High-Fat Diet May Be Good For Diabetes

For decades, doctors have been telling people with type 2 diabetes to eat a low-fat diet. Oops! That may be the reverse of what some people need to do. Research at Linköping University in Sweden shows that eating foods with a lot of fat while cutting back on sugar and other carbohydrates could have a better influence on blood sugar and blood fats.

The two-year dietary study found that a high fat diet helped diabetes patients increase their HDL (good) cholesterol and dropped their blood sugar levels. They also lost about 9 pounds. A group that ate a low fat diet also lost weight but their blood sugar and cholesterol did not change.

“You could ask yourself if it really is good to recommend a low-fat diet to patients with diabetes, if despite their weight loss they get neither better lipoproteins nor blood glucose levels,” says researcher Fredrik Nyström.