You and your car- the right fuels

Occasionally, the obvious is borne out by scientific studies. It is amazing how really important but obvious facts are overlooked in the health sphere particularly when it comes to diet and nutrition.

The study in Diabetes journal looked at the effect of a low Glycaemic Index(GI) diet on the need for insulin use in pregnant women with diabetes. No prizes for guessing that the women who ate more whole foods (fruits and vegetables) halved their need for insulin compared to those eating a “more conventional” high GI diet which contained more processed food.

Given that eating too much processed food is the key driver in the development of diabetes this result should not have surprised the researchers. In simplest terms by putting the right sorts of foods into the body, the body does better and has less need for any sort of pharmaceutical, even if the pharmaceutical is a hormone like insulin.

The New England Journal study showed that for those wanting to reduce weight the most important factor was reducing the number of calories consumed irrespective of what type of “diet” was followed. In other words all the diets out there “work” providing you consume fewer calories and thus use up the bodies reserves (fat stores.)

You wouldn’t dream of putting diesel into a petrol (gasoline) driven car because it wouldn’t run well. Yet sadly we put all sorts of fuels into our bodies that cause it to not run well and eventually become dis-eased.

Keep it simple . Eat “whole” foods which until recently were growing somewhere or moving around. Minimise the foods which have use by dates beyond next week, and come out of boxes and packages. Make water your main beverage.

Putting the right fuels into the body gives it the best chance of running better for longer. You are more important than your car!!

Tip for today

Try fruit or rolled oats for breakfast instead of boxed cereal.

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/dc09-0007v1


http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/360/9/859