Diet is now being emphatically shown to help reduce diabetes risk and help significantly in its management.
Several ’health experts’ have talked of diets such as the ‘Low carbohydrate Mediterranean Diet’ and the ‘Ketogenic Mediterranean Diet’ (KMD), as the best diets for diabetes, but research doesn’t bear this out.
Both are just variants on the Colourful Mediterranean diet, or the Rainbow Diet, as we call it at CANCERactive.
The key features of the colourful Mediterranean Diet are:
* Nil consumption of empty glucose, fructose or high glycemic carbs in processed, refined or packed foods and soft drinks.
* Small amounts of whole carb foods – like Jacket potato, whole organic brown rice, lentils, pulses and other high soluble fibre whole carbohydrates.
* Lots of good oils and fats, like olive oil, walnuts, almonds, pumpkin, sunflower, sesame seeds, avocados, fish oils. These should outweigh saturated fats 70:30.
* Colourful vegetables and fruits eaten fresh and in season to capture the bioactive ingredients
But the Rainbow diet is more than this - and this is why we don’t advocate the Ketogenic diet or the ’low-carbohydrate Mediterranean Diet’ as the best diets. The Rainbow diet is a Lifestyle diet - important elements like fresh air, exercise, red wine and sunshine also have to be considered.
Diabetes UK talks of the Mediterranean diet rich in fruits, vegetables and fibre being excellent for managing blood sugar. It has also been shown to reduce body fat and weight. In the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (March 2013), researchers followed people on a host of different diets - low carbohydrate diet, low glycemic index diet, high protein diet, and so on.