Healthy Whole Grains are like Healthy Filter Tip Cigarettes

Some poor victim, I mean patient, just posted on the ADA forums about a visit to the nutritionist where, having brought his A1c down from 12% to 5.8%, he was chided for not eating enough carbs!

In particular, he was told to eat 8 servings of grain each day.

I know, I know. By now I should be inured to this kind of stupidity, but reading something like this still does very bad things to my blood pressure.

The idea that people with diabetes should eat "healthy whole grains" is derived from a bunch of studies where people eating whole grains were compared to people eating junk food and found to have slightly better blood sugars. These studies are almost all funded by the companies that sell grain in one form or another. When people with diabetes eat those "healthy grains" their blood sugars may be slightly better than those eating marshmallow fluff, but their blood sugars are still much higher than is consistent with health.

This is very much like those studies that showed that filter tip cigarettes were healthier than unfiltered cigarettes. They look good until you notice that smoking any kind of cigarette causes cancer and heart disease at rates that are completely unacceptable.

But while researchers have compared the health of people who smoke with people who don't, you won't find large, well funded studies where people with diabetes who eat little or no grain of any kind are compared to people who ate these universally recommended eight servings of grain each day.

Nor will you find long term studies where they track the development of diabetic complications against grain intake over a decade. Why? Well, for starters, because such studies take a lot of money and almost all food-related research is funded by companies that sell the food being studied. It's in their interest to do small, sloppy studies, and to publicize the results of those studies only when they make their products look good. So yes, a study may "prove" that whole grain Cheerios are a "healthier" breakfast than sugar frosted flakes, but just about anything rich in protein is far better than either. Just don't wait for General Mills to fund that study.

I am old enough to remember when doctors all smoked and there were commercials on TV touting the brand that doctor's preferred. I probably won't live long enough to see the demise of the oxymoron "healthy grain".

Fortunately, you don't have to take any dietary advice on trust. Get out your meter and test those "healthy" grains. See what they do to your blood sugar. If you can stay at normal levels, eat them. If not, how about a nice cheese omelet. Afraid of the cholesterol? Relax. Eating cholesterol has no significant impact on your lipids a.k.a. Cholesterol. It is eating starch and sugar that raise the bad kinds of blood lipids.

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A visitor suggested I put in a link to back up my statement about the ADA's main contributors including a lot of junk food companies.

This was discussed and documented in an earlier post on this blog complete with link to the ADA's largest contributors and some information about what they sell:

ADA Nutritional Guidelines--Keeping Diabetics Diabetic