Ok, I looked at the cat links. They are by vets, and say that it is best to feed pet cats on diets heavily based on fish and meat, and that just strikes me as polite. If you are going to keep an animal in captivity, feed the thing very close to what it would eat in the wild. As I see it, the fact that people are not cats is relevant here. I see nothing in those articles that justifies the claim that T2 Diabetes in human beings is created by diet, or blaming an individual human being with T2 Diabetes for having "eaten their way into it".

You don't see any parallels between what happens when you feed an animal a diet it hasn't evolved to eat and what happens when humans (another sort of animal) are fed a diet they didn't evolve to eat? Even though they both end up in rather similar places. Interesting.

You seem to get it here, why does that fall apart when applied to humans? Show me the "wild" (aka primitive) diet that comes anywhere close to what "domesticated" (aka Westernized) humans are eating today.

Congratulations to the Paleo dieters for the first research on your WOE having happened. .

The results look very interesting too. With a bit more research, we could be looking at a better solution for T2 Diabetes than we have ever had. I still do not see anything that justifies blaming diet and lifestyle alone as the cause.

I see possible great news for people who already have T2, in the potential link with grain, and the results of the people in the study. This however, is an available solution for those that have the condition already. It looks like the kidneys issue and high protein too me...if a person has a kidney problem, they require a low protein diet, this does not mean that a healthy person is putting their kidney's in danger by eating a lot of protein. There is a risk that a person may start eating a high protein diet, unaware that they have a kidney issue. If so, it will soon show up. I am stuck for a reason why the same could not be true of T2 Diabetes. When a person, unaware they have a problem with insulin production, eats a high carbohydrate diet the insulin issues shows up. This does not mean the carbohydrate consumption was the cause, just the mechanism by which it became evident. They use the consumption of a glucose solution as a diagnostic technique on this condition for a reason.

Almost all of my relatives on my mother's side have diabetes.
They grow their own veggies,hunt and fish and get a lot of
exercise because the live on farms in a little town in Texas
called Ranger.These people did not eat their way into diabetes.
Eddie

Just out of interest, if anyone is at all interested in diabetes and other carb related disorders in cats/dogs, check out the groups listed in my sig

Oh yeah, I pulled my kitty back from the verge of diabetes by switching him to a meat/fish only diet.


They don't eat carbs? That's pretty rare if they don't.

just eating today's hybrid corn as compared to corn produced a 100 years ago could cause someone to eat their way to diabetes. Who really knows? There are so many things we consume today that could attribute to diabetes. Diet soft drinks, fast foods, preservatives in foods, etc....

For those of us who have diabetes, the argument as to how we got it is pointless, but to those who haven't become diabetics yet, what they don't know will hurt them and what they know and ignore will hurt them also.

Fact is; more people (percentage wise) are diagnosed with diabetes now then 50 years ago and there needs to be a cohesive voice to warn people that diabetes can creep up on anyone and especially if it runs in the family.

I wonder if I ever ate a diabetic animal? hmmmmmmm

So, if diet doesn't cause Type 2 diabetes, why does it seem to follow right on the heels of the western diet coming to a new people? We've seen this in America with various Indian tribes having terrible problems with diabetes and related disease, in Australia with their aboriginals, West Africa at the turn of the 20th century. Taubes writes about the wealthy castes in various societies (early 1900's) having epidemics of diabetes because they could afford the the sugar and refined carbohydrates the poor people couldn't.

But the table has turned now and the highly refined carbs are the food of the poor and the healthy veggies and meats are for the wealthier folks.


True. I'm not trying to make diabetics feel bad, they've got enough of a burden dealing with their disease. But getting the order of the horse and the cart correct means you can make progress at preventing these "diseases of civilization". If you don't ever make that acknowledgment then how is anyone to escape what looks inevitable and unpreventable and like just a stroke of bad luck?

Actually, if we look at cost of food and the cost effect of consequences of the food choices we make, eating healthy, in the long run, is a lot cheaper

I loved that study with the people, on the Paelo vs. Mediterranean diets. Hurray, I'd like to see more studies like that!

However, I'm not sure that we should be using studies of cats to compare to humans. For two reasons:

One: Cats (Felines) are the only true carnivores. Canines (Dogs, wolves, etc), humans, etc are all omnivores. Cats are also the only ones who cannot produce taurine and must obtain it from diet. If they don't get it from diet, they can go blind, die, etc.

