Healthy Eating For Diabetics

Our bodies need proteins continually but cannot store them in any quantity.
Therefore, you should eat proteins regularly on a daily basis, and at the same meal, in quantities proportional to your size. But they must be complete proteins: if any one of the essential amino acids is missing, the cell rebuilding process will abort.
Our bodies need about 1 - 1.5 grams of complete protein for every 1 kg (2 pounds) lean body weight per day.
. All meat - lamb, beef, pork, bacon, etc
. include the organ meats: liver, kidneys, heart, as these containthe the widest range of 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: 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.
. Continental sausage (beware of British sausage which usually has a high cereal content.)
. All animal and meat fats - without restriction - never cut the fat off meat.
. Fish and seafood of all types
. Eggs (no limit)
. All cheeses (except cottage cheese as this has a high carbcontent and very little fat)
. Soy products are allowed but, as they are toxic, I don't recommend them (see Soy On Line

The science of nutrition is highly complex and, even today, little is known about the vital part that fat plays in our health and well-being. Nutrients interact: a deficiency of one can have a profound effect on the metabolism of others.
Today, a lack of dietary fat probably causes a wider range of abnormalities than deficiencies of any other single nutrient.
With some 9 kcals per gram, fat is the best source of energy, but it does much more than provide energy.

Restriction of dietary fat causes a range of problems including:
. dry skin and eczema,
. damage to ovaries in females,
. infertility in males,
. kidney damage,
. and weight gain through water retention in the body.

When there is little or no fat in the gut, there is nothing to stimulate the production of bile, the gall-bladder is not emptied and the bile is held in reserve.
This leads to the formation of gallstones. If a fat-free diet is continued for a long time, the gall bladder - a necessary part of the digestive system - may atrophy.

Malabsorption of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K has consequences for yet more nutrients.
If vitamin D and fat are not present in the intestine, for example, calcium is not absorbed. For a woman, whose chance of suffering from osteoporosis and osteomalacia is high, this is an important consideration.

Dieters are usually told to drink skimmed milk. This has the advantage, they are told, that it contains more calcium than full-cream milk. This is true, but skimmed milk does not contain fat. As a consequence, only about 5% of the calcium in skimmed milk is absorbed, compared to around 25% from semi-skimmed milk and 50% from full-cream milk.
This small absorption of calcium is reduced still further if the skimmed milk is eaten with a bran-laden breakfast cereal. Calcium-enriched milk sold in supermarkets may seem worth the extra expense but, as it is invariably calcium-enriched skimmed milk, most of that extra calcium is simply excreted without doing any good at all.

"Fat is the most valuable food known to man" PROFESSOR JOHN YUDKIN

All body cells require a continuous supply of various fatty acids. If insufficient are supplied from food, the body tries to make them from sugar.
This causes blood sugar levels to fall, you feel very hungry and eat more, generally of the wrong things - and compromise your health.

Fat also has a satiety value: it takes longer to digest and stops you feeling hungry. Eat a hundred calories less fat at a meal and you will probably feel hungry so quickly that you will eat three times as many calories - in the form of sugary or starchy foods, because they are convenient.

It seems that the gut's nutrient-measuring system works so well with fat that it is difficult, if not impossible, to eat too much of it. Try and you will make yourself sick. Mp> But for the same reason, eating fat stops you eating too much in total. If your body needs 10 grams of fat, your appetite will not be satisfied until you have consumed those 10 grams of fat.
If you eat those 10 grams as 25 grams (1 oz) of Cheddar cheese, you will take in about 125 calories.
If you eat them as wholemeal bread thinly spread with a very low-fat spread, you will need to eat about eight slices - a total of about 200 calories!
Despite what you have been told, the truly healthy fats are the natural ones that we ate for the whole of our existence - until the 20th century; a time when diabetes and all the conditions related to diabetes were either rare or nonexistent.
So foods for diabetics, as well as non-diabetics, should contain those fats.

Those natural fats were animal fats and tropical oils. That's all.

So healthy fats are:
. The fat on meat: Beef tallow, Pork fat (lard), Lamb and mutton fat, Goose and duck fat, suet, bone marrow, brains
. Dairy fats: Butter, cream, full-fat cheeses
. Egg yolks; there's no fat in the whites. (Egg whites are used in the building trade in Poland!)
. Coconut and palm oils
. Olive oil
One big difficulty these days is that, after two decades of 'healthy eating' dogma, it isn't easy to buy really healthy foods for diabetics. This means that getting sufficient fats into your diet is made more difficult than it was half a century ago.
So:
. Buy the fattest meat you can find.
. Don't cut the fat off meat.
. Don't remove the skin from chicken, duck, goose or turkey.
. Use duck or goose in preference to chicken and turkey. They arefatter birds, taste better and provide lots of lovely, tasty fat forcooking.
. Use full-cream milk in preference to semi-skimmed or skimmed, orbetter still, as most of the milk is water, why not just buy cream? It's cheaper in the long run. And you can get the calcium and protein better from cheese. The best cheeses for calcium are Parmesan, Swiss cheeses and Cheddar.
. Eat your fruit with cream if you wish, put butter rather than gravy on cooked vegetables, and an olive oil dressing on salads.
. Eat fatty fish occasionally
. Cook with an animal fat or coconut or palm oil. With a higher saturated fatty acid content, these are more stable and less likely to be damaged by the heat.

