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Saturday 9 November 2013

Latest approach to diabetes, eat like your grandparents !

And we're all familiar with the advice - get moving, lose weight, reduce fat in your diet. But one expert is suggesting that the solution could be a diet low in carbohydrates and high in fat. Professor Grant Schofield, from the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand says that's the conclusion of research last year in several countries including Tonga, Tokelau, Kiribati and Vanuatu. He found people in Vanuatu were healthier than in Kiribati and the difference was diet - a traditional diet.
What you see is contrary to what the regular health advice is, which is like you're too fat, you need to exercise more and eat less and you particularly need to get your fat down. We've gone for the opposite approach which is just reduce the sugar and refined and processed carbohydrates, but make sure you do get some fat and protein and those sorts of traditional foods. And you see quite a good deal of success. So we're not the first to do this. When the actual science has been done and proper randomised controlled trials that you see that these diets are actually highly effective in helping people lose weight and sort their diabetes out.
More on this story here.
Eddie

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh great as my great grand parents ate alot of boiled potatoes and bread and a pudding every day - they were very thin but active.

Lowcarb team member said...

Anon

If they were diabetics med taking must have been a full-time job eh ?

You probably didn't notice, we are called thelowcarbdiabetic i.e. we promote a diet for diabetics. We believe the correct diet is fundamental for good long term control. "boiled potatoes and bread and a pudding every day" leads to poor control for many.

BTW What's the weather like in Wales today.

Eddie

Anonymous said...

It's not so much the food our grandparents ate, it's the energy they used on a daily basis.
We are all so used to the car, labour saving devices and sedentary jobs that we cannot eat their diet and remain healthy.

My Gran made some great puddings, jam roly poly suet pudding and treacle but she burned them off by hand washing the laundry, scrubbing floors and the like.

Lowcarb team member said...

Anon

When your grandparents were young the food shops did not contain the massive amounts of low fat high carb junk. Take out the junk from the average supermarket and only about ten percent of the food would remain.

Eddie

Galina L. said...

I just left the same comment on another LC diabetic blogs,then I left it in a wrong place, but I want to repeat it here-
Guys, lets eat better than our grandparents! I was fortunate enough to be raised in old eating traditions, like no snacks between meals, all food cooked from the scratch, fermented vegetables and organ meats regularly consumed, but many traditional diets rely too heavily on a starch, which is less metabolically damaging when consumed within traditional pattern of eating, but still couldn't be complitely benign for some people.

There is more in traditional way of eating than avoiding fast food. Try not to eat snacks and don't give snacks to your children - they would be less picky at the meal time and would learn that feeling a little bit hungry is not an emergency. Offer water more often between meals, and avoid too much to drink during your meals. Do not limit your meat to just muscles of animals. Eat mushrooms, learn to collect eatable mushrooms, berries and herbs.

Many put a finger at the fast food places, while the whole pattern of eating is distorted. Without going to McDonalds you can buy a lot of wrong food from a local or even organic store, or even cook it yourself.

Unknown said...

Go Prof Schofield! These findings give even more weight to those of Karin O'Dea with indigenous Australians and Jay Wortman with the First Nations' people in Canada. They also make Loren Cordain's arguments for the Paleo Diet even more sensible. We should all be eating the way we evolved to eat, not stuffing ourselves with fake carbage food. (Down off my soapbox...)

Lowcarb team member said...

"Oh great as my great grand parents ate alot of boiled potatoes and bread and a pudding every day - they were very thin but active.

My grand parents ate potatoes but not lots and they also ate real bread not your commercial breads full of additives. They also ate plenty of fried foods using lard and beef dripping as did my parents.

Graham

Lowcarb team member said...

"Go Prof Schofield!"

Absolutely !

All the best Jan