Dodging Diabetes
The Quick Answer: The shopping list is the perfect place to manage snacking—if a snack is in the house you'll likely eat it; if it isn’t you won’t. ____________________________________________________________________
Have a great 4th of July? (Clearly I did: I’m a bit late with this post.) Independence Day is a good time to reflect on the American spirit, the unique virtues as well as the defects that influence how we live, eat, and die. We are the world’s true pioneers. No other country is so innovative. We invented democracy (with a little help from the ancient Greeks), for goodness sake. And we invented processed foods, soda pop, fast foods, and diet drinks. We love change. What other nation would so recklessly experiment with food innovations—like getting half our calories from sugar and other refined carbs—of unknown consequence?
Books on Diabetes
I like to collect old books on nutrition, not because they’re old, but because they offer lost dietary wisdom. Here, for example, is the English biochemist R. H. A. Plimmer in his 1925 book, Food, Health, and Vitamins:
“The Americans, with their love of candy, are the largest sugar eaters in the world. Incidentally, cancer and diabetes, two scourges of civilization, have increased proportionately to the sugar consumption.” (Bold face added.)
We should have listened to Dr. Plimmer. I have another book, not as old but just as revolutionary, by John Yudkin, with this long but descriptive title: Sweet and Dangerous, The new facts about the sugar you eat as a cause of heart disease, diabetes, and other killers. (First published in England as Pure, White and Deadly.) Yudkin was the first to speak clearly about the dangers of our growing love for sugar. People value these books: A used copy of Sweet and Dangerous is offered today at $100 while a copy of Pure, White and Deadly requires $199.
Of course you can get the information updated at a lower cost with Nancy Appleton’s book, Suicide by Sugar: A Startling Look at Our #1 National Addiction. Scary titles.
What Causes Diabetes?
Diabetes comprises a disease family that includes type 1, type 2 and gestational diabetes. Type 1 diabetes, perhaps 5% of all cases, is an autoimmune disease of children that destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The cause is unknown but a near-normal lifespan is now possible through improved medical technology.
Type 2—the subject of this post—is an increasingly common consequence of the modern lifestyle. How common? Twenty-six million Americans have Type 2 diabetes, a chronic disease that leads to other diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Seventy-nine million of us are prediabetic and at risk for full-blown diabetes. These days, diabetes is a growth industry.
So what causes type-2 diabetes? This will drive you crazy but despite all the research, scientists don’t know for sure. We think of diabetes as the sugar disease but it’s more complicated. Not everyone who eats a lot of sugar gets diabetes. There are other factors, including diet, family history, overweight, and lack of exercise.
The best book I’ve read on sugar and disease is Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories; Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease. My conclusion after reading Taubes: The best way to avoid the risk of overweight and diabetes is to bring sugar intake below the American Heart Association recommendation (6 tsp daily for women, 9 tsp for men), eat a whole foods diet, and exercise at least three hours weekly. The Healthy Changes of the last six months build a foundation for doing this.
Where do we get most of our dietary sugar? Sugary drinks (addressed here) and snacks!
Healthy Snacking
We talked about snacking in a prior post and implemented the Healthy Change of using a snack plate. (Confession: I sometimes forget and need to remind myself to do this.)
Four principles for healthy snacking:
1. Commercial snacks are usually the unhealthiest food in the store and the worst value for your money. Remember: money spent on unhealthy snacks is a vote for that company to succeed.
2. Watch for “boredom” snacking and substitute other forms of variety, like a walk, a chapter from a favorite book, calling a friend, or, ahem, checking your favorite nutrition blog.
3. The key to healthy snacking is to eat a good (low G.I., whole food) breakfast. Our worst snacking habits arise from stimulant-craving due to skipped breakfasts. (The danger of coffee, I suspect, is less about the coffee and more about habitually skipping a nutritious breakfast.)
4. If your waist size is greater than your goal, eat a healthy breakfast and don’t snack after 8:00 pm.
We’ll talk more about healthy snacks and proven waist-reducing habits in the next post, but just to remind, snacks can be organized in these groups:
• Veggies
• Fruits
• Nuts and seeds (including popcorn)
• Cheeses and yogurt
• Leftovers
• Home-made snacks (like crackers or cookies from healthy recipes).
