National Diabetes Week | GP Dr Liz Fraser explains why she's going against the grain of our dietary guidelines

Or if you want to give a goose a fatty liver, you force corn down its throat? Hmmm, paté de foie gras.

Have you ever wondered why many dietitians insist that you eat porridge with banana to lose weight? Why do they give you meal plans with 45 per cent to 65 per cent of your dietary daily energy as carbohydrates?

The Australian Dietary Guidelines, that's why. But is that really going to get your weight or diabetes under control? Let's consider some basic biochemistry.

Carbohydrates like starch in grains might not taste sweet but they consist of long chains of glucose, which is a kind of sugar. Once you chew and swallow the starch, your digestive tract breaks it down into glucose which quickly appears in your blood. We call it blood glucose or blood sugar.

As the accompanying table shows, how the sugar equivalents of the carbs you eat might affect your blood sugar is shocking.

Now I'm going to say something outrageous: Glucose. Is. A. Poison.

It's not a potent poison. We can buy it by the kilo. And it's not a fast poison. It kills you very slowly. The many complications of diabetes such as damage to the heart, brain, eyes, kidneys and nerves are driven by high blood sugar, and can prevented by keeping blood sugar within the normal range.

Because glucose is a poison, our bodies carefully control how much glucose is in our blood. At any one time, there should be only one teaspoon (about four grams of glucose) in your five litres of blood.

So imagine what happens when you eat lots of carbs in foods made from grains. How does your body manage when 15 or 20 teaspoons of sugar from your meal of porridge and banana, or rice or pasta surges through your blood three times a day for a couple of decades?

In order to cope with those blood sugar surges, your pancreas goes into overdrive, producing lots of insulin, the blood sugar-lowering hormone. But high levels of pancreatic insulin means that you will store the excess dietary sugar as fat in your liver (just like geese) and in your muscles (like that cow, or pig). So, you get fat. (Humans are not so different to other animals.)

Then one day the pancreas can no longer do its job properly. With too much sugar for too long, the pancreas pegs out and we call it type 2 diabetes. Another name is sugar intolerance. It's a long, slow death made longer and slower by giving anti-diabetes medications that lower blood sugar without solving the underlying problem, which is too much carbohydrate and sugars in the diet.

Exactly as the Australian Dietary Guidelines say.

How did we get to this insanity? Let's call it "grainwashing" - the propaganda that grains are good for you. We know sugary cereal for breakfast is a blatant con, but the guidelines still insist that oats and banana are great, because, you know, "whole grain".

Whole grain is said to be better for you than refined grains, because the whole grain still has fibre. But when the whole grain is digested it becomes sugar in your blood. Checking your blood sugar after eating a bowl of porridge or two slices of toast will show you what happens when you consume those so-called healthy whole grains.

The Dietary Guidelines are based on studies that compares refined grains with whole grains. Unfortunately, they ignore all the research about low-carb diets that include no grains. By the way, there is no carbohydrate, including any grain, that is essential for any human diet. You can't survive on zero protein or zero fat, but you can survive on zero carbohydrate.

Isn't it time we ditched the outdated dietary guidelines, especially for people with obesity and type 2 diabetes who are so sugar-intolerant? I know, there are some folk who will go ballistic when I suggest that you don't need any grains, or their products. But there are no essential grains, and there are many people, even whole populations, who live well without grains.

"But," I hear you cry, "I can't live without ... !" Fill in the blank: bread, rice, pasta and so on. If you've ever tried eating real, whole foods, focusing on meat, fish, poultry, eggs and cheese with non-starchy vegies and nuts, you'll know it's filling and satisfying. After a while you stop craving sugar and the soon-to-be-sugar foods like cereal, bread, pasta, rice and other starchy stuff.

If you really can't live without certain foods, there are low-carb alternatives like grain-free bread. Or you could eat real, whole foods with no grains. Plenty of us ignore the dietary guidelines and we are doing very well, thank you very much.

While I used to love the smells from bakeries, these days they don't interest me. Years ago, I noticed that the aroma of freshly baked bread promised plenty but failed to deliver what I really needed: satisfaction.

Porridge never stuck to my ribs. I was hungry and reaching for a snack by 10.30am. That stopped when I first quit carbs.

An omelet with cheese, bacon and vegies at breakfast easily gets me through to lunch. No need for biscuits or a muffin by mid-morning.

While I might not eat bread these days I still enjoy baking, especially in winter. If you need a bread substitute there's a bazillion no-grain, low-carb recipes out there.

Here is my version of Dr Peter Brukner's three-seed bread. It uses eggs and bicarb to get a bread-like texture, a lot like pumpernickel.

It's simply sensational toasted with butter or brie melted over it. It's rich in protein, healthy fats and fibre. And because it's made without grains, it won't mess up your blood sugar, nor leave you unsatisfied and craving more.

Line a rectangular bread tin with baking paper. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

You will need 110 grams of sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Optional: soak the seeds for a few hours, then drain.

Mix the following ingredients in a large bowl:

Then whisk together the following wet ingredients:

Combine wet and dry ingredients with:

Method: add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, stir in your soaked and drained seeds, then add the melted butter. Mix well to create a firm dough.

Transfer the dough to the baking tin, using your hands to fashion the loaf shape.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until golden and a skewer in the centre comes out cleanly.

Set aside to cool for five minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy with butter or cheese!