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When people are trying to get their hands around their diabetes, one of the most difficult areas to understand is what is a good diabetic diet. Learn how to make this specialized diet your first Line of attack. Complex carbohydrates can be the key to Success. Weight loss and exercise will follow naturally. Discover the cutting edge in this battle to reverse the symptoms of type 2 Diabetes.
Consider this scenario: At the Institute of Health’s evening meal, it was an excellent healthy meal of vegetable lasagna, it is over and everyone is sitting around the dining table. The Hostessis about to clear the table. But first she checks to see if any one wants more. More lasagna, anyone? No thanks, the host asks, How about more corn or vegetables? No thanks. More salad or bread? No thanks. It was delicious, but we are full. We are full and we know it. We are finished eating. But not too full.
You might think that any delicious food that is calorically intense must also be rapidly absorbable, as sugars and fats are.
Beans and whole grains are calorically intense foods that many people find delicious. Yet if they are prepared simply and not milled, processed, or overcooked so as to render them “predigested" (and therefore too rapidly absorbed), they are not easily overeaten. That this is true is attested to by the fact that neither the members of the Institute of Health, nor anyone else who has adopted this style of eating will overeat these foods.
How about a Cookie, or white rolls
But are there foods that would induce us to eat even when we are full? Is that possible? You bet it is. And those foods are the sweet simple carbohydrate foods that you just can’t stop eating: those delicious high caloric foods that are absorbed rapidly by the gut into the bloodstream.
See if this sounds familiar: Hungry? No, I’m full. Want a cookie? Umm . . . yeah, thanks. The sugar in that cookie will be absorbed into your bloodstream within minutes. Sugar is predigested carbohydrate; it requires no digestion on your part. It will be absorbed partially through the roof of your mouth while you are still chewing and partially through your esophagus while you are still swallowing; then it will be rapidly finished off in your digestive tract.
Your body knows that it is getting a caloric bonanza from that cookie. It knows, from having been fed many cookies in the past, that within seconds a large quantity of calories will be captured, absorbed, and ready to be stored away (as fat) for a rainy day. Because “capturing calories" was an important survival trait in evolutionary man, the cookie is looked on by the body as a prize. But for a diabetic this begins the dangerous cycle of blood glucose problems.
But more corn and beans on a full stomach? No, thanks. There’s a lot of work to digesting and absorbing corn and beans, and there is plenty of digestion already going on.
Of course, if you add sugar or butter to the corn and beans, it’s a different story. You’ve made at least some of each bite a rapidly absorbed food, and you just might accept the offer of more. Even salt, which acts like sugar in being highly prized by the body in spite of its overabundance in our food, can render another helping more acceptable to a full stomach.
It’s a little like not your fault
Rapidly absorbed foods, especially sugars and fats, create an abnormal situation in the blood. Blood insulin and blood glucose behave abnormally in someone who consumes either a high sugar diet or a high fat diet. This is a cause for concern when it comes to overweight because the brain’s hunger center (and therefore one’s eating behavior) is controlled by the action of blood insulin and blood sugar. A disturbance in the hunger center can lead to obesity. And there is reason to believe that the blood glucose and insulin disturbances created by the sweet simple carbohydrate foods that contribute directly to overeating.
How to Learn What Foods are Natural and how to prepare them
The problem is that the population of the USA has No Clue what a “natural foods" diet looks like and needs an Instruction Sheet to EAT. Find an up-to-date Dietitian.
There are several excellent books and sources on the subject:
Live Longer Now, The First 100 Years of Your Life. 3 e-Books Free downloads
The Origin Diet
Information at The Paleo Diet
The winner maybe just eating “real" natural healthy foods and some regular light exercise. Eating COMPLEX CARBOHYDRATES may just be the simple formulae for reversing those diabetic symptoms.
The reason for this is that no matter how clever our scientists are there is still much they have not discovered about the way vitamins and the body interact. Every day we hear they have found either a new nutrient or another factor in how our bodies assimilate nutrients. If we eat foods that are as close to the state nature produces them we are most likely to get the nutrients we need together with all the other factors our bodies need to use them. This is crucial to any cancer diet.
A shining example is iron. Our bodies need Vitamin C in order to assimilate iron. However, there are still iron supplements on the market that do not have Vitamin C included in their mix. Now, parsley is a very rich source of iron and, you guessed it, is also full of Vitamin C. To further complicate matters, Vitamin C is heat affected and water soluble, so cooking, particularly in liquids destroys it – hence my assertion that eating foods – in this case parsley – in their natural state is best. Of course this won’t work for all foods – potatoes for example – but it is a good strategy to keep in mind when trying to maximize nutrition.
The other reason for eating foods in as near natural state as possible, is that cooking destroys the natural enzymes. Enzymes not only play a crucial role in digestion, and therefore influence the quality of the nutrients we get from our food, but some enzymes, particularly pancreatic enzymes, play a direct role in the fight against cancer.
So how do we include raw foods when designing a cancer diet?
The obvious answer is salads. Using as wide a variety of salad vegetables and incorporating as many different coloured salad veggies, is an excellent way to increase your intake of live enzymes.
But even with hot meals, many raw veggies can be added as a garnish. Eg parsley chopped up over scrambled eggs. Herbs stirred in a casserole after the heat is turned off. A couple of rings of capsicum on top of cooked fish. Use fruits to dress up a steak or a roast. Let your imagination go! Look for colour and variety and you will easily find dozens of ways to include raw foods.
Snacks are another way of getting raw veggies into the diet. Cut up celery and carrots into one inch/2cm lengths. Even broccoli and cauliflower are nice and crunchy as a snack. If you must dip them in something try a little cottage cheese rather than a fat laden dip!
By keeping your mind open and imagination engaged, you will soon be getting many more raw foods into your daily diet, giving yourself and your loved ones an edge in the cancer fighting stakes.