Diabetes.co.uk & Diabetes.org.uk. Careful, they are not the same!

Could you imagine a diabetes advice group encouraging you to eat more carbs?

Well, sadly that is what Diabetes UK (diabetes.org.uk) do. Have a look at a Facebook posting I received and ask yourself does eating floury wraps sound like a great idea for someone who, by definition, has a carb intolerance problem? Have a look at the picture. The meat and peppery sauce do look tasty. I will have some of that, please. But it sits atop a mound of starchy carbohydrate – the wraps. If you buy a packet of wraps, the front of the packet will tell you about their energy content and data on fats, proteins and sugars. The sugar value for wraps will be very low which is true. Wraps are low sugar breads. But have a wee peep at the full nutritional information box. It will in very small print and well out of your line of sight. The Box will confirm the wraps’ low sugar content but it is obliged to inform you of its starchy carb content. And starchy carbs are pre-sugars. Complex they may be as far as a chemist is concerned but they are exceedingly simple for your digestion to deal with. Starch unzips to release glucose as soon as it hits the stomach. Okay, right, they don’t contain sugar but they do liberate a wallop of it when you eat them.

Here is some nutritional information you can find about wraps on-line. One wrap delivers 34g of carbs to your system. A pitta bread serving of the same weight has been calculated to end up pushing around 28g of glucose into your bloodstream. Imagine if you ate two… or three? Remember, you normally only have 4g of glucose in your entire bloodstream. I guess pittas and wraps are nutritionally similar. So I ask again, why would a diabetes advocacy organisation (like diabetes.org.uk) go out of its way to encourage you to push your sugar levels up? Answer… I have no idea. Actually, I think it is because they adhere to the carb-based Eatwell Plate food advice. If you are a low-cal low-fat sort of person then they are your guys. But I am a low-carb person so I tend to stick to diabetes.co.uk for my advice. When it comes to low-carb and its benefits in reversing diabetes, diabetes.co.uk seem to get it.