Cut out white rice, pasta and sugar to reverse diabetes

REMOVING every day foods like white bread and pasta from people’s diets can reverse Type 2 diabetes and keep the NHS afloat, experts claim.

They say if people cut their consumption of “refined carbohydrates”, which also include white rice and sugar, it would have the potential to halt one of Britain’s biggest health epidemics.

Switching to the healthier lifestyle could save the NHS £10billion annually and change people’s lives in one year.

Suffering

New data from Diabetes.co.uk, the world’s largest community of sufferers, revealed that 7,000 Type 2 patients who switched to a dietary programme of reduced “refined carbohydrate” saved £6.9million on medication in one year.

Dr Aseem Malhotra, consultant cardiologist and author of The Pioppi Diet, said: “Extrapolate this across the UK population suffering with Type 2 and we could save hundreds of millions in the use of medication alone.”

Refined carbohydrates have had the “whole grain” extracted during processing, removing fibre and much of a food’s nutritional value.

Dr Malhotra continued: “Type 2 significantly increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, kidney failure and reduces life expectancy up to 15 years.

“More than half of patients report chronic pain at levels similar to those with terminal cancer and a quarter suffer from depression, fatigue, sleep disturbance and emotional disability.

“The good news is it’s not only preventable but it’s also reversible. Simple dietary changes through cutting refined carbohydrates can at the very least help patients come off medications.”

His “manifesto for change” takes inspiration from the tiny southern Italian community of Pioppi, dubbed the world’s healthiest village, where average life expectancy is close to 90.

Central to the plan is the fabled Mediterranean diet which extols the virtues of diets rich in “real foods” containing natural fats, extra virgin olive oil, eggs, greens, nuts and devoid of refined carbohydrates like white bread.