We’ve known since the 1930s that type 2 diabetes can be prevented, arrested, and even reversed with a plant-based diet. Within five years of following the diet, about a quarter of the diabetic patients in that early study were able to get off insulin altogether.
Plant-based diets are relatively low in calories, though. Is it possible their diabetes just got better because they lost so much weight? To tease that out, we need a study where people are switched to a healthy diet but forced to eat so much food they don’t lose any weight. Then we could see if plant-based diets have specific benefits beyond all the easy weight loss. We had to wait 44 years for such a study, which I then discuss it in my video How Not to Die from Diabetes.
Subjects were weighed every day. If they started losing weight, they were made to eat more food—so much more food in fact that some of the participants had problems eating it all. They eventually adapted, though, so there was no significant weight change despite restricting meat, eggs, dairy, and junk.
Without any weight loss, did a plant-based diet still help? Overall insulin requirements were cut about 60 percent, and half the diabetics were able to get off their insulin altogether. How many years did that take? Not years. An average of 16 days. Only 16 days.
Continued: How Not to Die from Diabetes | NutritionFacts.org
