We all know that whole organic food is an excellent choice for us diabetics, but not many of us know just how excellent they really are, or why.

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What are whole foods and how are they an excellent treatment of diabetes?

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Well whole foods are exactly that, whole - without any processing.  Like plucking an apple from a tree and eating it without washing it first.  When we were kids, that's how we ate a lot of our food - plums, nectarines, apples, pears, peas, tomato, grapes, all types of berry fruit - how lucky  we were.  Although today, I'd be very dubious about picking them, with so many of them being sprayed with commercial pesticides and growth hormones.

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Sometimes it is not possible to eat whole food without some form of processing - root vegetables like carrots, are covered in dirt when pulled from the ground and should be washed first before eating.  Other vegetables require a cooking process, like kale, which should be boiled for 7 minutes before eating because it has a very fibrous texture.

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The National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) did a study between whole-grain rye bread and whole-grain wheat bread, prepared with bakers yeast and a sourdough fermentation, to see if there were any changes to the nutritional value.

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The results found that intensive sourdough fermentation had a higher impact on the nutritional elements of whole-grain rye compared to whole-grain wheat sourdough fermentation.

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During the fermentation process, it was noted that there was an increase in certain types of branched-chain amino acids and also small peptides containing the same branched-chain amino acids.  This increase created a rye bread that was more responsive to insulin and as a result, formed a protective effect against type 2 diabetes.

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The NCBI continued to say that there was increasing evidence to support the protective effect of eating whole-grains against diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer.  This comes about because the dietary fibre in the whole grain and the different types of phytochemicals within the fibre, interact with stomach gases and bacteria to begin the physiological change process.  Within the bran part of the whole grain, it was found that the phytochemicals phenolic acids and alkylresocinols, were in abundance.  These compounds have already-proven antioxidative, antibacterial and anticancer effects.