by Peter J. Nebergall, Ph.D.
Includes photo of Peter Nebergall with cat.
One of the perils of giving good advice is that one runs up against those ladling out really bad advice. Lately, this has been nowhere as evident as in the field of diet.
We are the fattest nation on earth, and the wonder of the world. Some time ago, I quoted immigrant writer Dinesh D'Souza's comment: "People want to move to a country where the poor are fat." But here, it's not just the poor. The fad diet purveyors are correct--something needs to be done.
Like carny-barkers hawking their snake-oil cure-alls, what they really want is to get rich selling you their exclusive, miraculous, lose-it-all-overnight-without-effort magic meal replacers. "Buy this one--and lose your flab." Right. It sounds so simple, so simplistic--because it is. Hucksters have always reeled in their suckers that way. Pushed to produce any scientific support for their statements, they'll smarmily tell you, "you are entitled to your opinion."
The pop fad diets marketed so brazenly on store shelves are based on deep misunderstandings (and misrepresentations) of human metabolism, of the nature of carbohydrates, and of the Glycemic Index. The faddists, without any scientific evidence or FDA clinicals to cite, claim there is a substantive difference between simple and complex carbohydrates (a position disproved and abandoned by the American Dietetic Association and the American Diabetes Association years ago), and that avoidance of "simple" carbs is critical to diet adherence. We know that all carbohydrates wind up in the same place--and the difference between simple and complex carbs is absorption time--a few hours. Diabetics who embrace these fad diets are imperiling their blood sugar management and their long-term health--in my opinion.
Same with the Glycemic Index (GI). GI numbers are simply a measure of velocity. How fast does a given food item get into the body and raise blood sugar? The higher its GI, the quicker your blood sugars will rise. Lower GI foods take a bit longer to get there--and won't "spike" your sugars as fast, but beyond that, there is no distinction; they're still going to count. To say they have less dietary impact is a fairy tale. No diabetes-trained dietitian (RD CDE) would spoon-feed you such nonsense--in my opinion.
The faddists correctly observe that many "light," or "sugar-free" foods have more carbs than the "normal" versions--but they fail to look at the "bottom line": calories. Many "light" foods may well have more carbs than their conventional equivalents--but they have less total calories, and fat has calories too, a lot of them. Failure to count calories, to view carbs without viewing the impact of the total food consumed, is more than a bit silly, in my opinion.
The human body needs protein, needs carbohydrate, and needs fat, in measured amounts, to maintain health. An oversupply of one component is just as dangerous as an undersupply of another. The average American diet includes far more protein than the body can process (we need the equivalent of three ounces of meat per day), and more protein just puts a load on the kidneys. Many diabetics and others have kidney damage, and for some of these individuals, a LOW-protein diet is routinely recommended--in my opinion.
Most Hollywood fad diets have their roots in the desire to lose lots of weight without effort. People want to believe there is a magic pill, or some secret way to do this, that their doctors have been holding out on them for the last 3000 years. They don't want to work as hard to take it off as they did to put it on. "Ketotic diets," deliberately formulated to strip the body of nutrients and burn stored fats, work, short-term, on the morbidly obese, for whom the risk of being so overweight outweighs the real risk of such an extreme diet--but for those less overweight, or who need not a weight LOSS but a weight MAINTENANCE diet, use of these is akin to embracing anorexia--in my opinion.
The real experts, those properly trained and experienced in formulating a healthful, safe, effective, balanced diet based not on some soap-opera actress's paid endorsement but decades of clinical observation, are the Registered Dietitians (RD), and, for us, the RD CDEs, the dietitians who are also trained in diabetes, Certified Diabetes Educators. They have the proper background to design a diet appropriate for you. And that's my opinion.