How does cereal fit into the subject 'Low Carb Tips for Diabetes Awareness Month'?

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:

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

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?