A new op-ed published in Minnesota's largest newspaper, the Star Tribune, christens the keto diet as "The risk-reversal diet."
Star Tribune: The risk-reversal dietWriter Paul John Scott begins with a focus on the type 2 diabetes epidemic, including its shocking scale and crippling cost. After laying out the depressing facts, what is his assessment?
So if there's a preventable illness that deserves our attention more than diabetes, it's hard to imagine what that is. And yet our imagination when it comes to identifying the source of the illness is impoverished. Officeholders demand more "access to health care" (from the political left), or "freedom to choose your doctor" (from the political right). Few ask why we need so much diabetes care in the first place. Not to mention why "your doctor" doesn't seem to have the tools to arrest diabetes.
From there, Scott talks about the power of ketogenic diets to reverse type 2 diabetes. He mentions Virta Health's results, but points out that patients can wear a continuous glucose monitor and see for themselves what starchy staples - "even high-fiber, so-called "healthy carbs" like brown rice, grains, fruit and whole-grain breads" - do to their blood sugar.
He summarizes the current quandary as follows:
How did we get here? We embraced ideas about diabetes that aligned with our sense of righteousness - the virtue of physical activity and salads, the supposed decadence of satisfying foods eaten during the unenlightened past. We got detoured by conceptual errors, pairing diabetes with obesity, for instance, when obesity is largely benign other than as a symptom of diabetes...
We told harried, manual-labor-performing diabetic patients to join the gym, eat smaller portions, less red meat or more plants, as if diabetes had been traced to cultural villains like sloth, overeating or beef, instead of being the maladaptation of the body's system for regulating energy that we know it to be.
Bold words. Great writing. Powerful ideas.
Give Scott's op-ed a read, and if you enjoy it, it could be a great piece to share with family and friends.