Food wars - whose opinion is right and why should we care?

Photo by Matthieu Joannon on Unsplash

A friend of mine has just asked me a very important question - one with a multitude of answers, and which baffles just about every person at some point or another. In a nutshell, it is this: what foods should I eat? Which foods are right and which are wrong for me?

Well that all depends on who you ask. I started my food journey back in about 2011 with The China Study - a book on vegetarianism, and maybe at that time I would have preached the virtues of that lifestyle to you (even though I was still hecka overweight and struggling with food addiction). But the long and the short of it is: people are all different; they have different genetic and environmental factors which influence their body composition and their individual tendencies towards different diseases. This means that some folks do better on some diets than they do on others, and the natural tendency is to tell everyone what's been helpful. Oh, there are vested corporate interests at play as well, so often what we hear promoted heavily in the media is the 'spin' to prevent damage to profits - but that's definitely a story for another time!

My focus is on low carbohydrate diets, and here's why. Once upon a time I was 100kg, and my attempts at eating less and moving more, at low fat, healthy wholegrain and plant heavy diets, had only resulted in weight gain and frustration. I was constantly living in cycles of blaming myself, eating healthy, then caving and falling off the wagon. Low carb was the thing that really helped me move out of that cycle and into a much healthier weight range - permanently.

But that's just my personal story - what's in it for you? Well if you have diabetes or are on your way to diabetes, I believe you are one of those people who would respond well to a low carb diet. Your body is already showing signs that it is struggling to process the daily load of glucose it is receiving, so it is logical to cut down. The PRIMARY reason why I promote a low carbohydrate diet for people who have diabetes or are on their way to diabetes is that it makes perfect sense - biologically.

You see, carbohydrates are made up of long chains of glucose molecules. And digging back to your year 7 science classes - do you recall?... Glucose is a form of sugar! In fact, it's the very thing we're measuring when we do a finger prick 'blood sugar' test - we're checking blood glucose levels. When we eat starchy carbs like bread, biscuits, potatoes, pastries, crackers and yes - even that 'heart healthy wholegrain' breakfast cereal, our bodies are breaking those starches down into sugars!

Let's add this to what we already know about diabetes. It's a condition where the body is unable to process sugar adequately. So why on earth would we tell people to keep eating plenty of 'healthy wholegrain' carbs? It just doesn't make sense to continue ingesting the very thing that we are struggling to process! Do you know anyone who's gluten intolerant or has coeliac disease? Their bodies are struggling to process wheat and some other grains, but we don't tell them to keep eating wheat, do we? SO why do we tell people who are struggling to process sugar to eat more carbs? There is a cognitive disconnect.

But anyway, it's late, and probably not the best time to be writing on the fundamentals of low carb and why it's important (I think it's already turned into a bit of a rant), but hopefully we've made a little step forward. Cutting out starchy carbs like those mentioned above can be challenging when we've had them for many years, but I'll offer some tips for this in upcoming posts.

I'll also go into questions like: Are eggs OK now? What about meat - someone said it's bad? Ditto for fats? Should we care about dirty foods vs. clean? What about glycaemic index? Calories? Exercise?? What signs in my body indicate that I'm struggling to process sugar? Is food addictive and how can I get out of the vortex? What other conditions can low carb be helpful for? What were you implying about corporate interests having a role? Prescriptive diets, ugh! (I agree, by the way).... Oh there are oodles of things to cover. But for now it's goodnight - time to get some sleep. Sweet dreams everyone!

- Juliet.