Why Diets Don't Work.

How many different diets have you tried over the years? I ask, because personally I've done the Atkins, the cabbage soup, the 5 2, high fat, low fat......you get the idea.

It transpires that there is no 'one-size-fits-all miracle diet.' Recent intensive studies by a team of Israeli scientists have proven that peoples bodies react very differently to the same foods.

The key to weight gain/loss is blood sugar (glucose) we all need blood sugar for energy and most of it comes from carbohydrates. Our digestion breaks down carbohydrate into sugar, which is released into the blood stream. After eating foodstuffs such as bread, rice, pasta or potatoes, we see a slight rise in our sugar levels, which is normal. However, large and regular increases raise your risk of weight gain (hence the fad for low carb diets.)

30 years ago, scientists developed a way of measuring a food's effect on blood sugar which we now know as the glycaemic index (G I.) This system rated foods according to how they would push up blood sugar after eating, findings suggested that white bread or pasta would produce a rapid spike, whilst vegetables would release carbs more slowly.

Consequently, low G I diets became fashionable. However, having conducted trials on 800 volunteers, the Personalised Nutrition Project collected an impressive amount of data about the different, minute-by minute effect of food on each volunteer. The results were quite remarkable, several participants were surprised to find foodstuffs such as tomatoes, grapes, salmon, granola, yoghurt and other supposedly healthy foods, were causing spikes, whereas a caramel sundae with nuts or white rice with nuts was fine (in some instances adding fat to meals lowered the blood sugar response.) Generally the volunteers responded differently to the same foods, two participants had completely opposite responses to a banana and a cookie: the glucose response of one shot up with the cookie but stayed flat with the banana, and vice versa.

It trumps up, gut bacteria are the key. We all have gut bacteria and firmicutes ( vital for the body's various systems to communicate) vary in each of us. Foods rich in fibre help to keep firmicutes in a healthy balance with other gut bacteria. However, scientists believe that our highly processed, artificially refined diets are wiping out our number of stomach flora by more than a third.

One volunteer spent 10 days on a processed food diet, he started off with 3,500 bacterial species in his gut, dominated by firmicutes, once on the diet he rapidly lost 1,300 species. The imbalance of bacteria in our guts can have a direct effect on our glucose response to food, thus our weight!

I guess it's not surprising that given our modern Western diet, which is full of unnatural additives, salt and sugar, our guts don't stand a chance. Obesity here and in the USA is rife, yet in Mediterranean countries, where they still eat a diverse and natural diet, obesity is less of a problem.

It makes sense of the fact that our ancestors ate anything from bread and dripping to fatty cuts of meat, homemade cake and chips etc without gaining the weight we are currently gaining. Theirs was not a refined, processed diet but natural diverse ingredients in moderation.

I think the lesson I have learnt here is that it's better to eat a jacket potato with real butter or homemade hummus with traditionally made bread or eggs on toast with coffee than highly processed 'health foods' such as diet bars, muesli, sugary yogurts and juices etc. Because we don't cook from scratch, fewer and fewer of us are using medicinal herbs and spices in our diets, I recently wrote about the myriad of health benefits from eating black garlic, but how many of you cook using garlic, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, basil or cloves, all commonly used in many cultures to help with digestive ailments.

I recently found a recipe for a infusion which is apparently good for colds and stomach ailments. I shall start on it tomorrow and let you know how I get on.

Homemade health juice

Recipe
1 small piece of ginger root, peeled and diced
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 litre water
1 bulb of garlic, peeled and cut into quarters
1 tablespoon of honey

Boil water and dissolve honey
Add other ingredients and remove from heat

Cover with a lid and leave to infuse for a couple of hours

Decant through a strainer into a sterilised bottle and refrigerate
Take 2 tablespoons on an empty stomach first thing in the morning and 2 tablespoons last thing at night

'We talk about 'gut reaction' 'gut instinct' and 'gut feeling' but how much do we really care for our guts?'
- Thomas Leith

Love Donna xxxxx