Does Eating Sugar Or Other Kinds of Foods Affect My Risk Of Developing Type 2 Diabetes?

Dr. Robert Rizza answers the question: 'Does Sugar Affect Risk Of Type 2?'

ByABC News
November 9, 2007, 12:34 PM

— -- Question:Does eating sugar or other kinds of foods affect my risk of developing Type 2 diabetes?

Answer:So one of the questions that's been asked for years is that, if I eat certain kinds of food, do I change my risk of diabetes? And the answer is yes. It turns out, that if you eat, in fact, the things that we all are taught we're supposed to eat: high complex carbohydrate, low saturated fat, in other words limited animal fats, fruits and vegetables, probably monounsaturated fats, in essence, people refer to it as the Mediterranean diet, but actually it's what your mom and dad told you you were supposed to eat. Eat your vegetables, eat your fruits, complex carbohydrates -- you reduce your chances of getting diabetes.

On the other hand, people wonder, well if I eat a lot of sugar, does sugar cause diabetes? Because after all it's 'sugar diabetes.' The answer is maybe. But if so, it's very subtle, because this gets into how much sugar-free carbohydrates, etc. etc. And again, high-sugar containing foods or high calories, you don't want to eat those anyway. But it isn't sugar that causes diabetes, it's calories that cause you to become overweight and causes you to become diabetic.

On the other hand, again as I said, high complex carbohydrate, low saturated fats, high monounsaturated fats, fruits and vegetables, gives your body all the stuff it needs. And in fact, it turns out to be the healthiest diet going; we all do well with that. So that's what you should be going for.

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