Mediterranean diet can help protect against type 2 diabetes

A new study has found that a Mediterranean-style diet and diets low in available carbohydrates can offer protection against type 2 diabetes.

The authors studied patients from Greece who are part of the ongoing European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and nutrition (EPIC), led by Dr. Antonia Trichopoulou, from the University of Athens.

From a total of 22,295 participants, actively followed up for just over 11 years, 2,330 cases of type 2 diabetes were recorded.

To assess dietary habits, all participants completed a questionnaire, and the researchers constructed a 10-point Mediterranean diet score (MDS) and a similar scale to measure the available carbohydrate (or glycaemic load [GL]) of the diet.

People with an MDS of over 6 were 12 percent less likely to develop diabetes than those with the lowest MDS of 3 or under.

Patients with the highest available carbohydrate in their diet were 21 percent more likely to develop diabetes than those with the lowest.

A high MDS combined with low available carbohydrate reduced the chances of developing diabetes by 20 percent as compared with a diet low in MDS and high in GL.

The study is published in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD).