I stumbled upon quite an interesting piece at the New York times contributed by Michael Pollan, the Knight professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

This isn’t specifically about diabetes but I do think it is directly related. The article itself is quite lengthy, around 12 pages, but it is packed full of very insightful and useful information regarding the state of our society (and the world) regarding how we eat and the influences we have regarding nutritional consumption.

Especially taking into account how your diabetic health is directly related to your diet and what you eat, it could make you consider twice next time you think you’re making a health conscious decision. As they say: “The right choices are sometimes the hardest to make”. Regarding food, that is something I can definitely attest to.

Some interesting snippets:

“FROM FOODS TO NUTRIENTS

It was in the 1980s that food began disappearing from the American supermarket, gradually to be replaced by “nutrients,” which are not the same thing. Where once the familiar names of recognizable comestibles — things like eggs or breakfast cereal or cookies — claimed pride of place on the brightly colored packages crowding the aisles, now new terms like “fiber” and “cholesterol” and “saturated fat” rose to large-type prominence. More important than mere foods, the presence or absence of these invisible substances was now generally believed to confer health benefits on their eaters. Foods by comparison were coarse, old-fashioned and decidedly unscientific things — who could say what was in them, really? But nutrients — those chemical compounds and minerals in foods that nutritionists have deemed important to health — gleamed with the promise of scientific certainty; eat more of the right ones, fewer of the wrong, and you would live longer and avoid chronic diseases.”

and

“Also, people don’t eat nutrients, they eat foods, and foods can behave very differently than the nutrients they contain. Researchers have long believed, based on epidemiological comparisons of different populations, that a diet high in fruits and vegetables confers some protection against cancer. So naturally they ask, What nutrients in those plant foods are responsible for that effect? One hypothesis is that the antioxidants in fresh produce — compounds like beta carotene, lycopene, vitamin E, etc. — are the X factor. It makes good sense: these molecules (which plants produce to protect themselves from the highly reactive oxygen atoms produced in photosynthesis) vanquish the free radicals in our bodies, which can damage DNA and initiate cancers. At least that’s how it seems to work in the test tube. Yet as soon as you remove these useful molecules from the context of the whole foods they’re found in, as we’ve done in creating antioxidant supplements, they don’t work at all. Indeed, in the case of beta carotene ingested as a supplement, scientists have discovered that it actually increases the risk of certain cancers. Big oops.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 10:00 am and is filed under Diabetes News, Diabetic Health, Fitness, Food, Glucose Management.
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