October 17/Karachi, Pakistan/South Asian Media Network -- Older adults who stick with a traditional Mediterranean diet rich in plant-based fats may help lower their risk of type 2 diabetes -- even without counting calories or shedding weight, new research hints. In a study of 418 older Spanish adults, researchers found that those instructed to follow a Mediterranean diet were less likely to develop diabetes over four years than those instructed to follow a low-fat diet -- about 10% developed the disease, versus 18% in the low-fat group. Weight loss did not appear necessary to gain the benefit.
The findings, reported in the journal Diabetes Care, may sound too good to be true, but they back up previous work by the same researchers showing that the Mediterranean diet, even without weight loss, appeared to curb the risk of metabolic syndrome -- a collection of risk factors for diabetes that includes abdominal obesity, high blood pressure and elevated blood sugar and triglycerides.