According to the numbers, we're in the middle of a diabetes epidemic and all the numbers and general health of our population indicate that this problem is only going to worsen.

So my question is, where is the diabetic marketing? Why aren't restaurants and food manufacturers responding? When I go into a restaurant like Applebee's or the Outback Steakhouse, they usually have a 'light' menu to point out their low-fat selections (because, presumably, people are looking for this.) Why not have a sugar-wise menu? Ribs with sugar-free bbq sauce. 'Sugar-free' salads with SF dressings, no croutons/tortilla chips or sugared nuts/dried fruits/meats. SF Jell-O or pudding parfait desserts. You would think if a restaurant came out with a special menu that people would flock to it, because even if it's ultimately still bad, people will feel great about eating it if they feel as though they are doing something proper for themselves.

Let's face it; living the LC lifestyle is a little more work in the kitchen than the standard American diet. It's nice to get a break. If my Pizza Hut sold a crust-free pizza bowl with low-sugar sauce and my choice of toppings, I'd totally buy it. If I knew I could go to the Lonestar steakhouse and get a steak that hadn't been injected or marinated in a sugar solution, it would be my family's number one restaurant destination. If McDonald's sold a sugar-free yogurt with berries, I'd probably get one once in a while.

It would seem finding LC, or diabetic-friendly food should be an easy task, both at restaurants and grocery stores. Even the small 5-location local grocery store chain around here has a special gluten-free section now.

Am I mistaken in thinking that diabetics control (or are supposed) their disease with their diet? (And that it would mirror LC?)

Yes, you are mistaken. The general wisdom is that diabetics should be able to eat what everyone else eats, and cover it with insulin. Unfortunately this does not work. There are some enlightened diabetics who have clued in to low carb, but we wage a constant war with our medical practitioners, who continue to insist that we base our diet largely on carbs. I COULD GO ON and rant and rave...been doing it ever since my son was diagnosed with diabetes. We low carb. We are healthy. I would LOVE to see the low sugar options you have described! (hey, let's start this...let's open a restaurant! I would call it, very simply, "Good Food.")

Well, thanks to the help of "nutritionists" restaurants probably believe that they do have a diabetic menu. It is up to the patient to handle their health. It is no different from anyother enlightened low carber. No sugar, no sugar, no sugar. A carbohydrate is treated like sugar by the body so no potatoes, no rice, no bread no sugary fruit. No, no, no.

I'm convinced the educated ones just eat at home because the options out there at restaurants and fast food are null. You can go to KFC and get the Grilled Chicken there, but I recently found out there are hidden carbs. And yes, those light menus are horrible, most of them have sugar instead of fat, and low calories.

It's clear our society here in America still believes that "light" food is low cal/low fat. The common logic amongst most people is that if you're overweight its because you're eating fatening foods that are high in calories.

I don't see how hard it would be for any restaurant to incorporate a REAL light menu, such as grilled proteins seasoned with salt and pepper, let the natural flavors come through. Steamed vegetables. Green Leaf salad with oil and vinegar.

It sounds TOO simple, maybe that's the problem!

It's no different for us. I don't *have* to eat at home, I can eat out and still eat low carb. It's just I have to be very selective. It would be nice, but not necessary, to have options like sugar free desserts, but I can always make them myself if I need them.

The problem is that diabetics (and I assume we're talking type 2s) are taught by the ADA, nutritionists, most doctors, etc., to eat low in fat and to consume quite a large amount of "good" carbs (you know, whole grains and fruits and whatnot). Most are told to eat something like 45-60 grams of carbs PER MEAL, plus snacks.

The medical community is sadly VERY much lagging behind the research that consistently shows that a low-carb, high-fat diet is the most successful for controlling glucose levels for type 2s.

I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at age 25. I spoke with a Certified Diabetes Educator (also a registered dietician), and she told me to limit (and I only use that word because she did) my carb intake to about 150 grams per day. Funny thing, I limited mine down to about 50 a day at the time and still needed meds.

As for eating out, I have always found it easy to eat out while low-carbing. Meat, cheese, and non-starchy veggies - they're available pretty much everywhere. As long as you're smart about sauces/condiments, you're pretty much good to go. I did a Bernstein-like diet for a couple months (no more than 5g total carbs at any one meal/snack), and I ate out every single day. A couple extra carbs might have snuck in here or there, but I was very successful ith the weight loss and glucose control.

