greater risks of type 2 diabetes than their counterparts who remain in their native countries. But it is not just the change in exercise patterns that causes the greater susceptibility to diabetes, populations undergoing westernization in the absence of migration, such as North American Indians and Western Samoans, also have experienced increases in obesity and type 2 diabetes.

There have been suggestions that particular dietary constituents are involved in the onset of NIDDM. Excessive fat, sucrose (sugar) and other carbohydrates, and inadequate dietary fiber are those particularly discussed.

Today, one frequently hears in the medical world, expressions such as ‘the causes of diabetes have not been clearly identified’, or ‘we do not know what causes diabetes’. However, this is not so: we have known for almost three-quarters of a century. In 1935, a Dr H D C Given pointed out the correlation between carbohydrate intake and diabetes.

This has since been confirmed many times and it is now known beyond doubt that diabetes is caused by an excessive intake of carbohydrates – just as obesity is.

Fortunately Type 2 diabetes is easily treated with a low-carb, high-fat diet.

More recently, several epidemiologic studies have measured insulin levels in populations.  These noted higher insulin levels in subjects with high blood pressure and other vascular disease. For this reason, insulin resistance is now also considered a risk factor for heart disease. These studies have added a great deal of confusion to the field because many individuals with insulin resistance do not have diabetes.

Diseases of insulin resistance, particularly NIDDM, occur with greater frequency in populations that have recently changed dietary habits from hunter-gatherer to Western grain-based regimes, compared to those with long histories of such diets. This is why obesity and diabetes is so much more common among Americans of African and Asian origin than among those whose ancestry is European. It has been suggested that insulin resistance in hunter-gatherer populations may be an asset, as it may facilitate consumption of high-animal-based diets. The down side of this is that when high-carbohydrate, grain-based diets replace traditional hunter-gatherer diets, insulin resistance becomes a liability and promotes NIDDM.

The cause of type 2 diabetes via insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, and pancreatic beta-cell failure, largely explains the worldwide increase in this disease.

Whatever the precise nature of the diabetes, eating a diet that helps to keep blood-sugar levels on an even keel is of obvious importance. Until recently, the traditional view has been that sugar, because it causes surges in blood-sugar levels, should be limited in the diet. On the other hand, starches such as bread, potato, rice and pasta are recommended by doctors and dieticians because of the long-held belief that they give slow, sustained releases of sugar into the bloodstream. Fruit is also recommended because it is believed the sugar fruit contains — fructose — also does not raise insulin levels.  And this approach shows better than anything just how little the diabetes establishment understands about diabetes — because, biochemically, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Let me give you a short chemistry lesson.
Sugars -  The first and most important point to make is that all carbohydrates are sugars , although we do not normally call them that, but differentiate between those that taste sweet, which we call ‘sugar’, and those that don’t, which we call ‘starch’.
The simple sugars in foods that are most important to human nutrition are called sucrose, fructose, lactose, and maltose. But the body is only interested in the simple sugar called glucose, so these other simple sugars break apart in the digestion to become glucose.

Next we need to understand how the current recommendations are actually based on what I can only describe as dietary nonsense.

Q: What are diabetics told to eat?
A: "5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day"
Q: What carbohydrate do fruit and vegetables contain?
A: FRUCTOSE — which is a sugar!
Ah, yes . . . but . . . glucose raises blood levels very quickly (Fructose is preferred to glucose because it is thought to take longer to raise blood sugar).

Diabetes mellitus is a disease of incorrect nutrition.
The disease develops as a result of a high intake of carbohydrates — the ‘healthy’ diet.
Since ‘healthy eating’ was introduced, type 2 diabetes has become epidemic to such an extent that it now affects children.

This increase at such a time is NOT a coincidence — it is cause and effect.
The reason conventional treatment of diabetes fails is because authoritative bodies such as the American Diabetes Association promote the very diet that caused the disease in the first place — a diet that actually makes the condition worse.

Fortunately Type-2 diabetes is easily treated without the need to resort to drugs by:
A strategy that offers the prospect of cure or successful treatment for diabetes is one that limits hyperinsulinemia by restricting carbohydrate intake — the exact opposite of the conventional approach.