Which brings us to the healthy change of the week:
If we don’t have unhealthy snacks in the home (or office), we won’t eat them. If we have healthy snacks available, it’s likely we will eat them. Pretty simple. Got a nasty snack you can’t resist? Buy just one serving, once a week. The experience of many is that as you eat better, you’ll also snack better.
Budget Wisdom: As an experiment, wander the grocery store snack aisles and look at the cost per ounce. Then compare to the cost of fruits and vegetables or other healthy snack ingredients. With the exception of certain nuts and seeds, which I love, you save by buying healthy snacks.
Please comment: Share your favorite healthy snacks. We’ll collect your favorites into the next post.
Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 12:05PM | by Skip Hellewell | 19 Comments | 5 References | Share Article | in healthy change, sugar | Email Article
Reader Comments (19)
We like to snack on apples and cheese. I also make graham crackers using whole spelt flour and a sucanat/honey combination. We try not to eat them too often, though. Snacking on fresh home made bread is another thing I love, but I usually try to stick to fruit for snacking and the kids love it.
I make an occasional bulk order from nuttyguys.com when they're running a sale or groupon. I stock up on raw and unsalted brazil nuts, cashew pieces, almonds, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, and sunflower seeds. I've an order on the way now and when it arrives I'll mix 'em together, then measure out individual snack bags to have on hand for me and my husband to take to work each day. Also, this summer has been great for keeping a bowl of fresh fruit on hand in the fridge- pineapple, strawberries, cherries, cantaloupe in addition to the apples and bananas usually on the counter. We've both noticed an increase in energy and general well-feeling since we've made these and other WoW changes to our lifestyle (like less sugar, more whole grains and fiber).
Thanks so much for your blog- reading the science and thoughts in your posts make for permanent change in our thinking instead of just trying out something new and later abandoning it. Keep up the great work!
I love air-popped popcorn with a little butter and Parmesan cheese. It's so much tastier than the kind from the bag, which I used to buy.
My kids and I love roasted chickpeas. They are so delicious hot out of the oven.
Kale chips! I just roast whole leaves of kale in the oven with a touch of sea salt on 250 until they're dry and crunchy... And delicious.
Hummus--with veggies or with pita chips! :) Popcorn is another favorite.
Funny...as I walked into my office this morning, I thought "I forgot my snacks!" I stocked up on fresh fruits, veggies and nuts last night but then didn't take the time to assemble my snack bags. Another key to healthy eating: take a few minutes the night before to put together a snack plate or bag. Don't wait until morning because, if you're like me, you'll either forget or will run out of time.
As for favorites...I'm trying to replace my favorite "protein bar" (really, I think they're just candy disguised as "healthy snacks") with fresh, whole foods. I'm loving whole, organic carrots rather than the more common snack-sized baby carrots. I think the whole carrots have more flavor. Fresh berries are tasty right now. Frozen grapes are cool and refreshing during hot summer months. Juicy pineapple--yum! I always love a hand full of raisins, sunflower seeds and almonds. And a good pink lady apple is always delicious!
I get made fun of at work all the time for bringing in my choice snacks. I'll be eating carrots with hummus and my supervisor will say I sound like a rabbit, crunching away. I make my own trail mix with raisins, sunflower seeds, nuts, etc. and my co-workers laugh at the giant bag of it I keep in my desk. I just smile back at them when they make these comments. Meanwhile, they are consuming liters of soda, bags of chips and candy from the vending machine, and grabbing fast food for lunch. I am one of only three people in this office building who is not overweight.
Something my boss suggested that is DELICIOUS is celery sticks with homemade almond butter and agave syrup. It's so good and satisfies my crunchy and sweet cravings.
