Eat More Fruit, Drink Less Fruit Juice

A new study published by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reports that eating fruit, like
blueberries, grapes, and apples lowers your risk of developing diabetes, but drinking fruit juice increases it.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, was the first of its kind to look at the effects of individual whole fruits on diabetes.
"While fruits are recommended as a measure for diabetes prevention, previous studies have found mixed results for total fruit consumption," said lead author Qi Sun, an associate professor in the school's Department of Nutrition and at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "Our findings provide novel evidence suggesting that certain fruits may be especially beneficial for lowering diabetes risk."
This is the second study in recent months to show the importance of eating fruit. Researchers in a different study provided a connection between fruit and preventing deadly aneurysms that develop in the abdomen.
In this new study, researchers from the United States, Great Britain, and Singapore looked at data collected from about 187,000 participants in three long-term studies in the United States to see which fruits were associated with a risk of diabetes. Nurses and other health professionals were questioned over a period of 25 years about their diet, health, and other topics. In that group, 12,000 developed diabetes.
The researchers found that participants who ate at least two whole servings of fruit each week, especially blueberries, apples, and grapes, lowered their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by as much as 23 percent, compared to those who had less than one serving a month.
However, those who drank one or more servings of fruit juice each day increased their risk for diabetes by as much as 21 percent. Switching out three glasses of fruit juice for whole fruit each week reduced a person's risk by seven percent.
"Our data further endorse current recommendations on increasing whole fruits, but not fruit juice, as a measure for diabetes prevention," said Isao Muraki, another lead author in the study and a research fellow at the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "And our novel findings may help us refine this recommendation to facilitate diabetes prevention."
Besides looking at fruit consumption overall, the researchers also looked at specific fruits, including grapes, raisins, peaches, plums, apricots, prunes, bananas, cantaloupe, apples, pears, oranges, grapefruit, strawberries, and blueberries. They examined apple, orange, and grapefruit juices.
The researchers theorized that components in fruit allow for the beneficial effects. Previous studies had linked anthocyanins found in berries and grapes to a lower risk of heart attack, but acknowledged that more research was needed to determine which components influenced diabetes.
Reference: WTSP News
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