Monday, September 19, 2011

WHAT SHALL WE EAT. MORE NEWS FROM EASD

The Atkin's diet was a rather popular diet to lose weight, when Dr Atkins was alive. Books were written and some proponents swear by it. It did certainly lose weight in the short term, but is it good for the body in the long term. No, I am not going to discuss Atkin's diet per se, but I am relating to a paper presented at the just concluded EASD ( European association for the study of Diabetes ) 2011, Lisbon, Portugal.
Dr Ulrika Ericson and colleagues from the Lund University at Malmo, Sweden, presented a paper on the association of a high protein diet with diabetes.
Dr Ericson and colleagues looked into the Malmo Diet and Cancer Cohort. Picked out 27,140 patients who had no diabetes, and followed them up over 15 years. More than half the cohort were females. They took a detailed diet history from each of the patients, including a 7 day diet diary, have them fill up a 168 items questionaire, and also interviewed them for 45 mins.
After a follow up of 15 years , they found that those on a high protein diet had a 37% increase in the incidence of diabetes. So also those on a diet, high in process meats, poultry and eggs. Surprisingly, those on a high carbohydrate, did not show such a trend. What was good was that those on a diet high in high fibre cereals and breads showed a 30% decline in the incidence of diabetes.
Well this is not a study on the Atkins diet, but the study criteria is almost that of an Atkins.
It is important to note that this is just registry data, on retrospective recall and diary keeping. It is not the most accurate way of studying diet and disease. However, it is cheap and does allow us to see a trend and guide us in what is good and bad for us.
I just wanted to share that a high protein, high process meat diet is bad. Looks like low fat, high cereals and bread diet is good.
But then some us like to eat, in fact some live to eat. We are all different. But then health is wealth too.
Too each his own and all in moderation. That cannot be wrong.

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