For more evidence that saturated fats are healthy, see Saturated fat is better for diabetics than starch

You don't have to look very far to find the evidence that unsaturated fats are dangerous. Studies go right back to 1945, when a scientist named Rausch at the University of Wisconsin noticed that rats which had corn oil added to their diets had more cancers.[1]
That observation alone should have ensured that there was a thorough investigation of unsaturated fats before they were applied to humans. Yet no such trials were ever done.
Over the following years, several scientists highlighted increased numbers of cancers in people with highly polyunsaturated diets.
In 1957, Dr D Harman, an investigator from the Veterans' Hospital in San Francisco, advised caution with the use of polyunsaturated fats in human diets because of the cancer-producing compounds that could result from their auto-oxidation.[2]
He pointed out that the Japanese had much more stomach cancer which, he suggested, was because of the polyunsaturated fats in the fish the Japanese ate.
In the 1960s an 8-year study was conducted at the Veterans' Hospital, San Francisco, to look into the benefits of polyunsaturated fats for the prevention of cardiovascular disease.
The results were published in 1971.[3] In this study scientists split war veterans into two groups. One group ate their normal diet with animal fats, while the other group's diet was high in polyunsaturated fats.
During the study, careful records were kept and autopsies were performed to verify causes of death.
The results showed that there were a few more deaths from heart attacks among the men on the saturated fats, but this was unremarkable as variations in numbers of this sort were not unusual.
What was far more important was that there were almost twice as many deaths from cancer in the polyunsaturated fats group. This did come as a surprise, for deaths from cancer do not show the variation that is seen with heart attacks. Not surprisingly, this study questioned the advisability of using polyunsaturated fats.

But there is another question hanging over this paper: it was not published in an American journal, but an English one. I have to wonder: was it refused publication in the USA?
And, if so, why?

There have also been many other studies on both animals and humans which have shown the unhealthiness of polyunsaturated fats and oils.
References
1. Rausch HP, Kline BE, Baumann CA. The influence of calorie restriction and of dietary fat on the tumor formation with ultraviolet light. Cancer Res 1945; 5: 431.
2 Harman D: Atherosclerosis: possible ill-effects of the use of highly unsaturated fats to lower serum cholesterol levels. Lancet 1957; II: 1116.
3. Pearce ML, Dayton S. Incidence of cancer in men on a diet high in polyunsaturated fat. Lancet 1971; I:464-7.

There is one class of fats that everyone agrees is harmful: they are called trans -fats.
To make a solid margarine from liquid vegetable oils they must be hydrogenated to change the double bond(s) from bent to straight. This process involves heating the fat with hydrogen and a catalyst under pressure. Unfortunately the conversion in this process is not complete. A small proportion of the unsaturated fatty acid is not hydrogenated but converted to a trans-fatty acid (TFA).
For example, the TFA arising from oleic acid is still unsaturated, with a double bond in the same place, but with a different spatial arrangement around the double bond. This change gives the new molecule a different shape and property.
Partially hydrogenated vegetable fat is used primarily in fast food and other commercially manufactured fried and baked foods to boost their shelf life; TFAs are found in thousands of products on supermarket shelves. [1] A diet high in frozen meals, pies, crackers, biscuits, chips, muffins, doughnuts, snack bars, butter or margarine, are likely to contain high levels of TFAs.
There is no argument by either side of the fat debate that fats containing such TFAs are unhealthy. TFAs inflame the arteries and accelerate heart disease.[2]
Despite this, margarine manufacturers claim that margarine is healthier than butter because they class saturated fatty acids and TFAs in margarine together, and then show that the two combined in margarine are less than the total saturated fatty acid content of butter. This, of course, is based on the totally untrue assumption that saturated fatty acids are harmful.
If we were wise, we would ban this harmful ingredient from our food supply. Denmark banned these commercial fats in 2004 with no adverse effect on taste or price of affected food, including fast food and even their famous Danish pastries.[3]
But even then the message can still go wrong. In a recent New York Times there were samples of new FDA food labels that included TFA levels in foods. But conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which is entirely healthy and beneficial as it has been shown to reduce cancer and heart disease risk and help with overweight, is a trans-fat. So now butter, which contains about 0.5 g per serving of CLA, has to be labelled as containing trans-fat. This makes butter look unhealthy when it is actually exactly the opposite.
So to put the record straight: trans-fats in vegetable margarines and cooking oils are harmful; trans-fats in animal fats are good for you.
References
1. Stender S, Dyerberg J, Astrup A. High levels of industrially produced trans fat in popular fast foods. N Engl J Med 2006; 354: 1650-1652. 2. Mozaffrian D, Katan MB, Ascherio A, et al. Trans fatty acids and cardiovascular disease. N Engl J Med 2006; 354: 1601-1613. 3. Astrup A. The trans fatty acid story in Denmark. Atheroscler Suppl 2006; 7: 43-46.

