Diabetes surprising link to food colors

If you want to improve your type 2 diabetes and live longer, scientists have found a surprisingly simple dietary trick: eat a wider variety of colorful plant foods every day.

Their study appears in the latest edition of the journal Nature Food.

Flavonoids are plant compounds found in fruits, vegetables, tea, and other plant-based foods.

They’re responsible for the bright colors in berries, grapes, and citrus fruits, and they’re also powerful antioxidants that help protect our cells from damage.

Previous studies showed that eating a lot of flavonoids is good for your health.

But this new research went a step further: it looked at how variety in flavonoid intake affects your risk of disease.

Researchers used data from the UK Biobank, a large long-term health study.

They looked at 124,805 adults aged 40 and older who had completed detailed dietary questionnaires.

Then they tracked participants over an average of nine years to see who developed chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory disease, and brain diseases like dementia.

They also recorded who died during the follow-up period and analyzed whether those outcomes were linked to how much and how many types of flavonoids people consumed.

The results were clear: more variety meant better health outcomes.

Here’s how people with the most diverse flavonoid intake compared to those with the least:

1. 14% lower risk of dying from any cause.
2. 20% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
3. 10% lower risk of heart disease.
4. 8% lower risk of cancer.
5. 8% lower risk of respiratory disease.
6. 20% lower risk of neurodegenerative disease—but only at the highest overall intake levels.

The researchers also discovered that both quantity and variety mattered independently.

People eating about 500 milligrams of flavonoids daily (compared to 230 milligrams) had lower risks of most diseases.

But the biggest protection came from eating around 1,400 milligrams daily from many different sources.

People who got most of their flavonoids from just one source (usually tea) didn’t get the same benefits as those who mixed things up with berries, apples, grapes, red wine, and oranges.

The most useful flavonoids for reducing diabetes risk specifically were flavan-3-ols (found in tea, apples, and cocoa) and flavones (in parsley, citrus peel, and celery).

So, make sure they’re part of your diet, along with as many other rainbow-colored fruits and vegetables as possible.

But this is only one piece of the puzzle.

Thousands of readers have completely reversed their type 2 diabetes using the 3 simple steps explained here…