When It Comes to Health, Not All Fruit Created Equal

Blueberries fare best in diabetes study, but fruit juices may make things worse
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 8, 2013 6:03 AM CDT
When It Comes to Health, Not All Fruit Created Equal
A new study suggests that eating whole blueberries regularly helps ward off diabetes, at least a little.   (Shutterstock)

If you're worried about diabetes, you might want to stock up on blueberries and ditch the fruit juice. That's the upshot of a new study in the British Medical Journal that tracked the eating habits of 180,000 subjects over nearly 30 years. The simplified findings: Those who ate five servings of whole blueberries a week had a 26% lower risk of contracting type 2 diabetes, reports the New York Times. Grapes and apples also did well, followed by prunes, pears, bananas, and grapefruit. Other fruits didn't seem to have much of an effect in terms of diabetes.

One striking part of the study is that fruit juice might actually raise the risk for the disease, notes National Geographic. That's probably in part because dietary fiber and nutrients are lost in the juicing process, explains Bloomberg. So are blueberries a silver bullet? Not even close. “We don’t want to leave the impression that there’s any magical fruit,” says a co-author of the study, per the Boston Globe. And, he adds, no amount of blueberries in the world will compensate for things like a lack of exercise, an otherwise lousy diet, or a pack of smokes. (A previous study suggested blueberries also helped ward off dementia.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X