If you have type 2 diabetes, you’re told to focus on eating a balanced diet. But counting calories and watching what nutrients you eat may not be enough.
The way your food is prepared might also impact your health. Some foods go through a lot of changes before they reach your plate.
These are called “ultra-processed” foods. They are linked to bad health outcomes in studies that look at the general population.
A research team from the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention at the I.R.C.C.S. Neuromed in Pozzilli, Italy, has now looked into whether eating these ultra-processed foods is also a problem for people with type 2 diabetes.
The results showed that eating a lot of ultra-processed foods can significantly raise the risk of dying, particularly from heart diseases. This was true even if the person was following a healthy diet, like the Mediterranean Diet.
What Are Ultra-Processed Foods?
Ultra-processed foods are those that have been changed a lot before they’re ready to eat. These changes often involve using ingredients that you wouldn’t normally use in your kitchen at home.
Examples include hydrolyzed proteins, maltodextrins, and hydrogenated fats. These foods also often have food additives, like coloring, preservatives, flavor enhancers, and sweeteners.
These changes aren’t meant to make the food healthier. Instead, they’re designed to make the food taste better, look more appealing, and last longer on the shelf.
Some examples of ultra-processed foods are packaged snacks, fizzy and sugary drinks, ready-to-eat meals, and fast food.
But these foods can also include things you might think of as healthy, like fruit yogurt, breakfast cereals, crackers, and many meat substitutes.
The Italian Research Study
The researchers looked at data from the large Moli-sani Study, which started in March 2005 and focuses on around 25,000 citizens living in the Molise region.
The aim of this study is to learn about environmental and genetic factors that can cause cardiovascular disease, cancer, and degenerative disorders.
For this part of the research, the team looked at 1,066 participants who had type 2 diabetes when they joined the study between 2005 and 2010.
Marialaura Bonaccio, one of the researchers, says, “We found that a diet rich in ultra-processed foods put people with diabetes at a greater risk of dying.
People who ate a lot of these foods had a 60% higher risk of dying from any cause. Their risk of dying from heart diseases, which is a common cause of death for people with diabetes, more than doubled.”
Implications for Dietary Guidelines
The researchers also found that eating ultra-processed foods was risky even for those who followed the Mediterranean Diet.
Licia Iacoviello, Director of the Department, says, “If you’re eating a lot of ultra-processed foods, you might not get the health benefits of a good diet like the Mediterranean Diet.”
Giovanni de Gaetano, President of the IRCCS Neuromed of Pozzilli, says, “These findings could impact how we make dietary guidelines for managing type 2 diabetes. We need to not only focus on the nutritional requirements but also on limiting the consumption of ultra-processed foods as much as possible.
We should also include information on the level of food processing on the front of food packages.”
If you care about diabetes, please read studies about Vitamin D and type 2 diabetes, and what you need to know about avocado and type 2 diabetes.
For more information about diabetes, please see recent studies about How to eat to prevent type 2 diabetes, and 5 vitamins that may prevent complication in diabetes.
The study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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