Consume fruits and not juices to prevent diabetes

A recent study suggests that eating whole fruit is much healthier to consume natural juices from them. Researchers from the UK, USA and Singapore studied nearly 200 000 people over 25 years to determine the way we consume certain fruits helps or prevents the development of type 2 diabetes.

Of the 187 000 people who participated in the study, 12,198 (6.5%) developed type 2 diabetes. The research followed the consumption of certain fruits such as grapes, peaches, plums, apricots, prunes, peaches, melons, apples, pears, oranges, grapefruit, strawberries and blueberries of subjects. Every four years they were asked how often they consumed a portion of each fruit.

consume fruits

The results indicate that eating blueberries, grapes, apples, pears and raisins reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes. The researchers determined that this is due to beneficial levels of anthocyanin and polyphenols in these fruits.

On the other hand the effect of consuming juice is the opposite: it contributes to an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. So replace a portion of juice by one of blueberries reduces the risk of developing diabetes by 33% and replace the juice for other fruits had a minor effect but similar.

Lead researcher Qi Sun explains that, on having done juice, “We get rid of the fruit and we were quickly absorbing liquids, leading to an increase in blood sugar and insulin levels”. So we recommend eating whole fruits instead of juices.