I was delighted to find out recently, that my grandmother published a book in 1958 called, "This Word of Wisdom." She wrote several gospel-related books, I just didn't know until now that one of them was about health! Anyway, included in it are essays written by 3 people who shared their experiences of living the Word of Wisdom, one of them was a Miss USA. My favorite part of the book though, was my grandma's disdain for white processed flour which she expressed with this quote, "But what father if his son ask for bread will give him a ...wad of wallpaper paste?" She passed away when I was 10 but it's been great to get to learn her wisdom and humor through her writings. You too are creating a lasting treasure for your children/grandchildren with this blog. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with all of us.
Snacks? I've been chopping up veggies for easy snacking, just like you suggested. My favorites are celery, zucchini, carrots and cauliflower. It makes me feel so good when I take the time after I shop, to wash and cut up the veggies so they're ready to be eaten at any moment or thrown on the table for a quick side dish for dinner.
I LOVE cashews. I eat a handful before breakfast or in the afternoon and it keeps me from getting too hungry. Also, I've been enjoying the batch of Katie's granola I made last week.( My neighbors have too.) Thanks for that recipe.
LC, Ora Pate Stewart was your grandmother? She was a successful author, wrote a series of 4"x5" mini-books.
Kelsi, you're one of three in the building not overweight? Sweet revenge for all the teasing.
Kristen, I'm with you, the unprocessed carrots are more, well, real. I prefer them.
Michelle, hummus is the next healthy food fad, like guacamole was. More people are discovering it.
Thanks, all, for your comments.
Veggies with hummus, cheese or peanut butter with apples, popcorn with nutritional yeast and dill, and cottage cheese with a dollop of good-quality jam are my favorite healthy snacks. I'm also a sucker for homemade trail mix and granola.
Those are all my 'lightweight' snacks. If I need more of a mini-meal, I'll have a piece of whole wheat bread with peanut butter and a glass of raw milk.
One of the best ways to ensure any snacking is healthy, along with buying fruit and veg as snacks in my regular shop, is to take the time to prepare them (wash, cut, etc) as soon as they arrive home. Knowing that there's a tub of carrots, snow peas, small tomatoes and celery sticks ready to go helps to prevent snacking on other foods or justifying buying commercial snacks.
After reading In Defense of Food, and discovering your blog, I have tried to stop buying processed foods, and I have been teaching my three kids the importance of a healthy diet. I smile and do a little silent cheer when my children pick a piece of fruit or vegetable to eat rather than say, candy or cookies. I have shown my 11 year old the ingredient lists of some of her old favorite snacks, like ding dongs..the list had 38 ingredients and most of the them I had no clue what they were! I then showed her a recipe for homemade cupcakes,,it had seven! I try not to make too many homemade sweets, but I feel like when I control what is put into the foods I make, my family will benefit from it. A nephew was at my house yesterday, and was complaining we didn't have any snack food, I told him we did..carrots and apples! And guess what? He at it and asked for more!
I'm really loving all the fresh berries in season now. I do wonder though if I need to eat a better balance of vegetables in my snacking to avoid all the sugar in fruit. Can too much sugar from fruit be a bad thing?
What is nutritional yeast? Isn't eating too much yeast a bad thing? And what does it taste like?
Skip – I love your site and would like to request a post topic. I am interested to know your thoughts as a Father on teaching good health to your children. I contribute to a pod cast www.thedadshow.net and we would be very pleased if you might have the time for a 10 min interview on the topic.
Too funny! I was reading this post while munching on one of my favourite snacks, a raw carrot. Just that. Normally I would have added some nuts or roasted soy beans as carrots need to be accompanied by a bit of fat in order for the body to process all the goodness, but I ran out and forgot to write it on my grocery list, so there you go. Carrots have the benefit of being sweet enough to saturate the sweet tooth, yet not cause raising and dipping blood sugar levels that fruit (not to mention candy!) can cause. Another good snack is a cup of miso soup, it rises the energy levels without causing a later energy dip. I also love stove popped popcorn with a timy sprinkle of sea salt.
Sacha, nutritional yeast is not the fast-acting yeast that goes into bread. It is deactivated, 'cultured' yeast that is full of protein and vitamins. It is yellow and flaky and resembles fish food, to be honest. It has a nutty, cheesy flavor that goes really well with popcorn, potatoes and other snack-type foods.