Can a plant-based diet reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes?

deleciousfood | February 28, 2024 | Diet | No Comments

TOP LINE:

Greater adherence to a plant-based diet was associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D) among middle-aged US adults. Higher consumption of healthy plant foods, rather than lower consumption of animal foods other than red meat, was the main factor driving the inverse associations.

METHODOLOGY:

The study population consisted of 11,965 adults aged 45 to 64 years from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study who did not have diabetes at baseline and who completed food frequency questionnaires.
Adherence to a plant-based diet was ranked overall with the Plant-Based Diet Index (PDI), as well as higher Healthy PDI (hPDI) and Unhealthy PDI (uPDI) indices. higher.

TAKE AWAY:

The average total daily consumption of plant and animal foods for the highest quintile (5) was 15.1 and 3.4 servings per day, respectively, while the average consumption for the lowest quintile (1) was 9.9 and 5.8 servings per day, respectively.
During a median follow-up of 22 years, 35% (n = 4,208) of participants developed T2DM.
After controlling for age, gender, race, energy intake, education, income, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and margarine consumption, people in the quintile PDI 5 had a significantly lower risk of developing T2D than those in quintile 1 (relative risk, 0.89; P. = 0.01).
As a continuous score, each 10-point higher PDI score was associated with a significantly 6% lower risk of T2DM (P. = 0.01).
Higher hPDI scores were also inversely associated with T2D risk (hazard ratio, 0.85 for quintiles 5 versus 1; P. < 0.001) and (0.90 for each 10 units more; P. < 0.001).
Higher uPDI scores were not significantly associated with diabetes risk, regardless of adjustments (P. > .05).
Associations between plant-based diet outcomes and diabetes did not differ by sex, age, race, or body mass index (BMI) after accounting for multiple comparisons (all P._interaction > .05).
Further adjustment for BMI attenuated the associations between healthy, plant-based diets and diabetes risk, suggesting that lower adiposity may partly explain the favorable association.

IN PRACTICE:

“An emphasis on plant foods may be an effective dietary strategy for delaying or preventing the onset of diabetes.”

SOURCE:

The study by Valerie K. Sullivan, PhD, RD, of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues was published online in Diabetic treatments.

BOUNDARIES:

Limitations were self-reported dietary intake, diets assessed decades ago, possible food misclassification, possible selection bias, and residual confounding.

DISCLOSURES:

The ARIC study was funded by the US National Institutes of Health. The authors had no further disclosures.

Miriam E. Tucker is a freelance journalist based in the Washington, DC area. She is a regular contributor to Medscape, and other work appears in the Washington Post, NPR’s Shots blog, and Diabetes Forecast magazine. She is on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MiriamETucker.