Two: Cats can get a temporary diabetes that goes away, which humans don't experience. *Anecdotal example: We put our kitty in a kennel when we went out of the country for 3 1/2 weeks. Kitty refused to eat while at kennel, became skin and bones. When we got back, Kitty had diabetes. Vet advised this is common in cats after a period of fasting, will probably resolve itself once kitty is back home, eating normally. Kitty did indeed go back to normal after several weeks.* However, humans do not become diabetic from a period of fasting.


Oh, and as far as people who are eating only fruits, vegies, meats, etc. and wondering why these same people still get diabetes, the poster who said the varieties are different now is correct. The super-sweet corn that we can buy at the roadside stands was not even available a couple of decades ago. Our giant-sized sweet apples barely resemble the heirloom varieties that people grew even a hundred years ago. And so on. Almost all of our vegies and fruits would not be recognizable to cave man.

One more thought: if the info about diabetes and the benefits of low carb diets was suddenly given to everyone, and everyone believed it--then we would have a major food crisis on our hands. Alot of people would be out of work, and there wouldn't be enough "good" food for people. IMHO, I think that the head honchos are considering all this when they "poo-poo" the evidence in front of them.

Well, the point I was trying to make isn't that humans and cats are identical, but that you feed either one of them a diet they're not adapted to eat and you get similar outcomes. I chose cats because they're critters a lot of us have, and many of us have cats with metabolic issues too. You can pretty much reproduce that effect in most mammals. Cats have an even more limited ability to deal with carbohydrates than humans do, but the outcome is the same. And weirdly enough, people are doing the same thing to their cats they're doing to themselves. Overloading them with stuff they can't handle in large quantities.

I know cats get fatty liver disease when they lose weight really fast, or starve, but didn't know diabetes went along with that. It makes sense though, usually people getting carb induced FLD also get/have diabetes. Humans do get temporary diabetes though, gestational diabetes and also drug induced T2 diabetes.
Well, that's true about food prices going up because of demand. But the alternative seems pretty disgusting too doesn't it? 1/3 of the population now has diabetes or are pre-diabetic. Even kids are getting T2 now, especially when their Mom's have it too.

At least if they made a concerted effort to get people to stop guzzling sugared drinks and juices, and HFCS, it might slow things down a little. They could back off on recommending grains, starchy veggies and emphasize non-starchy veggies and lower sugar fruits. That would have a huge impact I'm sure.

And my thought behind posting this isn't so much for the "establishment" (I've given up on them) but for those of us here. It just seems like there's quite a few people here that, even though they follow a low carb diet, don't quite see how eating a high carb diet relates to diabetes. Believe it or not.

I wish I could get them all to read GCBC, Taubes is far more convincing than I am but... you know the saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

Nancy, I understood that you were comparing cats to cats and humans to humans, but only using an analogy of what happens when diets are manipulated to what we were not evolved to consume. Good points you've been making... I tend to agree with you......

Mrs Skip.... I think there is enough green earth to provide enough food for everyone if they all decided to eat for health. I don't see a mass conversion happening, but if it progressed to that over the next few years, I don't think the demand would exceed the supply, although we might all be paying a little higher prices.......

I do not see the correlations that you are making there, I think that is the cause of your confusion. Domestic cats are a type of cat, and some live as pets, others live as strays. My ideas about cats are not based on theories about what cats ate in a previous era, they are based on what stray cats eat now. This means that the wild versus pet cats that I am comparing, are the same animal exactly, and living in the same era, hence wild is not aka primitive, and "domesticated" is not aka Westernized. So, since when I said "wild" I did not mean "primitive", and when I said "domestic", I did not mean "domesticated", the argument about cats does not transfer so readily to human beings in my mind.

The increased numbers of people diagnosed may be a lot less to do with diet, and a lot more to do with more affective diagnostic techniques, more human beings getting access to healthcare, mild and rare forms of the disease having been identified...all this could create an illusion that there are more people developing it. 100 years ago a diabetic person could have drunk themself to death from blood glucose related mood swings before they went anywhere near a doctor. Since then, that persons child grew up, and drank all wrong, but somebody introduced them to AA meetings, which kept the drinking under better control, and this recovering alcoholic person had a child...and that child learned about alcohol and their family, so that child did not drink at all...but they stuffed their face with high sugar snacks as their energy levels fell because of the diabetes. This latest child in the family was the first one to go to college and have a good salaried job, so they have medical insurance, and they had an annual medical....and it has turned out that they are diabetic.

I am not saying the modern diet is perfectly ok. There is some pretty questionable elements for certain. I just think that if we want to help people, it may be difficult when you feel very keen to help, but IMHO it is very important not to blame the wrong thing.