Diabetes is a condition that was extremely rare in past eras but is now one of the most prevalent diseases in the United States. An estimated 23.6 million Americans suffer from diabetes, with only a portion of them properly diagnosed. That means there are millions of people living suboptimal lives with a potentially deadly condition without even knowing it.
Type 2 diabetes is generally caused by a culmination of poor dietary habits that persist over time. Eventually, the body loses its ability to properly regulate blood sugar levels and metabolic disarray ensues. The good news is there is much that you can do to prevent the onset and even reverse symptoms of diabetes, which we will explore below.
Importance of Medication
If you have diabetes and are seeking to remediate the situation through diet and exercise, it is a good idea to be taking medicine to maintain healthy sugar levels. This will safeguard from any dangerous dips or spikes in blood sugar while your body is in a compromised state. Dangerous blood sugar levels can lead to a number of lifelong complications, including blindness or amputation.
How Did We Get Here?
As previously mentioned, diabetes was relatively uncommon in times past. In 1958, less than 1% of the population was diagnosed with diabetes, and the rate likely falls well below that as you dive deeper into the annals of history. Meanwhile, that rate has increased more than 700% in a few short decades. It doesn’t take much investigation to realize the rates of diabetes diagnosis increase alongside the increased prevalence of processed foods.
After the industrial revolution, food manufacturing companies began popping up everywhere, trying their best to create products that people would eat that also had low production costs. The result is what we still see today: manmade junk food created to maximize profits at the cost of all else.
For decades, people were completely unaware of just how unhealthy certain processed foods were. In fact, not too long ago, the government issued Food Guide Pyramid suggested that we eat a diet consisting primarily of carbs – with no distinction between refined versus unrefined varieties. Thanks to the internet and the ubiquity of high-quality resources, some people are starting to get back in touch with what is truly healthy, as opposed to what companies or bureaucracies tell us.
Worst Foods For Diabetes
Most of the worst foods for diabetes (and health in general) tend to be those which are processed or otherwise altered by man. This is because these types of foods were often created in a lab with the single objective of making money. Companies prey upon our bodies’ built-in preferences and manipulate the content of sodium, sugar, and fat to make their products hyper-palatable.
An instinctive predisposition for salt, sugar, and fatwas important for human beings as a species in our evolutionary past, but our bodies are not geared to accommodate these dietary constituents in the context or quantity in which they so often appear.
Among the worst dietary items in terms of the body’s sugar regulation is soda or any other carbonated, sugary drink. Whether coincidental or not, a clear link has been established between obesity, diabetes incidence, and consumption of soda. These drinks represent the largest single-item source of calories in the American diet and simultaneously provide little to no nutritional value.
Fruit juices are another danger to look out for since they can easily contain as many grams of sugar as soda. While minimally processed fruit juices may contain negligible amounts of vitamins, the drinks elicit a similar insulin response to anything else with a high sugar content. The reason fruit juices are so fundamentally different from the fruits from which they are derived is because of the absence of fiber. The presence of fiber slows the rate of digestion, which causes a more stable blood sugar response.
Best Foods For Diabetes
To better handle and even potentially reverse diabetes means reducing the metabolic load on the body by eating fewer calories and more nutrients. A good rule of thumb is to consider whether the food in question was made by humans or made by nature. Our bodies are inherently compatible with most foods found in nature thanks to millions of years of coevolution.
Cruciferous vegetables or other leafy greens are among the best foods you can eat. They are low in calories, yet nutrient dense. This gives the body the raw materials it needs to function without any of the empty caloric bulk. Experts recommend eating a wide variety of colors as well since the different colors are indicative of unique carotenoid and flavonoid contents. All of these compounds have different effects on the body, so it’s wise to make sure you have all your bases covered.
Although there is obviously sugar in fruit, they tend to have a relatively low glycemic index due to the presence of fiber. This means the fruit is less likely to elicit a dangerous spike in blood sugar than refined counterparts.