Trans-fatty acids are now being abandoned by many manufacturers as it has become accepted that they are harmful. Instead, a new type of fat, called interesterified fat, has been developed.
Interesterified fat is hydrogenated and then rearranged on the molecular level, a process which hardens fat in much the same way as trans-fatty acids.
But new research published in a recent issue of Nutrition & Metabolism suggests that interesterified fats may be even more unhealthy than the trans-fats they replace.[1]
The structure of each individual fat molecule is important to health as the specific location of individual fatty acids on the glycerol molecule seems to affect the metabolism of both fat and glucose.
Two key results from the study, which compared diets containing natural saturated palm oil with partially hydrogenated soybean oil and interesterified soybean oil, stood out:
Firstly, HDL levels dropped on the interesterified fat diet;
secondly, while blood glucose levels remained relatively stable for 8 hours on the palm oil and partially hydrogenated soybean oil diets, the interesterified fat diet suppressed insulin production allowing blood glucose levels to rise by an alarming 20%.
Reference
1. Sundram K, Karupaiah T, KC Hayes KC. Stearic acid-rich interesterified fat and trans-rich fat raise the LDL/HDL ratio and plasma glucose relative to palm olein in humans. Nutr Metab 2007 ; 4: 3.

Diet gurus often restrict the amount of any particular food a person should eat - usually to a specific number of calories, but not everyone eats the same amount. For example, a smaller person will eat less than a tall one and a child will eat a different amount from an adult.
So, laying down specific total amounts can be misleading and potentially damaging.
Taking this into consideration, let me put it another way, and suggest that you eat as much as will satisfy you while aiming for the ratios set out below.
The major consideration is that you are satisfied. It is important that you do not go hungry because, if you are hungry, you will eat more - and probably of the wrong things because they are convenient.
Having said that, there are practical limits on certain food stuffs, above which, blood glucose levels are likely to be adversely affected.
Fats

As we saw earlier, dietary fats do not contribute to body fat or to raised blood glucose or insulin levels; so there is no limit on the amount of fat that can be eaten.

Carbs, the major cause of obesity, diabetes and the complications associated with these conditions, MUST be limited. Research has shown that a limit of about 10% of calorie intake is safe.
For all practical purposes this is some30 to 50 grams spread among the day's meals.

If you are not diabetic, the carb limitation can be relaxed somwhat. But even then there is a limit of some 60-70 grams if you don't want to become diabetic.

Because people have been taught to be afraid of fat, it is common for some to increase protein too much for an energy source. This must not happen.
There is an excellent article on the second-opinions website that explains why it is not a good idea to increase protein too much.

When you have selected the right foods and stocked your larder, all you need to know is in what proportion these foods should be eaten. It is determined, like everything else, by our evolution and our body's needs.
For the best of health and for weight maintenance, research has shown that you should try for the following ratios of the three macronutrients:

. Carbs - 10-15% of calories
. Protein - 15-25% of calories
. Fat - 60-70% of calories

Carbs. The ideal figure for carbohydrates has been found to be about 50-75 grams. That amount avoids the problems caused by a too drastic change of energy source during the few weeks after the changeover period. It is also the maximum amount that a diabetic should eat. After your body has become accustomed to not getting the level of carbs it had previously, you can eat more or less as you like.
Protein and fat. To maintain your body and provide it with the amino acids it needs for cell regeneration and repair, plus the enzymes that control almost all body functions, your consumption should be at least 1 to 1.5 grams of good quality protein for each kilogram of lean body weight. This means in practice eating some 50 to 100 grams of protein. You then need to ingest sufficient fat for its essential role in body maintenance as well as to supply the energy your body needs to function. As only some 23% of lean meat is protein, whereas fat is practically all fat, this equates to eating meat which is about 4-6 parts lean to one part fat.
You should also include variety or organ meats like liver and kidneys as these contain the widest range of the vitamins, minerals and trace elements your body needs.

