Our modern food supply is turning healthy people into diabetics. And people already battling diabetes are now facing cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s.
While the connection that links these chronic diseases is often ignored by the media and medical journals, the carefully crafted narrative that tricks the public into eating these poison foods is rooted in junk science.
Let me explain…
The big, multinational companies that produce the majority of our food are puppet masters.
And they’re pulling the strings of the research institutions and their “scientific studies” that frame the medical advice you receive from trusted national organizations.
The companies who produce these fake foods have billions of dollars at their disposal. They’re using this money to literally take over our food supply.
You’ll find evidence simply by looking for corporate sponsors.
The Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics is sponsored by corporations like PepsiCo, Danone, and the Campbell Company.1
And the American Diabetes Association is backed by pharmaceutical behemoths Merck and AstraZeneca.2
Business Insider reported that only 10 companies control almost every large food and beverage brand in the entire world. This includes names you’ll be familiar with — Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola, Nestle, and General Mills.3
Lobbying to influence our food choices is one thing. But actively manipulating scientific studies is even worse.
Often, these large corporations will fund nutritional research — leaving us with biased outcomes and cherry-picked results.
Kellogg’s Australia funded one such study. They were looking at whether whole grain cereal could help people with type 2 diabetes manage their condition. Of course, they proudly concluded that whole grains were an “important” part of a diabetic’s diet.4
It wasn’t long before this study came under fire by a number of respected health experts. They accused Kellogg’s of practicing “junk science.”5,6
This assertion that “grains are important for
diabetics” is one of the most reckless and dangerous claims I see today.Let’s take a closer look at how a high carbohydrate diet affects your type 2 diabetes.
In the past 60 years, our modern diet has become more starch-loaded than at any other time in human history.7
Our Standard American Diet (SAD) is filled with processed foods containing an unnaturally high amount of grains. This is made even worse by cheap and unhealthy seed oils. Refined sugars are added at every opportunity.
Even the red meat you buy at the grocery store is from animals that have been grain-fed. And milk, cheese, and butter come from grain-fed cows.
A nationwide analysis of U.S. grocery stores revealed that more than 60% of the calories we buy come in the form of highly processed foods.8
Our levels of disease have kept pace with this increase in grain and processed food consumption.
If you look back to 1957, you’d find that only about 1% of the U.S. population had high blood sugar.9
It was around this time the American Heart Association famously – and falsely – linked dietary fat to heart disease.
The result? Millions of Americans began to remove fat from their diet and replace it with low fat/high-carbohydrate items.
Fast forward to the decades between 1980 and 2016. The number of people suffering from high blood sugar rocketed from around 6 million to 111 million people.
That’s a 1,750% increase in just 35 years!
It gets worse.
By the year 2030, the World Health Organization estimates that 40% of the U.S. population — 144 million people — will be diabetic or prediabetic.10
The American Diabetes Association still encourage 25% of a diabetic’s food plate to be filled with grains and starches. And they list whole grains as a superfood on their website.11
The result of all this bad messaging is a widespread pandemic that was raging out of control long before our most recent pandemic hit the news cycle.
People are dealing with uncontrollable weight gain, fatigue, high blood sugar, and organ malfunction. This has resulted in a constellation of chronic diseases that threaten every man, woman, and child on our planet.
It’s insulin resistance on a global scale.
At the Sears Institute, I help my patients beat diabetes and insulin resistance using intermittent fasting. It helps improve glucose regulation… increases stress resistance… and suppresses inflammation.
It also helps cells to activate an important process called autophagy. This is where the body cleans house and disposes of old or damaged cells.
One study of 16 healthy people found “alternate-day fasting” for 22 days helped them lose 2.5% of their initial weight and 4% of their fat mass. This came with a 57% decrease in insulin levels.12
To see the positive effects of this way of eating, we just need to look to the island inhabitants of Okinawa in Japan.
This population traditionally eats on an intermittent fasting schedule and has low rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes. They also live extremely long lifespans — many more exceeding 100 years of age.
Lower Insulin Resistance With Intermittent Fasting
If you’d like to start using intermittent fasting to control your type 2 diabetes, start with a form known as time-restricted eating.
It calls for an 8-hour eating window each day, followed by a 16-hour fast. Here’s how it works:
- Start your day with a 10 a.m. breakfast
- Lunch at your regular time
- Finish your dinner by 6 p.m.
- Your body gets no additional food from 6 p.m. until 10 a.m. the next day
When your body gets used to the 16-hour fast, you can move up to the 24-hour mark. You can practice one-day fasts as often as every two weeks.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD, CNS
References:
- Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, “Meet Our Sponsors,” https://www.eatrightpro.org/about-us/advertising-and-sponsorship/meet-our-sponsors. Accessed on September 30, 2024.
- American Diabetes Association, “Corporate Support,” https://www.diabetes. org/about-us/corporate-support. Accessed on September 30, 2024.
- Business Insider, “These 10 companies control everything your buy.” www.businessinsider.com/10 companies-control-food-industry-2017-3. Accessed on September 30, 2024.
- Deloitte, “Analysis: Healthcare and productivity savings from increased intake of grain fiber.” www2.deloitte.com. Accessed on September 30, 2024.
- Harcombe, PhD, “Increasing Australia’s grain fiber intake could save the economy $3.3 billion a year.” www.zoeharcombe.com. Accessed on September 30, 2024.
- Demasi M. “Kellogg’s ‘junk science’ and Australia’s health policy.” www.michaelwest.com.au. Accessed on September 30, 2024.
- Pew Research Center. “Modern American Diet Has Gotten Bigger, Heavier on Grains and Fat.”
- Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). “Highly processed foods dominate U. S. grocery purchases.” ScienceDaily. 29 March 2015. https://www.sciencedaily.com. Accessed on September 30, 2024.
- “Long-term Trends in Diabetes.” April 2017. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Global Report on Diabetes. World Health Organization. Fact sheet.
- American Diabetes Association, “Nutrition.” www.diabetes.org/ nutrition. Accessed on September 30, 2024.
- Heilbronn LK, et al. “Alternate day fasting in nonobese subjects: effects on body weight, body composition, and energy metabolism.” Am J Clin Nutr 2005;81:69-73.