One of the latest trials, a 12-week, randomized clinical trial done in Asia, studied the effect of a strictly plant-based diet centered around brown rice versus the conventional diabetic diet on blood sugar control of patients with type 2 diabetes. A systematic review and meta-analysis found that the consumption of vegetarian diets is associated with improved blood sugar control, but how much of an improvement? No wonder diets centered around plants, “eating patterns that emphasize legumes, whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds and discourage most or all animal products…are especially potent in preventing type 2 diabetes and have been associated with much lower rates of obesity, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular mortality, and cancer”-and not just preventing type 2 diabetes, but treating it as well. Not great, but better than the lowest group, whose score was down around the level of the standard American diet, as you can see below and at 0:49 in my video. Less than a third of their diet was whole plant foods. Researchers reported the highest group was only scoring about 30 (out of 100). As I discuss in my video The Best Diet for Diabetes, there appears to be a stepwise drop in insulin resistance and insulin-producing beta-cell dysfunction as you eat more and more plant-based. When people are split up based on how they score, researchers find that the higher the score, the better the metabolic markers when it comes to diabetes risk. So, on a scale of one to ten, our diet is a one. ) The average American diet has a score of 12-out of 100. (See Calculate Your Healthy Eating Score. It’s just the percentage of your calories from whole plant foods, from 0 to 100. My favorite, for its simplicity, is the dietary phytochemical index-a fancy name for a simple concept. There are all sorts of different scoring systems to rate diet quality. The case for plant-based eating to reduce the burden of diabetes has never been stronger.
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