Arla Food for Health Research Add a Piecce to the Puzzle of Dietary Guidelines for Type 2 Diabetics

ABOUT ARLA FOOD FOR HEALTH

Arla Food for Health is an equal public-private research partnership between Arla Foods, Arla Foods Ingredients, University of Copenhagen and Aarhus University established in 2015. The overall vision of the partnership is to investigate the health effects of dairy and dairy ingredients by performing world-class research within the areas of prevent/remedy metabolic syndrome, prevent/remedy malnutrition and enhance immune defense/response.

Arla Food for Health research adds a large piece to the puzzle of how to eat if you have type 2 diabetes

For a long time, healthy non-diabetic people and people with type 2 diabetes have been recom-mended to consume identical diets for health maintenance – diets that are relatively high in car-bohydrate. However, the carbohydrate metabolism in non-diabetic and diabetic people is not iden-tical which have lead researchers at Copenhagen University and Bispebjerg Hospital to explore whether diabetic people could benefit from a diet containing a little less carbohydrate to accom-modate their metabolic situation. 

As consuming dairy products, especially fermented dairy like yoghurt, are associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, it was quite obvious to include dairy products as one of the means to com-pose a diet with less carbohydrate  and more protein and fat.

From the results, the scientists concluded that compared with the currently recommended diet,  type 2 diabetic people can improve their long-term blood sugar management by consuming a diet containing a little less carbohydrate along with more protein and fat. The increased fat and protein in the diet came from dairy products amongst other foods. Moreover, beneficial changes were seen in the participants’ liver as the amount of fat was reduced. 

The addition of yet another study confirming less carbohydrate is beneficial for diabetic blood sugar management, gives valuable reason to reconsider the current dietary recommendations for type 2 diabetic people. Nevertheless, the results should be supplemented by longer-term studies to estab-lish the durability of the beneficial health effects.

If you want more insight of the study design and results, you can read more in the published scientific paper: https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00125-019-4956-4