The correct diet for a Type-2 diabetic, (or treatment without drugs)

Let’s start from scratch and pull all the evidence together.

Why Do Adults Become Diabetic?

Adults and children develop Type-2 diabetes as a consequence of eating a high-carbohydrate diet — and for no other reason.

As a diabetic, there is only one way to ‘cure’ the condition and lead a normal drug-free life again: stop doing the thing that caused the disease. Diabetes is caused by a chronic high intake of carbohydrates — sugars and starches. The current "healthy" dietary recommendation advise a chronic intake of carbohydrates.

The evidence says that a low-carb diet is healthier.

The Balanced Diet

There is nothing so dear to a nutritionist’s heart as the idea of a "balanced" diet.
DiabetesUK say: "Foods can be divided into five main groups. In order for us to enjoy a balanced diet we need to eat foods from these groups."
And the ADA say: "No single food will supply all the nutrients your body needs, so good nutrition means eating a variety of foods."
Here is my definition of a balanced diet: A balanced diet is any diet that supplies all the nutrients the body needs in the correct proportions.
If you accept that definition, then a diet entirely of meat — so long as the organs (liver, kidney, etc) and fat are included — is a balanced diet.
Don’t believe me? Then consider what the Inuit (Eskimos) eat, as conveyed in the Eskimo food "pyramid" cartoon above.

Main Points

• Diabetes is not caused by obesity; both conditions are caused by the same thing
• Dietary carbohydrates cause obesity
• Dietary carbohydrates cause diabetes
• Obesity is merely evident before diabetes
• To reduce disease, reduce carbohydrates.

A high fat diet is best for weight loss!
Why? It’s really quite simple. It’s because that is our natural diet!
Q. What have all wild animals got in common?
A. None is overweight and none gets diabetes
Q. What have all primitive humans got in common?
A. None is overweight and none gets diabetes
Q. What have westernized industrial humans got in common?
A. Many are overweight and many get diabetes
Q. What have westernized industrial humans’ pets got in common?
A. Many are overweight and many get diabetes
Do you see the pattern?

What Is Our Natural Diet?

Summary of Evidence

• Agriculture very recent in history.
• For 2.5 million years — diet high-protein, high-fat, low-carb.
• 99.9% of our genes formed before advent of agriculture.
• We evolved eating an animal sourced diet.
• The current concept of a "healthy’ diet quite different — and unnatural.

All this isn’t new. Before 1984, diabetics were treated with low-carb, high-fat diet. Think about it: a low-carb, high-fat diet reduces postprandial (after meals) glucose spikes. If there are no glucose spikes there’s no hyperinsulinaemia and with no hyperinsulinaemia there’s no weight gain and no diabetes.

For diabetics, carbs should be reduced to around 30-40 grams a day.
The amount of calories lost through cutting down on carbs must be made up in some way from other foods. It is important that you do not go hungry.
It is equally important that these calories come from dietary fat — NOT from protein. The aim is to reduce blood glucose and insulin levels. Our bodies will make glucose from protein — they don’t make glucose from fat. And fat is a much better fuel anyway.
Below is a list of foods to avoid. Some will be obvious – others less so.

• Sugar and artificial sweeteners, including honey. The only allowed sweetener is stevia. (Sugar is a problem as it is addictive. I suggest you cut down gradually until you can do without. The other option is to go ‘cold turkey’ and stop it altogether. This will give you withdrawal symptoms, just like stopping any other addictive drug. But this will wear off within about two weeks.)
• Sweets and chocolates, including so-called sugar-free types. (If you want a chocolate treat, say once a week, then eat Continental dark chocolate with 70% or more cocoa solids, not the American stuff where sugar is the first named ingredient.)
• Foods which contain significant proportions of things whose ingredients end in -ol or -ose as these are sugars (the only exception is cellulose, which is a form of dietary fiber)
• "Diet" and "sugar-free" foods (except sugar-free jelly)
• Grains and foods made from them: wheat, rye, barley, corn, rice, bread, pasta, pastry, cakes, biscuits, pies, tarts, breakfast cereals, et cetera.
• Starchy vegetables: potatoes and parsnips in particular; and go easy with beet, carrots, peas, beans, et cetera and packets of mixed vegetables which might contain them
• Beans with the exception of pole beans
• Milk
• Sweetened, fruit and low-fat yogurts
• Cottage cheese
• Beware of commercially packaged foods such as TV dinners, "lean" or "light" in particular, and fast foods, snack foods and "health foods".
• Fruit juices, as these are much higher in carbs than fresh fruit. (If you like fruit juices as a drink, dilute about 1 part fruit juice with 2-4 parts water.)

Given this, the ratios you should adopt for your daily meals are:
10% — 15% carbohydrate
20% — 25% protein
60% — 70% fat
The amount of fat might seem too high to manage. In fact, it isn’t too difficult if you fry as much as possible, buy the fattiest meat you can find — and don’t cut the fat off, and spread butter on cooked vegetables or fatless meat.
As an example, here is an actual menu for meals for one day:

• Breakfast 8:00 am

  2 extra large egg

  3 slices fat bacon

  1/2 cup mushrooms (these soak up fat)

  15g organic butter or coconut milk

  75g banana

  Lunch 1:00 pm

  6 ounce fat pork chop

  1/3 cup carrots

  1/2 cup kale

  1/2 cup yellow squash

  1/3 cup onion

  Butter on vegetables

Evening 6:45pm

7 ounce sirloin steak, cooked in coconut oil

1 medium size beet, roasted, with butter

2 cups beet greens cooked with onions and butter

plus 2 litres of water as plain water or in green teas

That is an example of what I use as a slimming diet — Does it really look so difficult to live on?

Do you need exercise to burn off all these calories? Not really, you won’t gain weight eating this way.

Now that you think there is nothing left to eat, these are foods you can eat:

• All meat , ALL ORGANIC, FREE RANGE  – lamb, beef, pork, bacon, etc
• include the organ meats: liver, kidneys, heart, as these contain the widest range of the vitamins and minerals your body needs (weight for weight, liver has 4 times as much Vitamin C as apples and pears, for example)
• All poultry: organic chicken (with the skin on), goose, duck, turkey, etc. But be aware that turkey is very low in fat, so fat needs to be added.
• All animal and meat fats – without restriction – never cut the fat off meat.
• Cold water fish and seafood- once a week only
• Organic Eggs (no limit, but avoid "omega-3 eggs" as these have been artificially fed which upsets the natural fatty acid profile)
• organic (preferably raw butter (put butter on cooked veggies instead of gravy.;
• Vegetables and fruits as allowed by carb content. You want them low on the glycemic index.
• Condiments: pepper, salt, mustard, herbs and spices
• Soy products are allowed but, as they are highly toxic, I don’t recommend them

Here is a list of the lowest glycemic Vegetables;

Artichoke, asparagus, broccoli, bell peppers, celery, cauliflower, cabbage, green beans, lettuce, mushrooms, onions, kale, beet greens, Swiss chard, collards, turnips, spinach, Bok Choy, fennel.

NOTE: There are two points from a diabetic point of view:

• A diabetic should cut out the fruit at breakfast time if he/she notices the "Dawn Phenomenon" (higher blood glucose levels on waking than before going to bed).
• The small meal in the evening will ensure that blood glucose overnight and in early morning does not go too high

Why the Breakfast Most Americans Will Eat Today Is a Corporate Scam

Wake up and smell the McCafé: Cold cereal, donuts and orange juice are breakfast staples because somebody somewhere wanted money.

Not all of it. But nearly every breakfast staple — cold cereal, donuts, yogurt, bagels and cream cheese, orange juice, frappuccino — is a staple only because somebody somewhere wanted money. Wake up and smell the McCafé.

Seeking to provide sanitarium patients with meatless anti-aphrodisiac breakfasts in 1894, Michigan Seventh-Day Adventist surgeon and anti-masturbation activist John Kellogg developed the process of flaking cooked grains. Hence Corn Flakes. Hence Rice Krispies. Hence a rift between Kellogg and his business partner/brother, who wanted to sweeten Kellogg’s cereals in hopes of selling more. Guess who won.

In pre-Corn Flakes America, breakfast wasn’t cold or sweet. It was hot, hearty and lardy, and it had about 4,000 calories.

“Breakfast was the biggest meal of the day. Eaten before you headed out to do a whole day of farm chores, it had to keep you going until dinner,” says food historian Andrew F. Smith, author of Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine (Columbia University Press, 2009). Pre-industrial Americans loaded up on protein-rich eggs, sausages, ham and American-style belly-fat bacon along with ancient carb classics: mush, pancakes, bread.

The Great Cereal Shift mirrored — and triggered — other shifts: Farm to factory. Manual to mechanical. Cowpuncher to consumer. Snake-oil superstition to science. Biggest of all was food’s transition from home-grown/home-butchered to store-bought.

“Cold cereals are an invention of vegetarians and the health-food industry, first through Kellogg’s and then through C.W. Post, which steals all of Kellogg’s ideas,” Smith explains.

“These companies realized early on that people like sugar, and kids really like sugar — so they shifted their sales target from adults concerned about health to kids who love sugar. It’s a thoroughly American invention.”

As is orange juice, another breakfast contrivance marketed as healthy for kids. Media buzz about vitamin C and advances in pasteurization spawned the orange-juice industry in the 1930s, turning an obscure luxury into a household necessity.

“Orange juice has come to symbolize purity in a glass,” writes agriculture expert Alissa Hamilton in Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice (Yale University Press, 2009). Her research reveals a highly processed product whose use of cheaply grown foreign fruit now mandates a massive carbon footprint:

“Orange juice marketers have succeeded in creating an aura of golden goodness around the product. The idea that orange juice is ‘an essential part of a balanced breakfast’ is familiar and for the most part unchallenged.”

Hamilton is outraged that commercial orange juice is “advertised as pure, fresh, and additive-free. Those who buy orange juice buy the stories that the industry tells.”

Major companies use “flavor packs” engineered by the same firms that create perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein to make their juice smell and taste “fresh” despite its long shelf life:

“Flavor packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label. … The formulas vary to give a brand’s trademark taste. If you’re discerning, you may have noticed Minute Maid has a candylike orange flavor. That’s largely due to the flavor pack Coca-Cola has chosen for it.”

Tropicana, meanwhile, is owned by PepsiCo.

“Ask yourself why, like most people, you drink orange juice,” Hamilton urges. “You probably say the reason is that it is good for you, or that it is high in vitamin C, or that you grew up drinking it and like it. If so, then I must frankly tell you that, when it comes to orange juice, you are acting like a robot.”

From; AlterNet.com

Millie; By the way, which breakfast pictured looks more appetizing?  In the next post I will examine the nutrition content in each of these breakfasts…

Oatmeal or a Traditional Breakfast?

Each day we need approximately 2000 calories, athletes and pregnant or lactating mothers need more.

Each meal should give us about a third of the nutrients and calories we need each day.  So given that information, what should we eat for breakfast; oatmeal or a traditional breakfast?

Oatmeal

Here’s the nutrition info on a breakfast consisting of oatmeal with milk with blueberries added;

Calories-  458
25% of those calories came from fat
57% came from carbohydrates
18% came from protein.
You got 4% of needed Vitamin C for the day- You need 2000 mg a day for optimum health.
You got 4651 IU of Vitamin D- you need 50,000 IU a day.

Calories were about 1/4 of what you needed, Vitamins C and D were woefully inadequate.  Carbs were way too high and will leave you hungry and experiencing low blood sugar well before lunch.  You did not get enough fat or protein in this meal so the meal will digest quickly and leave you looking for food well before lunch.

How to Eat Far Healthier and Save a LOT of Money

Cook and Eat at home….yep, it’s that simple..

