Basics, Glycemia

Basics: the “clean” diet

I saw someone recently complain that they had a “clean diet” but after meals they felt bad and nauseous. It’s surprising because for a diabetic, it’s usually when you eat badly that you feel bad, not when you have a “clean” meal.

So after asking what the “clean diet” was, he explained that it was lots of fruit, rice, oats, all whole food stuff. This is essentially the exact wrong diet for a diabetic and really, for a human.

We’ve all been sold the “clean diet” myth: eat your 5 fruit and veg a day, eat oats or wheat not to be hungry, concentrate on wholemeal, etc. It’s all utter nonsense and diabetics can show you why: they’re all full of sugar and carbs. Fruits will give you mountains of fructose and glucose, rice will give you large amounts of carbs, and oats are essentially pure carbs. All will send your glycaemia through the roof because these aren’t good human food.

It’s ok to eat those when you’re in good health and your body has a wide margin of operation around carbs. But as a diabetic, at best you have a small manoeuvre margin if you’re in remission, or none at all if you don’t have your diabetes under control (in the case of T2). Diabetics see the actual effect on the body of that nonsense diet.

You don’t need carbs in your diet. At all. There is no such thing as “essential carbs”. Your body doesn’t get anything from carbs it can’t get from somewhere else. You don’t need 5 fruit or veg a day. 5 veg yes, not fruit. You don’t need to carb load to go sit in the office all day. You don’t need to eat bread not to feel hungry. And wholemeal wheat is wheat, don’t believe the lie that it’s good for you.

A human diet, genetically, is low on carbs. Simply because in the life of the species, carbs weren’t readily available. So over the 250,000 years of Homo Sapiens, and the millions of years of our ancestors’ lives before that, their body has adapted to a low carb diet. It’s only since the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago, and more so in the last 50-70 years, that carbs have been available all the time in massive quantities. Our bodies haven’t had time to adapt to that new diet. And that’s why it’s a diet that kills us.

You don’t have to look far back into the past to see proof. There is a very good illustration of that in modern history: during WWII, the incidence of diabetes fell dramatically. This has been reported all over the world. Why? Because sugar and carbs weren’t readily available due to food restrictions. As soon as the restrictions ended, the number of diabetics went up again.

One of the things being a diabetic requires is self-education: you need to unlearn the nonsense you were taught when you were young, and learn what a proper human diet is.

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