Will A Mediterranean Diet Lower Your Diabetes Risk?

A new study published in Diabetologia reports that a Mediterranean-style diet and low-carbohydrate diets

may help reduce the risk for developing Type 2 diabetes.
A Mediterranean diet consists of fish, fruits, vegetables, beans, high-fiber breads, whole grains, and olive oil and is based on the eating habits in Greece, southern Italy and Spain. The diet reduces your consumption of red meat, cheese, and sweets.
In the new study, published August 15th, researchers followed 22,000 people in Greece for more than 11 years, 2,300 of whom developed diabetes.
The researchers looked at the participants' eating habits and developed a 10-point Mediterranean diet score. Those with scores above six were 12 percent less likely to develop diabetes than those who had Mediterranean diet scores of three or lower.
People who ate the highest amount of carbohydrates were 21 percent more likely to develop diabetes than those with the lowest carbohydrate intake. Those with a high Mediterranean diet score and low carbohydrate intake were 20 percent less likely to develop diabetes than those with a low Mediterranean diet score and a high carbohydrate intake.
"The role of the Mediterranean diet in weight control is controversial, and in most studies from the Mediterranean countries the adherence to the Mediterranean diet was unrelated to weight," said Dr. Carlo La Vecchia and colleagues from the Mario Negri Institute of Pharmacological Research in Milan, Italy.
"This suggests that the protection of the Mediterranean diet against diabetes is not through weight control, but through several dietary characteristics of the Mediterranean diet," they said in a journal news release. "However, this issue is difficult to address in cohort studies because of the lack of information on weight changes during follow-up that are rarely recorded."
While the study showed an association between a Mediterranean diet and a lowered risk for developing diabetes, it did not show a cause-and-effect.
Reference: WebMD
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