Eating Nuts Beneficial For Diabetes Control

Wed, 13 Jul 2011

New research has revealed that replacing carbohydrates with a handful or two of nuts each day can help improve blood sugar control in people with Type 2 diabetes .

The study, carried out by a team of researchers from the University of Toronto in Canada, found that consuming two ounces of nuts daily instead of the usual carbohydrate-based foods like bread or cereal is beneficial for both blood glucose control and blood lipids and "may be used as part of a strategy to improve diabetes control without weight gain ".

For the research, 117 adults with type 2 diabetes were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first group was told to eat a mixture of unsalted mixed nuts instead of some of their usual carbs, a second group replaced their normal carbs with "healthy" whole-wheat muffins with no added sugar, and the third group was put on a half-nut, half-muffin diet .

After three months, the researchers reported a small improvement in blood glucose control among those in the full-nut group, as well as a reduction in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (known as LDL, or "bad cholesterol ").

Subjects on the muffin-only or mixed diet experienced no significant improvement in gylcemic control, but those receiving the muffin-nut mixture did see a drop in their serum LDL levels.

"Those receiving the full dose of nuts reduced their HbA1c [the long-term marker of glycemic control] by two-thirds of what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recognizes as being clinically meaningful for therapeutic agents," said Dr. David Jenkins of the University of Toronto’s Department of Nutritional Sciences.

"Furthermore, neither in the current study nor in previous reports has nut consumption been associated with weight gain . If anything, nuts appear to be well suited as part of weight-reducing diets."

"The study indicates that nuts can provide a specific food option for people with Type 2 diabetes wishing to reduce their carbohydrate intake."

The research was published online in the journal Diabetes Care .

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