I've noticed in my short time visiting this forum that both Aspartame (Nutrasweet\Equal) and Sucralos (Splenda) are recommended artificial sweeteners by some folks. Has there been any discussions regarding the reported health problems caused by these chemicals? If you are a user of these products, do yourself a favor and start Googling. If you find that you have to use some sweetener (I don't), people have substituted stevia powder.
If I want a dessert, I put .5 teaspoon organic fruit spread into .5 cup organic plain whole milk yogurt (the kind with the cream on top) total carbs around 10g. These products typically use evaporated cane juice for sweetening rather than refined sugar or high-fructose corn syrup.
I know that we're all told to avoid saturated fats, but I think it's pretty obvious by now that triglycerides from carbs are more of the health risk than healthy saturated fats like real butter, cream, and grass fed beef. Some researchers are indicating that the Food Pyramid diet could be triggering the increase in adult diabetes. I can say that since reading the Maker's Diet in 2004 and recently Dr. Mercola's website, my life-long asthma history is history. No inhalers period. It costs us twice as much money shopping organic, but it is worth it to me.
We try to buy organic foods mostly (Whole Foods Market and some at Kroger). I'm buying raw, unpasteurized milk from a farm even though I rarely eat cereals. You can also buy raw cheeses now. I eat two eggs cooked in real butter most every day, cooked with veggies, and cheese added. We try to buy grass fed beef .25 cow at a time, if we miss out on opportunities, we buy natural beef, chicken, and turkey at Whole Foods Market. It's not exclusively grass fed, but at least no hormones or antibiotics are used. They have added grass fed ground beef recently -- just bought some last night but haven't tried it yet. For the entire family, I religiously avoid purchasing products with: high fructose corn syrup (found in just about everything), partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (most baked goods, cereals, margarine), Nutrasweet\Equal\Splenda. Instead, we buy real butter, sweetened products with evaporated cane sugar juice, whole grain cereals with more than 7 grams of fiber, and a few cookie mixes without the bad stuff.
Since 1999, I've been doing my own research in diabetes to figure out what more I can do. I have noticed that there are definitely two camps -- those that avoid meds and those that avoid suppliments. I have been waffling with that for the past two years and came to the conclusion that if meds have been around and proven to work, then I'll use them. I've tried some suppliments and they just don't work as well as my current meds. This is the first time that I've committed to exercising five to six times a week, and I've been able to do it for four weeks now!
Long post, but I just wanted to share some of my experience with the forum.