The most recent statistic I found said that Americans eat out and average of four to five times a week. That was entire meals, not just coffee or a snack. Add that in—and try to make healthy restaurant choices instead of fast food—and it’s no wonder we think we can’t afford to eat healthy.

In Righteous Porkchop, Nicolette Hahn Niman discussed how people often balk at the cost of a dozen organic local eggs (which would last for several meals) but spend the same amount—or more—on a coffee beverage that will be gone in a few minutes. Good restaurants are fun and can definitely be part of mindful eating, but homemade meals save you money, are a more appropriate portion-size and, best of all, you know exactly what’s in them. When you make an occasion of eating out, you will appreciate it much more.

10 Ways Children Show US the Way to Happiness

From Elephant Journal

1. Cry. Then, forget what you were crying about. If you’re unhappy, go there. Like #1, don’t reject feelings because they aren’t “approved.” Be negative. Regret mistakes. Wallow in heartbreak—briefly. Then, move on.

2. Work hard at Playing. If your work isn’t fulfilling you, get a new job. Seriously. That’s not advice for yuppies—that’s advice for living. If you’re a writer, get a job watching a parking lot or hotel, where you can read. If you enjoy manual labor (my house painter friend loves to paint—especially when the paint is “eco” and non-fumey—he loves the exercise, the money, and being out-of-doors), god bless: no type of workplay is any better than any other (you’ll discover that, parents, when you buy your child a pricey, silly present only to find them playing with a cardboard box, an hour later). In Buddhism, we call it “natural hierarchy—do whatever you 1) love that you’re 2) best at and 3) is of most service to the welfare of others. You do those three things, and work becomes joy…you know, playtime.

3. Get in water once a day. Swim. Bathe. Children swim. A lot. They love water. Old wrinkly cranky uptight stressed cool people don’t jump in water enough. I should know. I’ve been both.

4. Laugh. Children are good at laughing. I’m really popular with children—mainly ’cause I got this whole wink/jump around/laugh/run around/make funny noises/make weird faces moves. They go crazy for that stuff. Last time I laughed? Yesterday, probably. I can’t remember. I smile a lot. I make jokes and all that. I listen to jokes and all that. I remember almost laughing today. I probably laughed a bunch, but forgot. Anyways…that’s my point: we get old when we can’t remember the last time we laughed. Americans spend millions and billions on bodywork and moisturizer and exercise and plastic surgery and hair tinting…when laughter, free, will make you look ravishing and happy and keep you healthy. Get on it.

For Full Article….

When will This Low Fat Madness Go Away?!

The low fat mania that Americans have been following for 30 years has led us to the horrible health most Americans suffer from; heart disease, diabetes, obesity…and their are still many advocates of this way of eating..including our government!

Michelle Obama’s new Food Plate advocates a diet far too low in fat and protein.  When we keep telling people to eat more fruits and veggies we are effectively telling them to keep eat carbs- fruits and veggies are 95% carbs!  I plugged in my almost perfect nutrition into both the GOV Nutrition Site that follow Michelle Obama’s recommendations and the FIRST thing it advised me to do is to contact a health professional to help me learn how to gain weight!   In spite of Baptist Hospitals review and testing of my health 2 years ago that showed me to be in PERFECT health; absolutely no plague in my arteries (unheard of for most people above the age of 5 in our country), perfect LDL/HDL ratio, no nutrition deficits, no joint calcifications or issues, perfect bone density. 

And needless to say I do not WANT to gain weight!   I have been the same size since I was 16 years old and want to stay that way!  Can we really have gotten to the point that small/thin people are seen as abnormal, a condition to be fixed?  I’m not talking about thin from a disorder or illness, I’m think because I always have been, am active, great genes…I come from a thin family.  AND I do not eat most of my calories from carbs, like most Americans.

Carbs, not fat, make you fat.  Fat is dense in nutrients you need and makes every biological function in your body happen.  You eat too much food because you never feel satisfied. Your body tells you to keep eating because you are not getting the nutrients you need.  Brain activity and function depend on saturated fats, so does your immune system.  The depth of nutrients in it are profound, thus they truly make you feel more satisfied.  Because you are.  Butter, coconut oils, proteins all satiate us because they are so dense in what we need.

Add high quality, grass fed meats, eggs, and plenty of low glycemic veggies, heavy on green leafy ones…and you have a perfect diet, and lose weight safely…and quickly. 

Lowering Saturated fats CAUSES Heart Disease!

This is one doctors advise, which is fairly typical;

Millie; We are going to take each one of these pieces of advise and address them…

• Don’t smoke.  If you do smoke quit now.
• If you have high blood pressure be sure it is well controlled.
• If you have diabetes do everything you can to control your blood sugars.
• If you have high LDL cholesterol and other risk factors discuss use of a statin or other lipid lowering medications with your doctor.
• Stay fit.  Exercise regularly, reduce your dietary animal fat intake, and lose weight if you are overweight or obese.
• If you already have atherosclerotic vascular disease, i.e. if you have had a heart attack, stroke, or peripheral artery disease even more aggressive treatment of risk factors like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes is important.  Ask your doctor about how to accomplish these things.
• Ask your doctor about taking an aspirin daily.

1)  Don’t smoke. If you do smoke quit now. – Great advise, do so now…

2) If you have high blood pressure be sure it is well controlled.  This is great advise but you want to control it by not getting it to start with..you do not want to take medication for it…

3) If you have diabetes do everything you can to control your blood sugars.  Eat substantially more saturated fats, 2/3 of each meal should be high quality organic/grass fed proteins, eggs.  The rest should be mostly low glycemic vegetables with a lot of green leafy veggies. No grains, cereals, bread, junk food, no soft drinks, no fruit juices, one to two small servings a fruit a day with a meal (never alone).

4)  Stay fit. Exercise regularly. Great advise, take it and run.  You want weight bearing/resistant exercise for bone health (yoga, weights, Pilates) and aerobic exercise for cardio-vascular health (walking, running, dancing, cycling, swimming, hiking, etc.…something that gets your heart rate up at LEAST a half hour a day…more if possible. And, no, it doesn’t have to be all at once…)

5)  Reduce your dietary animal fat intake. HORRIBLE advise, the very opposite of what you need to do!  50% of each days

6)  Lose weight if you are overweight or obese.  Follow the advise in #3, you will lose weight quickly, lower blood pressure, reverse or prevent heart disease and stroke, gain WAY more energy…and be happier.

7)  If you already have atherosclerotic vascular disease, i.e. if you have had a heart attack, stroke, or peripheral artery disease even more aggressive treatment of risk factors like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes is important. Ask your doctor about how to accomplish these things.  Your ONLY aggressive treatment should be nutrition unless you are looking at imminent, immediate death. 

8) Ask your doctor about taking an aspirin daily.  Good advise, take one a day. Or take quercetin, another excellent anti-inflammatory that is all natural, comes with no side effects and is inexpensive, get it at your health food store.

If you do not know what constitutes perfect nutrition, buy my book, “The Criterion Diet”…or carefully read the posts on this blog and follow the nutrition directives. 

Dieters on a Low Glycemic Diet Lose Faster and Safer

Millie; They use the term “diet” to mean something you do short term to reach a desired goal.  Eating a low glycemic diet is what we all should be eating all the time.  2000 calories a day means you meet your caloric and nutrient needs and you will lose weight and maintain it of tor the rest of your life!

By MARK BITTMAN at the New York Times

Over the long term, the low-glycemic diet appears to work the best, because you don’t have to eliminate an entire class of nutrients, which our research suggests is not only hard from a psychological perspective but may be wrong from a biological perspective.”

One of the challenges of arguing that hyperprocessed carbohydrates are largely responsible for the obesity pandemic (“epidemic” is no longer a strong enough word, say many experts) is the notion that “a calorie is a calorie.”

Accept that, and you buy into the contention that consuming 100 calories’ worth of sugar water (like Coke or Gatorade), white bread or French fries is the same as eating 100 calories of broccoli or beans. And Big Food — which has little interest in selling broccoli or beans — would have you believe that if you expend enough energy to work off those 100 calories, it simply doesn’t matter.

