If You Have Type 2 Diabetes, Avoid Most Potatoes

This is a little off topic, but when I read this in Diabetes Health, I had to think about what I had just read. Did I believe this? No, I do not believe this. Why do I not believe this? In the way the study was done, I have to believe that it may work for some people and the study in essence is too small and too short a time frame. Twelve weeks and 90 people assigned to three groups do not make sense.

And for this to be in a diabetes magazine make me wonder why it did not include people with type 2 diabetes. For a person with diabetes, most types of potatoes will bust a diet and destroy good management of blood glucose. Those on no medications or on oral medications will develop problems with diabetes management. A few on insulin can manage blood glucose, but even then, they must be careful.

I can understand why the blog is very short, as the author has no intention of getting into detail of any significance because the study itself was lacking detail often seen as part of the better studies. And being from the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, this is easy to understand that the study would be small and short to avoid problems that could be experienced from an longer study.

In viewing the full report, this seems very typical of nutrition studies - “Exclusions for study participation were the following: food allergies or intolerances to potatoes, cigarette smoker, currently modifying diet or exercise patterns to gain or lose weight, excessive exercisers or trained athletes, taking any medications that would affect glucose metabolism, or the presence of other health problems requiring ongoing intervention by their personal physician. Eligible men and women were overweight based on their body mass index (BMI = 25–37 kg/m²), over 18 years old, light to moderate exercisers and had normal fasting plasma glucose and were able to meet the time and effort requirements required for study participation.”

Some of the above are reasonable exclusions, but selection was apparently looking for participants that fit very limited criteria and help the people doing the study arrive at the desired results. Probably why the study was only 24 weeks,