If you have type 2 diabetes, you’ll want to do everything you can to improve your wellness, which, according to new research, might mean loving legumes. According to a new study, eating more legumes such as beans and chickpeas boosted the wellbeing patients with type 2 diabetes, as it helped them to improve their glycaemic control and lower their total cholesterol and triglycerides.
For the study, led by David Jenkins, MD, PhD, of the University of Toronto, and colleagues, 121 patients with type 2 diabetes were randomly divided up between 2 diets for 3 months: a low-GI legume diet that required them to eat at least a cup of legumes per day, and a diet that increased consumption of whole wheat products, in order to up their intake of insoluble fibre.
The results were that the patients who ate at least an additional cup of legumes per day had a greater reduction in HbA1c than patients who increased their insoluble fibre consumption, which also meant a reduced risk of coronary heart disease. The legume patients had significantly lowered mean total cholesterol and triglycerides, without any changes in HDL cholesterol levels, but the scientists were surprised to find that the insoluble fibre diet increased average HDL cholesterol levels, as such an association hasn’t been seen before in the literature. The final wellness benefits of the legume diet included a reduced blood pressure and heart rate relative to the high insoluble fibre diet.
However, though the evidence indicates that incorporating legumes into a diabetic’s diet significantly reduces heart risk and improves glycaemic control, Marion Franz, MS, RD, questioned whether the modest benefits do indeed come from the dietary components or whether they actually derive from a reduced energy intake overall. In an accompanying editorial, Franz accepted that legumes are beneficial as part of anyone’s diet, but warned that larger studies than this one showed no such glycaemic benefit to wellness, as ‘whether people with diabetes can eat the amount necessary to improve glycaemic control is debatable, and, if legumes do improve glycaemia, is it because of their low GI or high soluble fibre content?’
She concluded that legumes should not be praised in isolation, because ‘just as there is no one medication or insulin regimen appropriate for all persons with diabetes, there is no one nutrition therapy intervention.’
Comments are closed.