Plant-based diet may lower risk of Type 2 diabetes

“This study highlights that even moderate dietary changes in the direction of a healthful plantbased diet can play a significant role in the prevention of Type 2 diabetes,” said Ambika Satija from Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in the US. 

“These findings provide further evidence to support current dietary recommendations for chronic disease prevention,” she said. While previous studies have found links between vegetarian diets and improved health outcomes, including reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes, this new study is the first to make distinctions between healthy plant-based diets and less healthy ones that include things like sweetened foods and beverages, which may be detrimental for health. 

The study also considered the effect of including some animal foods in the diet. Researchers followed more than 200,000 male and female health professionals in the US for more than 20 years who had regularly filled out questionnaires on their diet, lifestyle, medical history and new disease diagnoses as part of three large long-term studies. They evaluated participants’ diets using a plant based diet index in which they assigned plant-derived foods higher scores and animal-derived foods lower scores. 

The study found that high adherence to a plant-based diet that was low in animal foods was associated with a 20 per cent reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes compared with low adherence to such a diet, researchers said.