Diet quality ‘can help to reduce type 2 diabetes risk’

Improving the overall quality of a person's diet can help to prevent type 2 diabetes, independent of other lifestyle changes.

This is the finding of a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health, which found that those who improved their diet quality index scores by ten percent over four years reduced their risk for type 2 diabetes by about 20 percent compared to those who made no changes.

By eating more whole grains, fruits and vegetables and cutting the number of sweetened beverages and saturated fats they consumed, people were able to minimise diabetes risk independent of weight loss and increased physical activity.

It was also shown that these effects persisted regardless of how good or poor a person's diet was when they started.

Lead researcher Dr Sylvia Ley, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, said: "If you improve other lifestyle factors you reduce your risk for type 2 diabetes even more, but improving diet quality alone has significant benefits."

In the UK, approximately 2.9 million people are affected by diabetes, with 90 percent of those having the type 2 variant of the disease.