What do Post cereals have to do with low-carb diets and diabetes?
Because my blog regularly addresses important health and nutrition issues related to a wide variety of subjects on such a regular basis, my e-mail box is filled with information from public relations companies galore all trying to get their message out there. Some represent non-profit organizations who are trying to increase awareness while others speak for companies who all try to give their angle of an issue to capitalize on it for marketing their business. I don’t have a problem with this practice except when it so laughably crosses the line of reality like what happened this week.
While most of these kind of e-mails almost immediately end up in File 13 as quickly as I receive them, one stuck out to me because of the subject line: Low Carb Tips for Diabetes Awareness Month. Oh, now this is interesting! I’ve actually received some good messages from this same PR company before, so I decided to read on. As I perused the press release, I literally could not believe what I was reading.
Although this was billed as “Low Carb Tips on National Diabetes Awareness Month,” the content was all about how “adding whole grains to your diet…can decrease your chances of developing diabetes.”
“Cereal fiber has been found to be more effective than other types of fiber due to the combination of antioxidants and soluble and insoluble fiber,” the press released declared.
They listed Post Raisin Bran and Post Shredded Wheat as two of the best ways to get whole grain fiber into your diet. They even pushed two new flavors of the Shredded Wheat — Vanilla Almond and Honey Nut — and offered to send me samples (why would I want samples of something that OBVIOUSLY had double-digit carb counts?). I was so stunned by the notion that high-carb cereal would even be promoted to diabetics at all. They’ve tried this with weight loss and now they’ve moved to diabetes. UGH!
My immediate response back was “This is a joke, right?” It HAD to be!
Nope. In fact, the representative said she is personally following a vegan version of a “low-carb diet” and that her trainer said she needed to increase her intake of whole grains when she’s working out.
“Is that incorrect info? I’d love to get tips from you if you have any other
recommendations,” she wrote.
I was happy to oblige. Here’s what I wrote back to her:
Thanks for writing back. Grains, even the so-called healthy ones, are a VERY BAD idea for anyone who is attempting to live a healthy lifestyle. That’s not to say that some active people can’t get away with consuming more of them because of their active lifestyle. But for a good many people like myself, they are carbohydrates that will simply turn to sugar in the body.
Just take a look at the nutritional label for these cereals:
POST RAISIN BRAN CEREAL:
Serving size: 1 cup
Total Carbohydrates 45g (EEK!)
Dietary Fiber (those so-called health whole grains) 7g
SUGAR (something your body does NOT need) 17g, or over 4 teaspoons
POST VANILLA NUT SHREDDED WHEAT:
Serving size: 1 cup
Total Carbohydrates 43g (EEK again!)
Dietary Fiber 5g
SUGAR 11g, or nearly 3 teaspoons
While these are certainly better than Fruit Loops or Cocoa Puffs, I’d never allow them to enter my body because of the glycemic impact on my blood sugar and insulin levels. Just not healthy at all.
You could tell a light bulb came on in her head about this after I shared.
“Wow, thank you so much for that info Jimmy. I will definitely re-evaluate my
diet, and review my pitch now,” she responded.
Incidentally, the sample “Post Anti-Diabetes Diet” looks like this:
Breakfast–
Post Shredded Wheat with skim milk topped with fresh berries
Lunch:
Whole grain bread turkey sandwich with avocado
Carrots and hummus
Dinner:
Salad with romaine lettuce, olive oil, topped with walnuts
Turkey Chili
Side broccoli
Snack:
Apple + ¼ cup Almonds
This so-called diabetes diet is much too high in carbohydrates and too low in fat to be healthy. Cut out the bread, cereal and fat-free dairy, add in more meat, full-fat dairy (raw milk especially), and eggs, and use liberal amounts of butter and coconut oil while minimizing the carbohydrate intake to no more than 10g per meal as the great Dr. Richard Bernstein would prescribe. Diabetics need blood sugar and insulin levels that are stabilized, not going erratically up and down like they’re on a roller coaster ride! That’s exactly what would happen if diabetics began eating cereal for the supposed benefits of the minimal amount of fiber in them.
On that note, with all due respect to these PR companies attempting to promote their client’s products and services, please don’t insult my intelligence by telling me you have “low carb tips” about diabetes and then send me just the opposite. I’m always happy to share factual information with anyone and everyone about livin’ la vida low-carb because this issue is too important to be whimsically played around with — especially for people with diabetes. But a diabetic needs to eat cereal about as much as a lung cancer patient needs to smoke a pack of cigarettes! And the end result is exactly the same…declining health and death!
Do I have “stupid” written across my forehead?
Oh man, don’t get me started. In the year after my daughter was born, I regained the weight I lost after her birth and then some, rocketing up past the 200 lb. mark. I still suspect thyroid issues and I’ll be looking into that when my health insurance kicks in at the beginning of the year. But for part of that time I was also experimenting with vegetarianism and then veganism, both of which made me fatter and crazier, especially the latter. (Hint for you moms-to-be out there: Wanna avoid postpartum psychosis? Going vegan is not the way to do it. I don’t think I got quite *that* bad, but I was pretty bad. Still safe with my child but not safe for my own social life. I lost a lot of friends that year.)
