| ADA Issues New Clinical Practice Recommendations
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) issued its annual Clinical Practice Recommendations to help health care providers treat people with diabetes using the most current evidence available.
This year, one notable change occurs in the Medical Nutrition Therapy section dealing with weight loss. Until now, the ADA did not recommend low carbohydrate diets because of lack of sufficient scientific evidence supporting their safety and effectiveness. The 2008 Recommendations include a statement recognizing the increasing evidence that weight-loss plans that restrict carbohydrate or fat calorie intake are equally effective for reducing weight in the short term (up to one year). The "Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes--2008" document reviews the growing evidence for the effectiveness of either approach to weight loss.
Want to go on a diet?: Four recommended dieting methods
Come New Year's, many people resolve to lose weight but it can be difficult deciding which method is best for you. Following are four ways to reduce your weight by controlling your diet. First is the so-called cabbage diet, which does not mean eating only cabbage, but rather chewing fresh cabbage thoroughly for 10 minutes before light meals three times a day. Toshihide Yoshida, who heads the diabetes and internal medicine department at Kyoto Municipal Hospital, came up with the method. "The 10 minutes of chewing activates the brain's satiety center so that you are able to feel satisfied even with a small portion of food," Yoshida said, adding that you must get 70 grams of protein every day to maintain muscle tissue, which helps the body burn calories. One person who tried the cabbage diet is Masanobu Yanase, a doctor at the National Cardiovascular Center in Suita, Osaka Prefecture.
Research has good news for indulgences
People who drink red wine occasionally lower their risk of developing dementia. Wine drinkers have healthier diets in general than beer drinkers. They typically buy fruit and vegetables, poultry, cooking oil, low-fat cheese, milk and meat. Beer drinkers tend to buy pre-cooked food, sugar, cold cuts, chips, pork, butter, sausages, lamb, and soft drinks. Red wines made from cabernet sauvignon, merlot, pinot noir and shiraz grapes are potent killers of bacteria. Resveratrol, a naturally occurring compound in red wine, may help prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes. Flavanols found in red wine (and chocolate, green tea and blueberries) can help sharpen the mind and give a short-term boost to cognitive skills. BUT Women who drink three or more glasses of red wine a day increase their risk of getting breast cancer by as much statistically as women who smoke a packet of fags a day increase their risk of lung cancer.
Diabetic Menus
Diabetes is becoming an epidemic in this country, affecting millions of adults and children. Since diet is so critical to keeping the disease under control, some restaurants are providing menus especially for diabetics. A.P. Stumps in San Jose, California is offering a host of dishes as part of a new Diabetes Society restaurant campaign. The goal is to offer menu items that will help diabetics like Herb Proser manage their blood sugar. "I think it's a darn good idea. There's so many diabetics around and they have troubles with the type of menus here that are too sugary or there are too many calories in it for what they need and this raises the blood sugar level too much," said Proser. "It's such a growing concern in today's society and especially in the youth. Diabetes is a growing problem and more restaurants should take on the role of being conscious about the nutrition in items they do provide," explained A.P.
Food columnist diets, loathes it
With the coming of the New Year, it seemed appropriate to kick off my last semester of columns with a piece of hard-hitting journalism on an international phenomenon. After minutes of careful deliberation, I decided to explore the world of dietary New Year's resolutions by going on seven different diets over the course of one week. Days 1-4: A Time of Meat, God, Tofu and Moderation On the first day, I chose to follow a low-carb diet because such bread-free meal plans have come to define America's weight loss scene for the past few years. There are a number of plans out there, but the Atkins Diet is the granddaddy of them all. After the publication of his book “Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution" in 1972, Dr. Robert C. Atkins started a craze that made millions of Americans think carbohydrates were making them overweight, as well as causing Type II diabetes and a host of other problems.
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