There’s an increasing body of evidence, however, that calories from highly processed carbohydrates like white flour (and of course sugar) provide calories that the body treats differently, spiking both blood sugar and insulin and causing us to retain fat instead of burning it off.

In other words, all calories are not alike.
You might need a little background here: To differentiate “bad” carbs from “good,” scientists use the term “glycemic index” (or “load”) to express the effect of the carbs on blood sugar. High glycemic diets cause problems by dramatically increasing blood sugar and insulin after meals; low glycemic diets don’t. Highly processed carbohydrates (even highly processed whole grains, like instant oatmeal and fluffy whole-grain breads) tend to make for higher glycemic diets; less processed grains, fruits, non-starchy vegetables, legumes and nuts — along with fat and protein — make for a lower glycemic diet.

A new study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association adds powerfully to the notion that low glycemic diets are the way forward. (Or, actually, backward, since the low glycemic diet is largely traditional.) The work took place at the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center  of Boston Children’s Hospital, and looked at people’s ability to maintain weight loss, which is far more difficult than losing weight. (Few people maintain even a small portion of their weight loss after dieting.) To do this, the researchers — led by the center’s associate director Cara Ebbeling and director David Ludwig — put three groups of people on diets to lose 10 to 15 percent of their body weight.

They then assigned each of the dieters, in random order, to follow four weeks each of three diets with the same number of calories. One was a standard low-fat diet: 60 percent carbohydrates — with an emphasis on fruits, vegetables and whole grains (but not unprocessed ones) — 20 percent from protein and 20 percent from fat. This is the low-fat diet that has been reigning “wisdom” for the last 30 years or more.

Another was an ultra-low-carb diet (for convenience, we’ll call this “Atkins”), of 10 percent of calories from carbs, 60 percent from fat and 30 percent from protein. And the third was a low glycemic diet, with 40 percent carbs — minimally processed grains, fruit, vegetables and legumes — 40 percent fat and 20 percent protein.

The results were impressive. Those on the “Atkins” diet burned 350 calories more per day — the equivalent of an hour of moderate exercise — than those on the standard low-fat diet. Those on the low-glycemic diet burned 150 calories more, roughly equivalent to an hour of light exercise.

Three conclusions you can draw on the face of this: One is that the kind of calories you eat does matter. Two, as Ludwig concludes, is that “the low-fat diet that has been the primary approach for more than a generation is actually the worst for most outcomes, with the worst effects on insulin resistance, triglycerides and HDL, or good cholesterol.” And three, we should all be eating an “Atkins” diet.

But not so fast; the “Atkins” diet also had marked problems. It raised levels of CRP (c-reactive protein), which is a measure of chronic inflammation, and cortisol, a hormone that mediates stress. “Both of these,” says Ludwig, “are tightly linked to long term-heart risk and mortality.”

His conclusion, then? “The ‘Atkins’ diet gives you the biggest metabolic benefit initially, but there are long-term downsides, and in practice, people have trouble sticking to low-carb diets. Over the long term, the low-glycemic diet appears to work the best, because you don’t have to eliminate an entire class of nutrients, which our research suggests is not only hard from a psychological perspective but may be wrong from a biological perspective.”

Almost every diet, from the radical no-carb-at-all notions to the tame (and sane) “Healthy Eating Plate” from Harvard, agrees on at least this notion: reduce, or even come close to eliminating, the amount of hyper-processed carbohydrates in your diet, because, quite simply, they’re bad for you. And if you look at statistics, at least a quarter of our calories come from added sugars (seven percent from beverages alone), white flour, white rice, white pasta … are you seeing a pattern here? (Oh, and white potatoes. And beer.)

So what’s Ludwig’s overall advice? “It’s time to reacquaint ourselves with minimally processed carbs. If you take three servings of refined carbohydrates and substitute one of fruit, one of beans and one of nuts, you could eliminate 50 percent of diet-related disease in the United States. These relatively modest changes can provide great benefit.”

The message is pretty simple: unprocessed foods give you a better chance of idealizing your weight — and your health. Because all calories are not created equal.