According to two studies published in The BMJ, higher consumption of fruit, vegetables and whole grain foods is linked with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

In the first study, a team of European researchers examined the link between vitamin C, carotenoids and type 2 diabetes.

The findings were based on 9754 participants with type 2 diabetes, compared with a group of  12,622 individuals who were free of diabetes. All of the participants were part of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort totalling 340 234 people.

The results revealed that individuals with the highest intake of fruits and vegetables reduced the  risk of developing diabetes by up to 50%.

 

Fresh fruit and vegetables 

The results also showed that increasing intake of fruit and vegetables by 66g per day was linked with a 25% decreased risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

In the second study, researchers in the United States examined the association between whole grain food intake and type 2 diabetes.

Their research involved 158,259 women and 36,525 men who were diabetes, heart disease and cancer free and who took part in the Nurses’ Health Study, Nurses’ Health Study II, and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.

 

Healthy heart

Those with the highest intake of whole grains had a 29% lower rate of developing type 2 diabetes compared with those who consumed the least amount. With regards to individual whole grain foods, those with an intake of one or more servings a day of whole grain cold breakfast cereal or dark bread, were associated with a 19% or 21% lower risk of type 2 diabetes, compared with the participants consuming less than one serving a month.

 

Fresh bread

Although both studies took into account several well-known lifestyle risk factors and markers of dietary health, both studies are observational, therefore it should be considered that some of the results may be due to unmeasured factors.  

These new research findings provide more evidence that increasing fruit, vegetable and whole grain foods can lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

DOI: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2194

Fan of milk and cheese? Here’s some good news - researchers have associated dairy-rich diets to reduced risk of developing diabetes and high blood pressure.

According to a large international study published in BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care, a research team has found that eating at least two daily servings of dairy is associated with lower risk of diabetes and high blood pressure.

 

Dairy products; milk and cheese

To see if this link exists across a range of countries, researchers drew on people taking part in the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, in which involves participants from 21 countries aged 35–70. Information on dietary intake over a period of 12 months was collected using food frequency questionnaires. Dairy products included milk, yoghurt, yoghurt drinks, cheese, and dishes prepared with dairy products. Butter and cream were assessed separately as they are not so commonly eaten.

The results demonstrated that total and full fat dairy were associated with a lower prevalence of metabolic syndrome, which was not the case for a diet with no daily dairy intake. Two dairy servings a day was associated with a 24% lower risk of metabolic syndrome, rising to a 28% lower risk for a full fat dairy intake.  

It was also noted that consuming at least two servings of full fat dairy per day was linked to an 11%–12% lower risk of high blood pressure and diabetes, whilst three servings of full fat dairy intake per day decreased the risks by 13% -14%.

 

Heart and stethoscope

The researchers stated that ‘If our findings are confirmed in sufficiently large and long term trials, then increasing dairy consumption may represent a feasible and low cost approach to reducing (metabolic syndrome), hypertension, diabetes, and ultimately cardiovascular disease events worldwide.’

A new type of wheat, chock full of healthy fibre, has been launched by an international team of plant geneticists. The first crop of this super wheat was recently harvested on farms in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington state in the US, ready for testing by various food companies.

Food products are expected to hit the US market in 2019. They will be marketed for their high content of ‘resistant starch’, known to improve digestive health, be protective against the genetic damage that precedes bowel cancer, and help protect against Type 2 diabetes. 

How do carbohydrates impact your health? Video: TED-Ed

‘The wheat plant and the grain look like any other wheat. The main difference is the grain composition: the GM Arista wheat contains more than ten times the level of resistant starch and three to four times the level of total dietary fibre, so it is much better for your health, compared with regular wheat,’ says Ahmed Regina, plant scientist at Australian science agency CSIRO.  

Starch is made up of two types of polymers of glucose – amylopectin and amylose. Amylopectin, the main starch type in cereals, is easily digested because it has a highly branched chemical structure, whereas amylose has a mainly linear structure and is more resistant. 

 

Bread and potatoes are foods also high in starch. Image: Pixabay

Breeders drastically reduced easily digested amylopectin starch by downregulating the activity of two enzymes, so increasing the amount of amylose in the grain from 20 to 30% to an impressive 85%.  

The non-GM breeding approach works because the building blocks for both amylopectin and amylose starch synthesis are the same. With the enzymes involved in making amylopectin not working, more blocks are then available for amylose synthesis.  

‘Resistant starch is starch that is not digested and reaches the large intestines where it can be fermented by bacteria. Usually amylose is what is resistant to digestion,’ comments Mike Keenan, food and nutrition scientist at Louisiana State University, US. ‘Most people consume far too little fibre, so consuming products higher in resistant starch would be beneficial.’

He notes that fermentation of starch in the gut causes the production of short-chain fatty acids such as butyrate that ‘have effects throughout the body, even the mental health of humans’.  

 

The GM wheat will hit US supermarkets in 2019. Image: Pxhere

The super-fibre wheat stems from a collaboration begun in 2006 between French firm Limagrain Céréales Ingrédients, Australian science agency CSIRO, and the Grains Research and Development Corporation, an Australian government agency.

This resulted in a spin out company, Arista Cereal Technologies. After the US, Arista reports that the next markets will be in Australia and Japan.