Mediterranean Diet May Protect from Diabetes

In the latest trial of the on going intervention study PREDIMED, Spanish researchers found that following a Mediterranean diet may cut the risk of diabetes by about 30 per cent compared to the control diet, which was characterized as a low fat diet.

The study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, involved 3,541 men and women who were a subgroup of the larger PREDIMED study that enrolled over 7,000 participants from seven communities in Spain since 2003. The men and women for this particular trial were between 55 and 80 years of age and at high risk for heart disease, but without diabetes

This is not the first time that the Mediterranean diet has been found to have a preventative effect against diabetes. In 2011 a smaller trial (418 participants) of the PREDIMED study showed that a Mediterranean diet reduced the risk of type II diabetes by almost 50 per cent compared to a low fat diet.