You’ve Been Blaming the Wrong Food for Your Blood Sugar Problems
We’ve spent decades telling diabetics to put down the banana and pick up the bacon — or the chicken breast, or the salmon fillet. It’s time to talk about why that advice may have made things catastrophically worse.
The Sugar Story We All Got Wrong
Ask most people what causes high blood sugar and they’ll say sugar. It seems obvious. Logical, even. Eat sugar, get high blood sugar. Cut the sugar, fix the problem.
But here’s what the science has been quietly telling us for nearly a century: the reason sugar gets stuck in your bloodstream isn’t because you ate too much of it. It’s because fat is blocking insulin’s ability to escort sugar into a cell to be metabolized.
How Insulin Is Supposed to Work
Think of insulin as a key and your cells as locked rooms. After you eat, glucose enters your bloodstream and insulin arrives to unlock the cell door, escorting glucose inside to be burned as energy. The system works beautifully. Blood sugar stays stable.
But what happens when the lock gets jammed?
That’s insulin resistance — and it’s not caused by sugar. It’s caused by fat accumulating inside your muscle and liver cells, physically interfering with insulin’s ability to do its job. Glucose has nowhere to go. It builds up in the bloodstream. Your doctor measures it and tells you your blood sugar is too high.
The culprit was never the glucose. It was the fat blocking the door.
The Fats That Jam the Lock
Not all fats behave the same way in the body, but research consistently points to these culprits:
Animal Fats — Meat, Dairy, and Eggs
Saturated fats found in animal products are particularly effective at accumulating in muscle tissue and triggering insulin resistance. Studies using muscle biopsies have shown a direct correlation between intramyocellular lipid — fat inside muscle cells — and insulin resistance. The more saturated fat in the diet, the more impaired insulin signalling becomes.
“Healthy” Animal Proteins — Fish and Chicken Too
This is where many people get a surprise. Fish and chicken are widely considered “healthy” alternatives to red meat — and they are lower in saturated fat. But they are still animal products that contain dietary fat, cholesterol, and the same fundamental capacity to contribute to intramyocellular (inside the muscle cell) lipid accumulation.
Salmon, in particular, is celebrated for its omega-3 content — and omega-3s do have anti-inflammatory benefits. But salmon is also one of the fattiest foods you can eat. Chicken, especially with skin, carries significant saturated fat. Neither food is the metabolic villain that butter or bacon is, but neither is neutral when it comes to insulin sensitivity.
The key insight is this: no animal product is fat-free, and all dietary fat — regardless of its source — has the potential to interfere with insulin’s ability to escort glucose into your cells.
Extracted Oils — Yes, All of Them
This is where it gets uncomfortable for a lot of people. Even oils marketed as healthy — olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil — are 100% fat, completely stripped of the fiber, water, and nutrients that existed in the whole food. Pouring extracted oil into your body is a very different metabolic experience from eating an olive or an avocado.
Extracted oils cause measurable impairment in arterial function and insulin signaling within hours of consumption. The dose makes the poison — but there is no such thing as a truly “safe” extracted oil when it comes to metabolic health. Eat the whole olive. Eat the whole avocado. Leave the oil on the shelf.
Ultra-Processed Fats
Hydrogenated oils, fast food fats, and the oils baked into packaged foods compound the problem further, driving inflammation that worsens insulin resistance across the board.
So What About Sugar and Carbs?
Here’s the fascinating part. In populations that eat whole-food, high-carbohydrate, low-fat plant-based diets — think traditional Okinawan, rural Chinese, or Papua New Guinean communities ( The Blue Zones) — type 2 diabetes is virtually nonexistent, despite very high carbohydrate intakes.
Whole food carbohydrates, eaten without the burden of dietary fat, are handled beautifully by a well-functioning metabolic system. It’s only when fat clogs the machinery that carbohydrates become a problem.
Remove the Fat. Restore the Function.
The good news — and it really is extraordinary news — is that insulin resistance is largely reversible. Studies on low-fat whole-food plant-based diets have shown dramatic improvements in insulin sensitivity within days to weeks, not months.
When you clear the fat from your diet:
• Insulin can do its job again
• Glucose enters cells efficiently
• Blood sugar stabilizes — often without medication
This isn’t fringe science. This is what the data has been showing for decades. We just weren’t told about it.
The Bottom Line
If you’re eating plant-based and steering clear of extracted oils and all animal products — including fish and chicken — you’re not just avoiding cholesterol or saturated fat. You’re actively unlocking your cells, restoring insulin’s power, and giving glucose somewhere to go.
The banana was never the problem.
It was always the butter. And the brie. And the chicken breast. And the olive oil.
Stay Plant Struck,
Dr. Deb
