The Effectiveness of Different Diet Strategies to Reduce Type 2 Diabetes Risk in Youth

• Published in: Nutrients Vol. 8; no. 8; p. 486
• Main Authors: Gow, Megan L, Garnett, Sarah P, Baur, Louise A, Lister, Natalie B
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 09.08.2016; MDPI
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescent Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; Child; Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 - epidemiology; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 - prevention & control; Diet, Carbohydrate-Restricted - methods; Diet, Reducing - methods; Evidence-Based Medicine; Global Health; Humans; Insulin Resistance; Overweight - complications; Overweight - diet therapy; Overweight - prevention & control; Pediatric Obesity - complications; Pediatric Obesity - diet therapy; Pediatric Obesity - prevention & control; Practice Guidelines as Topic; Prediabetic State - complications; Prediabetic State - diet therapy; Prediabetic State - metabolism; Review; Risk Factors; Secondary Prevention - methods; Weight Loss; type 2 diabetes; diet intervention; adolescent; carbohydrate; obesity; prevention; youth; child
• ISSN: 2072-6643; 2072-6643
• DOI: 10.3390/nu8080486

Type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents has become a prominent clinical issue in recent decades. Increasing numbers of young people have risk factors for type 2 diabetes, particularly obesity, indicating the need for effective type 2 diabetes prevention strategies. The aim of this review was to identify specific dietary strategies that optimize improvements in risk factors for type 2 diabetes in youth and hence reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes development. Our review of the current literature indicates that dietary interventions lead to weight loss when intervention adherence is high. However, in addition to weight loss, a diet that is reduced in carbohydrates may optimize improvements in other type 2 diabetes risk factors, including insulin resistance and hyperglycemia. While further research is needed to confirm this finding, reduced carbohydrate diets may include a very low-carbohydrate diet, a very low-energy diet, a lower-glycemic-index diet, and/or an intermittent fasting diet. This array of dietary strategies provides a suite of intervention options for clinicians to recommend to young people at risk of type 2 diabetes. However, these findings are in contrast to current guidelines for the prevention of type 2 diabetes in adults which recommends a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.