Is Vegetable Really Good for Diabetics?

According to World Health Organization (WHO), diabetes affects more than 285 millions people worldwide, of which 4 million people of them will die every year by 2010. The number could rise up to 438 millions by 2030 with the increasing obesity rate.

Type 2 diabetes, being the commonest form of diabetes, has swiftly spread from wealthy to the fast-developing countries because of the fatty, sugary diets and sedentary lifestyles.

While nutrition and exercise are important in the prevention of such disease, the dispute on ‘which foods work best and why’ continues. This is because only few good quality studies were carried out to explore such issue.

Recently, researchers from the University of Leicester, central England found that eating more spinach and other green leafy vegetables could actually reduce the risk of Type-2 diabetes. Their findings were published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on August 20, 2010.

6 studies involving 220,000 people were reviewed to explore the link between fruit and vegetable consumption and Type-2 diabetes. The results showed that eating one and a half extra servings (106 gm) of green leafy vegetables reduce the risk of diabetes by 14 percent, while eating more fruit and vegetables combined had negligible impact.

Researchers could not explain why leafy vegetables have such protective effect, though they suspected it is probably because of the high antioxidants such as Vitamin C and magnesium found in green leafy vegetables.

As such, they suggested more investigation should be carried out to confirm their findings. Other health experts also felt that it was too early to isolate green leafy vegetables and regard them alone as a way to reduce the risk of getting Type-2 diabetes.

Meanwhile, the researchers as well as other experts in the field urged people to continue consuming 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, which would benefit people in the prevention heart disease, stroke, some cancers and obesity as well as Type-2 diabetes.

The National Diet Nutrition Survey showed that, although fruit and vegetable intake has increased over the past decade, only a third of men and women eat the recommended five-a-day in 2008/09.