I hadn't realized that diabetics were being consulted to eat so many carbs. That helps to explain why there isn't much of a market... with that kind of allowance, sugar marinades and tortilla strips become insignificant.

I don't really struggle with finding things to eat outside of my kitchen. I am more than willing to take a few extra carbs for the questionable steak or whatever because I eat out so rarely. I bet I could walk into any restaurant and get a recommendation from the waitress for something gluten-free, but I'd probably get a dumb look if I asked about SF. My bigger curiosity is to why things are the way that they are - and that recommended amount of carbs kinda says it all!

The typical diabetic diet is really stupid. I know of an elderly person who had a high carb/sugar diet her entire life. It was excessive. She was about 300lbs. Finally, she becomes a diabetic. She lost about 60lbs but her diet still doesn't make much sense to me. Weight doesn't mean everything. She's still low on energy mentally and physically. She's now on a low fat/low sugar/low carb diet and she barely eats any protein. She's just now eating smaller or fake versions of all her previous foods. Splenda instead of sugar. A half a pint of icecream as a treat a few times a week instead of a full pint every day. Fake butter on her canned vegetables because real butter is "bad". Fake oils like Canola instead of olive oil. A package of Whole Grain/Wheat crackers instead of a package of Saltines. They won't even let her eat regular, natural peanut butter...they give her low fat Jiffy peanut butter!


It's probably the medication she's on controlling her insulin/blood sugar more than her diet. Her diet is just horrid.

It's really very sad. When I was diagnosed with type 2, I dove headfirst into research, and I discovered the wonders on low-carb and high-fat. My mother is also a type 2, and my father is as well, though he is in denial (refuses to admit to being more than "pre-diabetic"). My mother insists she cooks very "healthy" for them. You know, they use WHOLE GRAIN spaghetti, low-sugar oatmeal, corn/peas/carrots quite regularly (obviously excellent choices since they are vegetables), only skim milk, always lowfat mayo, etc. I have tried many times to explain the reality of low-carb to her, but I think she just thinks it's "too hard" and won't really give it an honest effort. It's so painful to know how much better they could be doing if only I could move in with them and cook their meals all day, every day :P

But why would she listen to me when her diabetes classes and her PCP tell her she's doing all the right things?

I have type 2 diabetics in my family but the only time I see them eat is on holidays and birthday parties. They always have cake/ice cream/pie/cookies and I'd always assumed it was a treat.. a break from their regularly controlled diet. (They never choose my SF/LC desserts.) Maybe they just eat poorly all the time

I hear ya on the resistance. I remember telling my mom about coconut bark as a chocolate substitute on Atkins after I found the recipe. (She'd done well on Atkins years ago to regulate her hypoglycemia and lose weight, but eventually fell off the wagon.) I'll never forget her response... she sat in front of me, with a king-sized bag of peanut M&Ms and a large diet Coke - a treat after eating chili cheese fries at the truck stop for lunch - cigarette dangling from her lips... she rasped, "But coconut oil is so bad for you!"

My VA dietician's advice to this type2? Eat 300 carbs a day or be on dialysis in a year. When I told her that 100 carbs daily equaled 1 lb. gained a day she scoffed and reminded me that she had a degree. Supposedly I was delusional or didn't know how to weigh myself. That was 8 yrs ago and my kidneys are no better or worse for my low carb diet. I also explained what the carbs did to my sugar readings and this caused her to stare at the wall for awhile. That seems to be a technique they learn in their training, whenever a VA nurse or doc doesn't like what you say they become fascinated by the computer screen and when they revive they move on to a new topic. Quite effective. But not if you need help with something.
be well
Art

My parents were both also T2 (as am I, <sigh>, though neither of my sisters are). My mom never changed the way she cooked for them, carbs all the way, and never really had a chance to try learn any other way, as she developed Alzheimer's at the age of 56. From then on my dad provided meals, but he was not a cook. So it was lots of take-out and things like frozen lasagna, pizza, burgers (with buns and fries). I never went to their house and didn't find boxes of cookies, 2-3 Entenmann's coffee cakes. My dad's usual breakfast was coffee cake and coffee, lunch would be a burger with bun and fries followed by cookies or else a sandwich with deli cold cuts, dinner would be pizza or heated up lasagna followed by ice cream, and possible pie as he often bought pies at the grocery store. Mom had to be hand-fed after a while - and her typical breakfast was eggs, a bowl or two of instant oatmeal, 2-3 slices of toast, and a banana. For lunch she got "Meals on Wheels" which always included potatoes or pasta or rice, a yeast roll or biscuit, and a sugary dessert, and dinner was usually what my dad had with possibly extra helpings of ice cream.

