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CNN
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Gulping down too many refined wheat and rice products, as well as eating too few whole grains, is fueling the growth of new type 2 diabetes cases around the world, according to a new study modeling data up to 2018.
“Our study suggests that poor carbohydrate quality is one of the major drivers of diet-attributable type 2 diabetes worldwide,” says lead author Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a professor of nutrition at the University of Tufts and a professor of medicine at Tufts Medical School in Boston, in a study. statement.
Another key factor: People eat too much red and processed meat, such as bacon, sausage, salami and the like, according to the study. Those three factors — eating too few whole grains and too many processed grains and meats — were the main drivers of more than 14 million new cases of type 2 diabetes in 2018, according to the study, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.
In fact, the study estimated that 7 out of 10 cases of type 2 diabetes worldwide in 2018 were linked to poor food choices.
“These new findings reveal critical areas for the national and global approach to improving nutrition and reducing the devastating burdens of diabetes,” said Mozaffarian, who is also editor-in-chief of the Tufts Health and Nutrition Charter.
Mozaffarian and his team developed a dietary intake research model between 1990 and 2018 and applied it to 184 countries. Compared with 1990, there were 8.6 million more cases of type 2 diabetes due to poor diet in 2018, the study found.
The researchers found that eating too much unhealthy food was more of a driver of type 2 diabetes globally than not eating at all. healthy foods, especially for men versus women, youth versus older adults, and in urban versus rural residents.
More than 60% of all diet-attributable disease cases globally were due to excessive intake of just six harmful dietary habits: eating too much refined rice, wheat and potatoes; too much processed and unprocessed red meat; and drinking too many sugary drinks and fruit juices.
Inadequate intake of five protective dietary factors (fruits, non-starchy vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and yogurt) was responsible for just over 39% of new cases.
People in Poland and Russia, where diets tend to focus on potatoes and red and processed meat, and other countries in central and eastern Europe, as well as central Asia, had the highest percentage of new type 2 diabetes cases. diet related.
Colombia, Mexico and other Latin American and Caribbean countries also had large numbers of new cases, which the researchers say could be due to reliance on sugary drinks and processed meat, as well as low grain intake. integral.
“Our modeling approach does not prove causality, and our findings should be considered as estimates of risk,” the authors wrote.