By Dean L. Jones, CPM
While waiting for the traffic light to change at the intersection of Wilmington and Compton Boulevards, I noticed a high number of people coming and going into the dialysis center within a matter of two short minutes. Living with diabetes is serious and difficult to manage, as the Centers for Disease Control reports the percentage of California adults with diagnosed diabetes is the 5th highest U.S. State at 8.9%, or 3,385,687 people.
There are 7,466,831 adults residing in the County of Los Angeles and 7.1%, or 528,971 of them have diabetes. A breakdown of this roughly half a million people by ethnic groups have adult blacks representing 8.5% of county residents and nearly 10% (9.2%) of them are diabetic. Asian adults are 14% of the L.A. county populace and 6.3% of them are diabetic. Similarly, Latinos account for 41.8% of L.A. county’s adult residents and 8.3% are diabetic, while whites comprise 33.8% of L.A. County’s adult residents and 5.6% of them have diabetes.
A lack of daily personal exercise and by not regularly eating fresh foods imposes a greater chance of developing Type 2 diabetes. Which is why consuming processed foods is unquestionably a setback. What is worst, processed food only tastes good because a majority of its’ ingredients consist of fat, salt, and sugar, which are huge ‘no-no’ ingredients for people having diabetes.
Moreover, changing from bad eating patterns can be complicated, due in part to the high number of unsuspicious archenemies to healthy nutrition. Such as, chicken nuggets that have heaps of salt, fat, and preservatives. Another nemesis is processed white rice that is made with refined flour offering zero nutrition, while simultaneously raising blood sugar levels. Also negatively effecting blood sugar levels are French fries, nevertheless, on the other hand by regularly eating fresh fruits and vegetables (sometimes canned) this will absolutely help reduce the graving for unfavorable starchy items.
High-quality breakfast cereals definitely need to be high-fiber to help prevent and manage diabetes, and be totally void of processed sugars. Potato chips and other fried snacks have huge amounts of salt and preservatives that harmfully slows the digestion system. In the same way, having a lot of sodas and/or fruit juices, even sugar-free sodas, are high contributors to the probability of diabetes and added weight.
High-fructose corn syrup is a common ingredient in packaged cookies, snack cakes, sweet pickle relish, ketchup, jams, jellies, and salad dressings. These are the obvious items to watch out for, but stay alert on the heavy salt and preservatives in processed meats. Not unlike the longtime favorite and ever ready hamburger, which science has proven for those who eat restaurant hamburgers two or more times a week are more likely in due course to be diagnosis to have type 2 diabetes than those who refrain from it.
www.SugarAlert.com
Dean Jones, Ethics Advocate, Southland Partnership Corporation (a public benefit organization), contributes his view on health attributes of packaged foods & beverages.