But my dad *did* fill his fridge with fat-free mayo, tubs and tubs and tubs of grotesque fat-free margarines, fat-free half-and-half (a contradiction in terms right there). When I would visit them I would always run to the store on my first visit there and buy some real butter, real cream, etc. And my dad would always berate me for buying such awful fatty stuff and tell me that's why I was "so fat".

Neither of them were ever given any recommendations on how to eat, just more and more meds on tops of meds. My mom was hospitalized at age 77, and her blood sugars were so high that my dad was told she needed to be on insulin and she was sent home the next day with my dad and some insulin and syringe, and he was told to give it to her with NO instructions on how and when to do it whatsoever!

And we are talking about a woman here who was basically in a bedridden vegetative state, had been unable to walk for over 8 years, had not been able to talk for 10 years, not been able to recognize a soul - yet here they are trying to continue to prolong her life and give her insulin as she continued to be fed the above diet. She died a week later. My younger sister is convinced that she probably died of an insulin overdose because my dad had been given no instructions, and wasn't sure what he was supposed to be doing, and was trying to get help from the daily aide who came in to bathe and feed my mom - and she thinks that between them they gave her a double dose. Did they? We'll never know now.

And my dad died five years later, shortly before his 82nd birthday, still eating as above right up to the very last day of his life. The thing is, though, that even if they had gone to a diabetes educator who told them to follow a strict low carb diet I can give you an absolute 100% gurantee right now that they would never ever have done it. They just loved all their carby stuff way too much.

I guess this is one of those areas where you'd expect to see the free market reign; but I suppose if the demand isn't there, no one will supply it.

Still, marketers are awesome at creating an urgency for things we don't have a need for. Seems like catering to a need, one which is steadily growing, would be a real moneymaker.

I also wonder if the marketing isn't there because by claiming one thing healthy, it separates other parts of the menu off as not-healthy.

Pillsbury makes cookie dough that doesn't have trans-fats or HFCS, and has a simple list of real-food ingredients. You'd think they'd advertise the shit out of that, but they don't - because they still sell the regular chemical-laden version chock full of the bad fats and HFCS. They can't boast one without implicating the other. It's delicate.

Luckily for me, I truly love the act of grocery shopping, planning meals and preparing food; I still want a break from time to time. And yeah, I can make myself a LC/SF dessert, but every once in a while it'd be nice if I could just throw one in the cart and enjoy it without having to clean up the mixing bowl

Marketers are awesome at whipping up a market when there's a large profit margin. Right now the big profit margins are for low-fat, high carb foods, because the whole industry has been working on it for 30 years. My sister got a degree in industrial food science and she said the push for 30 years has been for high profit, good-tasting, shelf-stable convenience food. Too bad we forgot to add "healthy" in that list of requirements.

If we could figure out how to make super high margin, real food, that would catch the attention of the food industry. But as others have mentioned, it would simultaneously take education to make people demand other food.

I also think the problem is simply that there aren't really good answers out there in the main stream media as to WHY this country is in a diabetic crisis. All we hear is that Americans eat too many processed foods and not enough whole grains and low fat so that's why there is crisis. The food industry capitalizes on that message to push the "healthy" foods but the money is in the unhealthy food.

As for restaurants, they give the customers what they want which is dishes built on fat, sugar and sodium because that's what Americans crave.

As Sue333, pointed out above, there is also the mentality that if you are diabetic, medications will make it so you can keep eating what you were eating that made you sick in the first place.

When Americans start demanding foods lower in carbs and sodium and higher in protein and fat, that's when the industry will begin to change to meet that demand. Can you imagine if half the people that walked into an establishment walked out because there was nothing on the menu to eat that was diabetic friendly....the owner would change the menu over night!