Twelve reasons why diabetes charities should ditch the low fat diet and recommend low carbs

By Jerome Burne Some extracts.

If you know anything about nutrition, and especially if you have friends or people in your family with diabetes, you have probably wondered: Why are diabetics advised to follow a low fat diet?

It means you will eat lots of carbohydrates, which get turned into extra blood glucose. Odd surely when the key aim of diabetes treatment is to keep blood sugar low? Why not begin treatment by cutting your carb intake to a minimum?

It sounds such a no brainer that the next thought is: surely the experts can’t have got it that wrong, there must be a good reason. I don’t know about it. But according to a paper about to be published in the journal Nutrition – there isn’t.

The abstract makes the point very clearly: “Dietary carbohydrate restriction reliably reduces high blood glucose, does not require weight loss, leads to the reduction or elimination of medication and has never shown to cause side effects comparable to those seen with many drugs.” What’s not to like?

The paper throws down the gauntlet to the diabetes establishment. “We set out 12 ways in which the low fat diet is the better option,” says lead author Richard Feinman Professor of Biochemistry at State University of New York Downstate Medical Center. “They represent the best documented and least controversial results. They are sufficiently compelling that we feel the burden of proof rests with those who are opposed.” In other words, put up or perform a major U-turn.

The paper is over 20 pages long and fairly dense in places so here is a handy primer that might be a useful starting point for a discussion with your doctor about why you’d be interested in trying a low carb diet.

Full article published today here http://healthinsightuk.org/2014/08/31/twelve-reasons-why-diabetes-charities-should-ditch-the-low-fat-diet-and-recommend-low-carbs/

Regards Eddie

Great link Eddie. Makes so much sense yet when first diagnosed, this was not explained. I actually feel sorry for my DSN. She advised me to "eat normal" ! Wow, what a remark. What is normal ? I'm pretty sure I eat different to 99.9% of members here. So, who is wrong ? Myself, or everyone else ?

It was eating normally that made me diabetic in first place. Ok so my portion sizes got bigger as the carb addictions got worse, but I religiously swapped to whole grains, lots of baked spuds instead of chips, low fat spreads and little cheese- after my dad had his bypass, I stopped eating the fat on meat, took skin off chicken and so on. When I said this to my GP on diagnosis he just said it looks like the healthy eating message we have been giving has been the wrong one all along- for everyone not just us diabetics.

cold ethyl wrote:It was eating normally that made me diabetic in first place. Ok so my portion sizes got bigger as the carb addictions got worse, but I religiously swapped to whole grains, lots of baked spuds instead of chips, low fat spreads and little cheese- after my dad had his bypass, I stopped eating the fat on meat, took skin off chicken and so on. When I said this to my GP on diagnosis he just said it looks like the healthy eating message we have been giving has been the wrong one all along- for everyone not just us diabetics.

Stick with your Doctor he seems to be one of the many who have seen the light. The healthy eating message we have been given has been the wrong one all along - for everyone not just us diabetics. Dietitians are usually the worst offenders in pushing the diet of slow death for diabetics. Some of the worst pushers of the wrong diet are carboholics on certain forums, how hard they work to confuse the issues, why I will never understand.

Regards Eddie