Do specific foods 'cause' diabetes?

[Vegwoes]

Not sure where to put this, so hope it's ok in chat?!

We recently watched a doc about diabetes and were surprised to learn that it has become much more prevalent in Asia, places such as Japan, etc. Even France and many of the Med countries are experiencing large increases in cases.
Most online discussion just says 'it's the white rice!!'
But weren't they eating it for many years before this upswing in cases?

I have googled but can't find any definitive info regarding HOW people actually become diabetic (type 2), since there is a lot of what I presume to be misinformation flying around, and not a lot of detailed literature at specialist sites or the nhs.

Some groups suspect seed oils (!!), along with refined carbs as a sole cause for diabetes, some suspect too much meat. More medically focused websites site 'eating too much and not exercising' as a more likely cause - which is a bit vague...or is it?

Is there a particular type of food that will cause it? I don't mean what triggers insulin AFTER diagnosis, but more before? Since some info includes people having diabetes at a low BMI, is it always as simple as being overweight?

I am new to this subject and am interested in finding out more - my dad had it late in life and I have heard that there can be a genetic component.

Obesity causes insulin resistance

I can't locate one single scientific source or medical body that considers T2 to be solely caused by carbohydrates. From what I can make out, the actual cause is rather more complex and less concerned with a single macronutrient.

Youtube celeb docs are really not what I'd call scientific data. Surely?

Def agree with the posts that suggest excessive consumption and less movement. Process, refined foods and excessive fat intake more likely. Or at least I would err on the side of moderation generally.

Not the 1970s I lived in.

It's caused by Insulin Resistance. Many things can lead to that.

(and you can develop type 2 whilst being a healthy weight)

Increase world wide is due to obesity, refined foods, increase in sugar intake. Lose weight cut down on sugars and processed foods.

So is the white rice in Japan suddenly causing issues?
I am really intrigued by some of the details worldwide.

And since the trad Med diet has been suggested as a healthy antidote to the western pattern diet, are those countries, too, succumbing to ultra processed/excessive fast foods now?

We are used ot hearing about the French Paradox (largely debunked now) yet even France and Spain (usually considered healthier than the UK) are experiencing higher Diabetes T2 cases.

Does anyone know - If I ate a homemade flatbread with mixed flour 3 times per week, containing only 4 ingredients, is this as likely to pose an all time risk for T2?

I can't think of a better example.
Maybe home-baked sweet potato fries?
What is excessive and what is moderate in such a case?

Perhaps overall calorie/energy consumption is more important, generally?

There’s research that suggests eating certain ice cream can trigger Type 2 diabetes 😢

Vijh is 52 and grew up in Solihull during the era of Monster Munch and Wagon Wheels, both launched in the late 1970s. “There was very little snacking,” he says. “You might have half a Twix. Snacking was a big treat.” Official figures bear this out. In 1977, the year Monster Munch was launched, the average adult in Britain consumed 29g of crisps, nuts, seeds, popcorn or savoury snacks each week, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) figures. That’s less than a bag of crisps. Fast-forward to 2015, the most recent year for which we have such detailed data, and the figure is 89g, the equivalent of very nearly three bags of crisps. In the space of a generation, we have tripled our consumption of snacks – if not more: Defra’s figures do not include the myriad of other products now sold in the snack aisles, from cashew quinoa bars at Aldi to Itsu crispy seaweed thins at Waitrose.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/aug/30/from-quinoa-bars-to-salmon-skin-chips-whats-behind-the-snacking-revolution

Snacks have increased from 29g to 89g in 2015

it might not have been how your world was but fir the average population their snacking habits have tripled

This is due to high fructose corn syrup

if you have a spare hour and a half, “ sugar the bitter truth” on YouTube is a lecture/talk. By an endocrinologist on why corn syrup has risen as an ingredient and its affect on the body

I suspect even in places like Japan there is more processed snacks and grab off the shelf stuff than there ever used to be - certainly in the med whilst on the whole they tend to eat more fish and salad there’s still an awful lot of snacky shit on the shelves if you go into the supermarkets - what you eat on nice miles out on holiday isn’t necessarily what locals are having day on day -

There are also more that two types of diabetes.

