November 14, World Diabetes Day, is fast approaching. There is now discussion of fresh research that suggests that going vegetarian may help reduce the proclivity to diabetes.
Research conducted by the George Washington University in Washington DC under the leadership of Dr Neal D Barnard, nutrition researcher and adjunct associate professor of medicine, who is also president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in the US, suggests that switching to a low-fat vegetarian diet might aid in weight loss, improved insulin sensitivity and greater cardiovascular health.
The study began in 2003. It concluded in 2006. Analysis of data and publication of reports continued through 2009. “Our study included99 participants. Of these, 49 began a vegetarian diet for the purpose of the research, while the remaining 50 followed a conventional diabetes diet,” said Dr Barnard.
Dr Barnard added that the diet of some of the participants in the research programme differed from a conventional diet recommended for patients of diabetes — instead of the limit introduced on the intake of carbohydrates and the encouragement to count calories, patients were required to abstain from animal products and oily food. The results showed that the diet recommended for the patients in the study made a more significant difference to blood sugar levels than the conventional diet.
Corroborating these findings from her own experience, Dr Nandita Shah, a homeopath based in Pondicherry, said, “The logic is simple. If we eat food natural to our species, we are less likely to fall sick. Human beings have intestines 12 times longer than the spine. All herbivorous animals have intestines 12 to 16 times longer than their spine. However, carnivorous animals have intestines only three times longer than their spine. The digestive process is thus shorter in carnivores than in human beings.”
However, there are nutritionists who caution that even a vegetarian diet could be unhealthy: “When shifting from a non-vegetarian to vegetarian diet, what one is doing is shifting from a high-fat, high-carbohydrate, high-sugar diet to one that is rather more well-balanced. But even a vegetarian diet, if it is lacking in balance, could prove unhealthy,” says Sheela Krishnaswamy, nutritionist, ChiHealth.
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