There’s really no reason to eat grains other than the cultural and the economical, but I question even the economic argument, as the only reason most of us can afford grains is that the U.S. government subsidizes their production. Without grain subsidies we couldn’t have huge factory farms, they’d have to feed grass to cows again instead of corn and we’d all be about a hundred times healthier. I really don’t buy the idea that we’d be going hungry. If you’ve got $300 in a month to plunk down on an iPod or a cell phone bill, don’t tell me you’d go hungry. Anyway, nobody said we couldn’t subsidize the foods that are actually good for us rather than nutritionally questionable. I’d kill to see a grass-fed beef and dairy subsidy put into place. I’m so there, dude!
We have a grass-fed dairy here in Ohio that I’ve been using for most of the past year, Snowville Creamery. I never knew before I started buying their cream that it’s supposed to be bright yellow in springtime. Up til that point all the heavy cream I’d ever seen in grocery stores had been white year-round. No wonder they have to add annato to industrial butter. Tsk, tsk.
Raw milk’s great, supposedly–I’ve never tried it. In a lot of U.S. states it’s illegal. (If you live in California you are one lucky you-know-what. It can be sold at retail there.) But there’s a workaround. Never buy ultra-pasteurized dairy. You might as well be drinking dead snot. Get regular pasteurized and if it says on the label that they used the lowest permissible temperature for pasteurization, favor that brand of milk over any other.
Then learn how to ferment milk. Doesn’t matter what you do, pick a culture. I’ve experimented with kefir grains (they finally succumbed to whatever mold I apparently had in my apartment’s HVAC system) and with yogurt-making. I actually like the kefir better, it has more consistent results and you can ferment at room temperature. I’d like to try piima yogurt at some point because that’s a room-temperature yogurt, but I will have to order the culture on the Internet so I’ve been putting it off. Anyway, fermentation eats up most or all of the lactose, breaks down the fats and proteins to make the milk a lot more digestible, gives you access to good bacteria for colonizing your gut and adds nutritional value to the milk as well. It more than makes up for not being able to get the milk raw, in my opinion.
Breakfast cereal is not only bad for diabetics and everyone else, it’s a stupid expenditure. You’re basically paying for air. Can you believe WIC pays for this junk for new moms and their kids? I was on WIC early in my daughter’s life and that cereal wouldn’t even last a week. No, I didn’t feed it to her, I hogged it up myself. I had to drop cereal along with the full-sugar soda because they both made me feel like crap and made my blood sugar swoop and dive all over the place. And the price wasn’t worth it! When I realized what a waste it all was I stopped getting the cereal and chose to take some of the little money I had and buy oatmeal instead. Turns out oatmeal’s full of phytates and I wasn’t preparing it right, but it’s still a way better deal than cold cereal. I hope whoever came up with the idea for that colossal waste of money is toasting somewhere on a long fork right now. Wanna know why so many kids need college loans… there’s your answer right there. OK, I exaggerate… but not by much. Do your heart and your pancreas a favor and eat eggs and bacon for breakfast instead. Fried in butter or coconut oil over low-ish heat. Sheesh.
Incredible, just incredible.
And not very edible, either.
I’m with you Jimmy! I’m so tired of advertisers blasting “health” messages to sell products. There doesn’t seem to be any truth in advertising anymore, if there ever was. They will say anything to get you to buy their product, even to notice it, and will propagate misleading, dated or outright wrong information to do it (like those commercials still trying to vilify butter). If you get your health information from advertisers, you are in trouble.
The cereal companies & the pharmaceutical companies have to be in bed together. Otherwise, why or how could they promote this as a good food for a diabetic? And don’t diabetics know that high carb counts are going to raise their blood sugars?
Minor correction regarding Dr. Bernstein’s carb limits. He recommends 6:12:12.
THANK YOU, JD! I suppose I was doing the average per meal.
–Jimmy
I used to eat plenty of “healthy whole grains” with plenty of fiber and it didn’t prevent me from getting diabetes. I ate shredded wheat and raisin bran with skim milk. This stuff doesn’t help control my blood sugar either. What a crock. Just more marketing.
With the exception of dinner (depending on what’s in the chili), that day’s menu would send my blood sugar through the roof.
Hey, Kellogs is getting into the “diabetes friendly” act too.
http://www.kelloggnutrition.com/live-healthy/diabetes-friendly.html
my local grocery store is promoting a “diabetes tour” of the store…. No doubt they are promoting the low fat whole grains nonsense, I wouldnt be suprised if even these crappy cereals are included on the “tour.” It’s really a shame, an outrage really.
Maybe I should start doing my own tour, starts at the butcher’s counter, next stop is the produce area, find the cooler with the eggs and bacon, then go straight to checkout!
And don’t forget the BUTTER, too, mrfreddy!
–Jimmy
Wow, just down that cereal with some skim milk (as recommended by most health practitioners) and you’ve got a glycemic load that would send anyone’s blood sugar through the roof! Then add a glass of “healthy” orange juice and you’re a bloog sugar attack waiting to happen.
The idea of boxed extruded cereals being a mainstay in our modern diet is just sad (or SAD for Standard American Diet I should say). I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who starts their day off with a huge bowl of this stuff.
Many food companies take cereal to be the product that’s easy to ride and market to anyone, even if they make outrageous claims about health benefits etc. To much fiber is very bad, not enough is also bad, that’s why people need to be conscious of their diets these days and not rely on food companies.