"Eat real food! Food is an important part of a balanced diet" FRAN LEBOWITZ

We don't always agree with Diabetes UK and the American Diabetic Association. But there is one thing we do agree on, and that is that there is no reason to eat special 'diabetic' products.
It is recognised that foods containing lots of sugar are not the best things for diabetics to eat. For this reason, similar foods are heavily laced with artificial sweeteners and sold at 4 times the price of the real thing. As well as artificial sweeteners being probably more harmful than sugar, they also perpetuate a taste for oversweet things, which is a habit you really need to ditch.
Because of the phobia about fats, diabetic products are also liberally laced with carbohydrates and artificial fat substitutes. These are not healthy either.
Putting it in a nutshell, 'diabetic' products have no benefits to your health and can harm both your health and your pocket - but they do wonders for the food companies' profits.
It is always much better to eat real food and learn to like foods that are not so sweet by reducing the amount of sugar you use until you don't need any.

The overweight and obese have always provided a very lucrative and ready market for food companies to exploit with expensive, nutrient-poor, highly-processed, 'slimming foods' and diet products.
Some of these, the liquid powders you made into a drink, were made largely from skim milk powder, with added chemicals and artificial flavours. The ingredients were very cheap for the manufacturers to buy (skim milk powder is almost given away), but were very expensive for the dieter to buy. Others included inert fillers which contained little or no food at all.
We had hoped that when the new low-carb way of eating caught on, these rip-off merchants would be unable to sell their products and go into liquidation.
How naive we were! It merely gave them yet another market to exploit.
The question we are asked most often is: 'Where can I buy low-carb foods?'
The answer of course is simple: you can buy all the foods you need in any high street at the supermarket, butcher's shop, dairy and farm shop because it is not necessary to buy anything special with the diabetes diet way of eating.
Nevertheless, shopping for natural, fresh and healthy food was undermined when low-carb books promoted low-carb products such as meal replacements and dietary supplements. Readers were misled into believing that they needed these special products to be successful but, because most books were from the USA, these products were not at first available in the UK. As low-carb diets increased in popularity the products were shipped to Britain and British food producers adopted a 'me too please' attitude and also jumped on the low-carb bandwagon.

It is always healthier to eat foods as near to natural as possible. There are so many foods in this category that it is quite unnecessary to eat the heavily-promoted rubbish aimed at damaging both your wealth and your health.
Supermarkets are a way of life these days; they have supplanted specialist shops and stores, and that has not benefitted our health. But, although most of the products sold in supermarkets today are quite unsuitable for human consumption - if you want to remain healthy - it is possible to buy real food there.
The secret is to shop around the edges. The cold cabinets around the edges of the stores are where you are most likely to find real food.
Stay out of the aisles except for condiments, tea, coffee or cocoa, and the occasional treat.
Real food will be plainly wrapped, rather than extravagently packaged and have a label that indicates that the product contains no additives, preservatives, colourings or items that you don't recognise as 'food'.

We often talk about the effect of different foods on blood glucose and cholesterol. But we tend to forget what we drink.
The best and most natural drink is, of course, water. But many people don't drink water on its own, they put something else in it such as tea or coffee or sugar or a fruit juice.

These additions can have a significant effect on the body. When you are thirsty, your body is telling you that it wants water, not food.
It is very easy to increase your blood glucose levels or body fat without apparently 'eating' anything, if you drink a drink that contains carbs.
Obvious examples are sodas or fruit juices.
Alcohol is also something to beware of. Alcohol contains 7 kcals per gram.
This is a significant amount of energy. Alcohol is not a carbohydrate and won't increase either blood glucose levels or body fat itself. However, it does provide calories and is used preferentially by the body. This means that if there are sufficient calories from the alcohol, the existing glucose from carbs in the blood is more likely to raise insulin levels and to be stored as body fat.
The safest drink is water. However, if you are out at a party, stick to dry wines and spirits as these don't contain carbs. And don't drink too many.
At home, if you like fruit juice, water it down. An 8 oz glass of orange juice probably contains the equivalent of 6 or 7 oranges. This is far too much for your health. It's much safer to quarter fill the glass with orange juice and make the other three-quarters water.
Hot drinks such as tea, coffee, cocoa are fine, but beware of milk because it contains lactose, a sugar which puts glucose into the bloodstream just as table sugar (sucrose) does. Rather than put in milk, it is better to use cream. You don't need much, but cream does have the advantage that it helps to raise your fat intake.

Created by Blindo

Last updated on 1 January 2012
Copyright: R J Moore 2008-2012 all rights reserved.