High Fiber Cereal Helps Women Fight Off Diabetes

By EmpowHER

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Eating breakfast is a healthy habit, but the choice of what you eat for breakfast may may be just as important to preventing diseases like diabetes. Two separate studies indicate that high fiber cereals appear to have a strong protective effect against type 2 diabetes in women.

This finding is especially important for minority women--particularly black women who have more than double the risk for developing type 2 diabetes compared to white women in the US.

A recent study from Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University followed 40,000 African American women over eight years and looked at their dietary habits while noting the development of type 2 diabetes within the group. The researchers found that the more high fiber cereals consumed, the lower the risk for diabetes in the women.

“Increasing cereal fiber in the diet may be an effective means of reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, a disease that has reached epidemic proportions in black women,” concludes Dr. Supriya Krishman, lead author on the study published in the November 2007 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

An earlier report from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston found similar results with data from more than 286,000 women who had participated in the Nurses’Health Studies and other research programs. During the 12 to 18 year follow up, approximately 11,000 women were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, but the women who ate more whole grain foods were less likely to develop the disease.

The authors report that just two servings a day of whole grains were associated with a 21% decrease in the risk for diabetes. They suggest that these studies “consistently support increasing whole grain consumption for the prevention of type 2 diabetes.”

So the general advice is to skip that doughnut in the morning and try the whole grain cereal instead. You’ll apparently be doing both your blood sugar and your waistline a favor.

Article Links:
Krishnan, S., et al, 2007. “Glycemic index, glycemic load, and cereal fiber intake an risk of type 2 diabetes in US black women,” Arch Intern Medicine. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17760498?ordinalpos=8&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

De Munter, J.S., et al., 2007. “Whole grain, bran, and germ intake and risk of type 2 diabetes: a prospective cohort study and systematic review,” PLoS Med. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17760498?ordinalpos=8&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Related Articles:
The National Women’s Health Information Center, “Minority Women’s Health: Diabetes,” 2007. Reference—Women’s Health.gov “Minority Women’s Health-Diabetes” http://womenshealth.gov/minority/africanamerican/diabetes.cfm