Who's The Daddy: Changing the world can be done just one meal at a time

The good news is four months later, thanks to a fundamental change in diet, weight loss, medicine, kinesiology, supplements and a supportive wife, it is in remission.

A routine blood test revealed raised sugar levels and a later HbA1c test showed a level of 52, which in layman’s terms means full blown diabetes with Caramac for blood.

But how? I do three spin classes a week and walk the dog for an hour every day. Turns out trying to outrun a bad diet is like mopping up the tide with a dishcloth as it roars across Morecambe Bay.

Being a stone overweight my entire adult life, 30 stressful years in the weird and wonderful world of journalism and a carb-heavy diet didn’t help.

Since early November my specialist subject on Mastermind has been YouTube videos of putting type 2 diabetes into remission, a low-carb, low-sugar, high-fibre and high-protein diet and losing 10 per cent of my body weight with the intensity of a gazelle running for its life from a cheetah.

It’s not been easy but it has been straightforward. So simple it can be boiled down into two words. Calorie deficit

If you lose a lot of weight quite quickly (more than 1lb a week since early November) it’s possible to lose the fat around your vital organs, and everywhere else, and put type 2 diabetes into remission. Which is what I did, as of last Thursday, when an HbA1c blood test earlier that day came back as 34. Normal. I nearly fainted.

Life is all about learning and here is the lesson I got taught. Diet is everything. If you eat a high-fibre, low-sugar diet it seems you’re on to something.

But the odds are stacked against us, what with all the sugary processed food that’s so) cheap and is everywhere. It’s no wonder treating diabetes costs the NHS £1m an hour.

If I ruled the world I’d go after fast food firms like we do tobacco companies and tax them out of business. Say, £25 for burger and chips and £30 for a pizza sounds fair, as does a £5 Twix. And I’d go one further, ban fast food advertising everywhere.

If we do nothing, we’ll see the first generation of parents who routinely outlive their kids.

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