A recent study found that consuming most fruits and numerous grains, which are typically considered healthy foods, can increase the risk of developing diabetes.
The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Madrid and identified fruit, oats and rye as increasing the risk of developing type 1 diabetes in children.
The study set out to analyse how children’s diets could influence the development of type 1 diabetes, a condition which causes the body to kill cells in the pancreas that produce insulin.
Lead researcher Professor Suvi Virtanen, of Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland, said: “Type 1 diabetes is a serious condition that requires lifelong treatment and so places a considerable burden on the patient and their family.
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“It can lead to complications including eye, heart, nerve and kidney problems and shorten life expectancy and has substantial health care costs (around 1 million euros per patient in Finland).”
It is estimated by researchers that type 1 diabetes in children worldwide will double over the next 20 years, having increased from 8.4 million in 2021 to 17.4 million in 2024.
Virtanen added: “The rapid increase in type 1 diabetes in children suggests that environmental factors play an important role in the development of the disease. Identifying these factors will offer an opportunity to develop strategies to prevent it and its complications.”
The research followed the diets of 5,674 children from birth until the age of six. All of the children were likely, due to genetics, to develop type 1 diabetes. After the six years, 94 of the children had developed the condition and an additional 206 had developed islet autoimmunity.
“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a child’s entire diet has been considered at the same time,” said Virtanen.
The results found that children who consumed higher amounts of fruit, oats and rye were more likely to develop type 1 diabetes and that the risk of islet autoimmunity increased in those who consumed more bananas, wheat and fermented dairy products.
On the other hand, the researchers found that consuming more berries reduced the risk of developing type 1 diabetes and that consuming more cruciferous vegetables reduced the risk of developing islet autoimmunity.
Virtanen explained: “Berries are particularly rich in polyphenols, plant compounds which may dampen the inflammation that is associated with the development of type 1 diabetes.
“On the other hand, fruits may contain harmful substances that don’t occur in berries. For example, berries can be free of pesticides that are found on other fruits.”
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She believes that further research is needed to investigate the foods linked to the development of TD1 and states that her team is making no diet recommendations based on the study findings.
“Many of the foods that we found to be associated with increased risk of type 1 diabetes and the disease process are considered part of a healthy diet and it is important that our results are replicated in other studies before anyone considers making changes to their child’s diet,” she said.
Issues with the study were pointed out by Kevin McConway, an emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University who was not involved in the research.
He said: “The issue here is that the children who ate different foods would also have differed in many other respects, though we have no detail on exactly which respects,” he said.
“Maybe the correlations between consumption of different foods and the health outcomes, that the researchers reported, were not caused by the foods but by one or more of the other differences. We just can’t tell.”
