Have you heard of “Smoker’s Wage Gap”? Maybe you’ve never really given it a thought, but smokers make 20% less than non-smokers. The primary reason behind this is the decline in productivity, as smoking a cigarette consumes a few minutes of a worker’s time. As per estimates, two 15-minute smoking breaks a day cost $3,077 to employers. Employers compensate for this with lower wages/perks to smokers.
While Sajith Ahamed has briefly critiqued the whole idea of 24×7 grazing – aka frequent small meals throughout the day – we will look at this “mainstream suggestion” that has been pushed on diabetics, from the perspective of national productivity loss.
Band Aid Solution
High Carb Low Fat (HCLF) diet that the “mainstream experts” recommend to everyone is definitely not something well suited to diabetics. It doesn’t really help in keeping Diabetes in check. Your blood sugar level is not the only thing that shoots higher on this orthodox diet, your medical bills increase significantly too. Since HCLF is not great for diabetics, sticking to it over the long-term ultimately leads to dependence on expensive anti-hyperglycemic medications, and insulin.
The plight does not just stop there. Associated with this horrible diet, there is a whole list of problems like weight gain, hypertension, elevated triglycerides, deteriorated healing of wounds, weak eye-sight etc. Besides this, the number of diabetics on the conventional HCLF diet who maintain an A1C of under 5.6 is low.
To sugarcoat the negatives of the HCLF diet, experts then suggest eating small meals eight to ten times a day, which does more harm than good. Instead of three to four wild swings in insulin levels per day, we now have eight to ten swings. This is nothing but a “BAND-AID” solution to a horrible diet pushed as “healthy and balanced”. A diet that a diabetic cannot cope with despite high doses of drugs and insulin, can neither be healthy nor balanced. It’s plain hogwash!
National Productivity Loss
Besides being unhealthy for diabetics, HCLF diet also contributes heavily to national loss of productivity, and with some assumptions noted in the foot-note, we can come to a rough projection.
First off, this diet is not practical for the regular office goer. On average, workplaces have one official lunch break of approximately 30 minutes. With a full-time job demanding roughly 10 hours of work per day, a worker following the HCLF diet will need to take at least four additional breaks of five minutes each, leading to a total of 20 minutes of additional breaks at the workplace every day.
Now let’s extend this number to the entire country. Based on certain statistics mentioned in the foot-note, this would mean (20×10)/60~3 million man-hours lost per day following the HCLF diet. On an annual basis, this equates to approximately 800 million man-hours. Translated into financial numbers, this is costing India a whopping Rs 800 billion per year in terms of productivity loss.
Imagine an office goer doing to-and-fro daily from Karjat to Churchgate. How does he follow the “eat every two hours” rule while in a local train where one can barely manage to stand on one’s feet? Have these so called experts ever pondered about such things while pushing the “fashionable” idea of 24×7 grazing?
I seriously doubt their capabilities to look into this negative aspect of their broken advise. It is a disastrous advice from all aspects to say the least.
The Exact Opposite of 24×7 Grazing
On dLife.in, we follow the exact opposite — low carb high fat diet in different shades. Dietitians/nutritionists promote Kellogg’s breakfast cereal based on how healthy it makes them feel, which is totally subjective, but we have successfully experimented with the LCHF diet, which is also backed by science.
Combine LCHF diet with intermittent fasting, and you can get rid of even 70 units/day insulin, or need no diabetes drugs at all. Many fascinating success stories can’t just be called anecdotes to defend a broken popular notion. On LCHF, we do not need to eat six to ten times a day to control blood sugar. We get rid of expensive drugs like Januvia, Invokana etc., and don’t have to stress the pancreas with drugs like Amaryl, Glimy etc.
We are challenging the paradigm, and demonstrating that we are in way better shape in terms of Diabetes, obesity and lipid reports than people who stick to the conventional HCLF diet. Besides lower expenses on medications, it’s a productivity booster as well.
Conclusion & Solution
The answer to tame Diabetes, obesity and other metabolic disorders is simple. Dump the conventional HCLF diet. It is horrible. Gradually transition to LCHF diet that is tailored for an average Indian in such a way that even vegetarians have been able to adhere to it with ease. As an added benefit, your medical bills for Insulin and other medications will come down drastically as well. On LCHF, you will also never need the much promoted “Bariatric Surgery” to get your weight down.
Assumptions
- 10 million diabetics in India are working. This is too generously conservative a figure. Actual would be far more.
- Their average cumulative package is Rs 3.6 lacs/annum. This is the usual package of a fresher out of engineering college.
- Presumed a number of just 1 million out of recorded 70+ million diabetics in India.
When you are managing your diabetes on high carbs diet and on medicines, endocrinologists often suggest to have small meals at the interval of 3 4 hours. They (Endo) thought it will spike BS. But in fact in this case BS rises and maintain on high level and causing damage to vital organs. And then Endo push more medicines or increase dose of medicines.
That’s how antidiabetic drug market is growing.
Yes! and we are reduced to just that performer in a circus where the ring master whips “one prescription after another” to force us down on the knees. Only way to escape that torture is escape from that circus called High Carb Low Fat. WE did it and we are happy we made that move :).