Diabetes In Control. A free weekly diabetes newsletter for Medical Professionals. News and information for Medical Professionals.
In part 3 of this Exclusive Interview, Sylvia Ley talks with Diabetes in Control Publisher Steve Freed about her overall message of a balanced, all-encompassing diet for people with diabetes, as recommended by medical experts.
Sylvia H Ley, PhD, RD, is a research scientist at Harvard University.
Transcript of this video segment:
Freed: What about poultry or fish? A lot of people strobe fresh vegetables on the grill and burn them, does that affect your risk?
Ley: So even poultry — if you use poultry on a grill, it also increases risk of developing type 2 diabetes. And its data on vegetable is not as clear, but it’s something we need to think more about. But in terms of animal poultry products, if you grill it doesn’t seem to be beneficial.
Freed: Is that same for fish, in the same class as poultry?
Ley: I have not seen the data on fish being as strong, so it’s mostly on poultry and red meat.
Freed: Can you say the same thing about, let’s say, McDonald’s or Burger King, they cook it on the grill with high heat and obviously they want it on as high as possible so they can make it faster?
Ley: So, those are processed meat choices when you choose those at a fast-food restaurant, so that would increase your chance much more so. And cooking it in a high flame, it would increase it even more.
Freed: So, the fast-food aspect, it’s all processed food. Actually it increases your risk more than pure red meats and there’s science to show that. So, I saw a presentation on what makes a good presenter.
Ley: Okay.
Freed: And a good presenter, for their presentation, people learn something but they use it in their practice when they walk out the door.
Ley: Yeah.
Freed: The next day they see a patient, they use that concept, that idea, with that patient and that’s a good presenter.
Ley: Yeah.
Freed: We’ve all been to presentations, hundreds of them. And sometimes you go to a presentation, you walk out, and you don’t even remember what the person said, that’s the difference between a good presenter and one that isn’t. So, what in your presentation did you want people to walk away with?
Ley: I mean, I think different presenters are targeting different audiences when they come to places like ADA where you have science by people who are doing research as well as clinicians. And there are people who are interesting just the audience, the public, and so on. So, you need to know who your target is. But I come from background of being a dietitian and having seen the patients myself, but then now I’m a researcher and I do population based studies and I’m much closer to meeting people who are looking at changing public health policies and so on. So, I think you just have to think about different audiences and who you’re targeting. But when I give a talk and especially in this context I need to think about the MDs and RDs who are in the audience and how to interpret the data that’s currently available out there and what do you want to tell your patients. And then, of course you want to bring it back to the current guidelines because red meat we know that it may not be as beneficial for type 2 diabetes prevention and especially not the processed red meat, but we really need to bring it back to the ADA guidelines which currently states, “Recommend patients about the overall healthy eating patterns, not single food items when we’re talking to people with diabetes for prevention for further progression for other complications.” And not only that, when we are talking about prevention of type 2 diabetes, we go to tighter guidelines for Americans and those guidelines are so focused on the overall dietary patterns not just single food items, having variety of different protein sources not just, think about red meat but think about poultry, think about fish, think about legumes, think about soy products, and so on. So, those are the messages you want to bring it back to, not just focus on red meat alone.