If you want to reduce your risk on type 2 diabetes, better start eating more home-cooked meals.
In a new study conducted by US researchers led by Harvard University's TH Chan School of Public Health research fellow Geng Zong, it's been revealed that for every lunch or dinner prepared and eaten at home per week, the risk of type 2 diabetes, a type of long-term metabolic disease characterized by abnormal production of insulin and presence of blood sugar, reduces by 2% and 4%, respectively.
During the study, Zong and his team used the data provided by two previous large studies, Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Overall, they worked with more than 50,000 women and around 41,000 men. At the beginning of the study, all of the participants were considered healthy and didn't have any chronic disease including cancer or diabetes. The studies went on for thirty years with participants reporting their eating preferences for lunch and dinner.
Based on the results, those who ate no less than 11 home-cooked meals every week decreased their risk of type 2 diabetes by as much as 13% than participants who consumed no more than 6 lunches or dinners over the same period. Further, one of the possible reasons to the risk reduction is the lower intake of sugary beverages when eating home-cooked meals.
Sodas, which are often laden with high amounts of sugar, is being strongly linked to obesity and its complications such as cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and type 2 diabetes by several other studies. With the decreased consumption of sweets, weight gain is also controlled or averted.
The study, which is set to be presented to the yearly meeting of the American Heart Association, is considered preliminary as long as it's not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal. It also doesn't establish a cause-and-effect relationship between eating home-cooked meals and reduction of type 2 diabetes.
