Can a Vegan Diet Help With Type 1 Diabetes?
Eating a low-fat vegan diet helps reduce the amount of acid consumed in the diet, which makes the body’s pH more alkaline and leads to weight loss for people with type 1 diabetes, finds new research from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine published in Clinical Diabetes. About half of people with type 1 diabetes have extra weight.
“Eating acid-producing foods like meat, eggs, and dairy can increase the dietary acid load, or the amount of acid consumed, causing inflammation linked to weight gain,” says Hana Kahleova, MD, PhD, director of clinical research at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and lead author of the study. “But replacing animal products with alkaline plant-based foods like leafy greens, berries, and legumes can help promote weight loss in people with type 1 diabetes.”
The new research is a secondary analysis of a Physicians Committee study, which was the first randomized clinical trial to look at a vegan diet in people with type 1 diabetes. In the 12-week study, 58 adults with type 1 diabetes were randomly assigned to either a low-fat vegan group with no limits on calories or carbohydrates, or a portion-controlled group that reduced daily calorie intake for overweight participants and kept carbohydrate intake stable over time.
Excerpted from Physicians Committee
