Type 2 diabetes is a serious illness that affects many millions of people in Australia and around the world. In 2018, more than 14 million new diagnoses were made worldwide. Here in Australia, almost 1.2 million (4.5 per cent) Australians were living with type 2 diabetes in 2020.
Australia’s case count rises by an average of about 60,000 each year, which equates to 166 new diagnoses of the disease daily.
For sufferers, type 2 diabetes is no walk in the park. Symptoms include feeling tired all the time, going to the toilet a lot more often, feeling thirsty and blurred vision. And then there’s numbness or pain in your hands or feet and even cuts or wounds that heal slowly.
It’s not the sort of condition you’d wish on your enemies, let alone yourself. And yet, many cases of type 2 diabetes are self-inflicted, through poor dietary habits.
Many of these habits are ones with which most of us are familiar. But a new study has thrown a spanner in the works. It’s well known that a diet high in fat, calories, and cholesterol increases your risk of diabetes.
What this study shows is that highly refined grains appear to be a big contributing factor. The study identified poor carbohydrate quality as one of 11 dietary factors linked to type 2 diabetes.
Figures from 2018 suggest that these dietary factors account for more than 70 per cent of all new diagnoses of the disease. That means more than two-thirds of cases may be preventable. The new study, conducted by researchers at Boston’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, is published in Nature Medicine.
Honing in on the type 2 diabetes culprits
The study’s starting point was the well-established knowledge that diet plays an “outsized role in the risk of type 2 diabetes”. However, “specific dietary factors to global incidence of T2D remain unclear”, the research paper’s authors said.
Their aim was to clarify which elements of our diets are at play. They found that 20.3 per cent of type 2 diabetes cases were attributable to the excess consumption of processed meat. That comes as no real surprise.
But, two other factors might. Playing an even greater part were insufficient wholegrains (26.1 per cent), excess refined rice and wheat (24.6 per cent).
The risks insufficient wholegrains and too many highly refined grains pose to gut and bowel health are well known. But this new research adds further weight to the need for a change in Western diets.
“The scientific evidence linking refined grains consumption to type 2 diabetes is clear,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Meghan O’Hearn. “Refined grains, starches, and sugars induce rapid blood glucose spikes, conversion of sugar to fat in the liver accumulating around abdominal organs,” she said.
Highly processed food is marketed to us almost incessantly, and these foods often displace healthier ones such as wholegrains. Making changes to our diet so that it features less won’t be easy.
On the other hand, sufferers of type 2 diabetes will tell you that living with the condition isn’t easy either. Any change that adds more wholegrains to your diet is unlikely to be one you’ll regret.
Do you eat enough wholegrains? Have you reduced your intake of red meat and refined grains? Let us know in the comments section below.
Also read: Potential link between COVID and diabetes revealed