Type 3, steroid induced, MODY, LADA and gestational.

The incidence of overweight and obesity in Japan, especially among men, would appear to correlate with an increase in type 2 diabetes. It’s not any particular food item, just the same issue with weight increasing insulin-resistance that we see everywhere else.

In Japan it will be a combination of a rapidly aging population (risk increases with age), more western diet (more highly processed food has lower fibre and has lost its food matrix with helps protect against glucose spikes) and genetic susceptibility (e Asian populations tend to secrete less insulin).

I watched a documentary circa mid 1990s where a Mexican town had a hard working, healthy an active population until a major new road was built which opened them up to fast food outlets .

The change in a relatively short space of time saw the population become obese, there were huge people that could barely walk and they had to open a hospital that solely dealt with diabetics.

It was horrific.

This is interesting stuff, thanks.

I wonder what impact alcohol might have, too? (hides glass).

I don't know much about T2 but I do know that too many and too high spikes in your blood sugar are a big part of the problem.

The mixed flour, you mean less processed? Containing seeds and whatnot? That would help but also if you eat it with fatty food like cheese that will reduce the glycaemic index which is, basically, the rate at which your blood sugar rises. Also if you exercise (nothing too strenuous as that can raise your blood sugar too - for T1s anyway) so maybe gentle walking or a bit of gardening, after you've eaten it, that should help to keep the spike lower.

You could, if you can afford it, buy something like a Freestyle libre which will show the effects of foods on your blood sugars, as far as it can with a non diabetic (I think, I'm not sure how it works for NDs).

I once had a massive hypo because I'd taken an injection to lower my horrifically high BS after drinking. I was unaware at the time that alcohol can lower your blood sugar but will increase it initially. Especially things like cocktails or these juice type things that I think are made to appeal to youngsters. Anything with sweet juice or added sugar - bound to spike your blood sugars. And you can't lower the GI with crisps because although they're fatty the potato gets in there first. The bastards 😞

I think it is down to two simple things:

1. we exercise less - less manual work, less walking as car use has increased and we fit more into life
2. we eat more and the wrong things. Our diet started to change in the 1970s and we now have access to a wider range of foods, much more snacking, more processed foods.

Another thing that has happened over many hundreds of years is that we eat less seasonally. Wheat was originally seasonal, many moons ago. We ate what was available and worked with the seasons.

Too much is available now. And still people are starving.

Yes, we are fully dependent (mostly) upon industrialised food. Agree that this ensures the majority of people in the western world are actually 'fed', but far too many are actually malnourished.

I remember being stunned watching a documentary where several school children didn't know that a pig was a living animal that made sausages. We have let go of our natural, essential relationship with foods. It'll take more than a few of us buying organic/local and growing our own rocket to put a dent in that, sadly.

My understanding is that in the short term alcohol can reduce your blood glucose but in the longer term it damages your metabolic health by damaging the liver. So although it lowers your blood glucose it is doing more damage to the body than having high glucose ie it’s an unhealthy choice if you are already struggling metabolically.

That's quite funny, you say there was no eating between meals and then you produce the figures to show how much snacking there was. I wonder when they were eating those snacks?

White carbs and sugary drinks and snacks and not exercising after eating them

Forget all that nonsense. There is NO single food that triggers it. Anyway, Type 2 is not something that gets switched on and that's that. It is insulin resistant diabetes, and there is the HbA1c to measure certain levels in your blood. In the UK, a level above 47 is considered to be T2, anything below that in the range 42-47 means you are at high risk of it (which they call pre-diabetes). Anything below that range is considered normal. By changing your diet and other lifestyle habits, you can bring your score down. So T2 can be reversed.

Insulin resistance increases due to a number of factors, only one of which is having too much sugar in your diet. Carbs are converted to sugars, which is why people talk about carbs as well.

If you want some proper, scientifically proven information, look up T2 on the Diabetes UK website.