Healthy Thursday: High-glycemic foods and Diabetes

Original article written by Katti Gray for Reuters:

People who eat a lot of low-fiber and processed foods that quickly spike blood sugars may, not surprisingly, have a significantly higher risk of the most common form of diabetes, according to a new study.

“By raising blood sugar and demanding that the pancreas keep pumping more insulin, meal after meal, day after day, a high-glycemic diet can put people at risk over the edge,” said Dr. David Ludwig, who studies obesity at Boston Children’s Hospital but was not involved in the work.

The report analyzes 24 studies published since 1997 that tracked what 125,000 adults ate. The new study confirms links prior researchers made between those so-called high-glycemic foods – including white bread and potatoes – and diabetes.

Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the new report from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, Oxford University in the UK and others found that the 125,000 studied adults daily ate an average of 139 grams of sugar or its equivalent.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 8 percent of Americans have diabetes. More than 90 percent of those cases are type 2 diabetes, which prevents the body from properly using or producing the blood sugar-regulating hormone insulin.

My Take:

In the forward to my cookbook, Simple Healthy Fresh 1.0, I state that I started eating healthy by removing anything pre-made, boxed, bagged and canned. Those foods are so processed, that the end product no longer resembles the fresh from the farm food that it started out as. Also, I cut out salt and sugar, two leading causes of diabetes, heart disease and so forth.

Buy/grow and Prepare your meals from foods as close to nature as possible.  Buy your vegetables and fruits from local farmers so you know they are not full of GMO byproducts: only fresh, healthy from nature, foods. I do buy pastas from the store, because it isn’t worth my time to make spaghetti, penne, rotini and so on from scratch.

Start by switching out something you buy pre-made by making it yourself.

Your body will thank you.