Avoid type II Diabetes, part 3:

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Monday, 7-31-2006

Avoid type II Diabetes, part 3:

Author Jean Carper, PhD says that diets high in saturated fat from animal sources tend to trigger type II diabetes.

Large studies of whole countries & other population groups show that people who eat diets of 5 to 7 percent saturated fat by calories tend to have much lower rates of heart disease than those with more or much more saturated fat in their diet.

So, to avoid type II diabetes & heart disease, we suggest cutting the amount of saturated fat in your diet.

Today & tomorrow’s post have ideas on how to do that.

One way is to substitute beans & nuts & wild caught fish & some whole grains & nonfat & 1% fat dairy products for all meat & poultry.

Another is to only eat meat & poultry that is 100 percent grass or range fed. (If the animal or bird is grass or range fed most of their life & then fattened up or “finished” by feeding it grain just before it’s killed & made into food, it is more humane for them; but the health benefits to you drop sharply as the saturated fat content will rise as they are grain-fattened.)

And, eating grass fed & range food meat & poultry works best to cut your saturated fat intake if you eat meat or poultry twice a week or less instead of once a day or more.

Another strategy that works is to substitute extra virgin olive oil for butter all or 95 percent of the time.

Extra virgin olive oil has other health benefits & is about 14% saturated fat by calories. Butter & butterfat is about 70 to 75% saturated fat by calories -- or about five times as high.

If you remove baked potatoes, which are high glycemic index foods, & french fries, which are a higher glycemic index food & are often cooked in transfats, from the average American’s diet, the average American eats one serving of vegetables a day or less.

If you stop eating baked potatoes & french fries & eat two or more servings of nonstarchy, low glycemic index, vegetables each day, you’ll be less fat & the percentage of your diet that’s high in saturated fat will fall as you’ll tend to be full enough you’ll eat less of the foods that are high in saturated fat.

In addition, eating that many “real” vegetables each day cuts your risk of heart disease according to a recently reported study.