Research
Mixed
Suboptimal dietary intake is responsible for 70.3% of global incident type 2 diabetes cases, with the largest burdens driven by insufficient whole-grain intake, excess refined rice and wheat, and excess processed meat.
Focus on increasing whole grains, reducing refined grains (rice/wheat), and limiting processed meats. These three factors alone account for the majority of diet-attributable diabetes risk globally.
StrongSupportsHIGH confidence
In 2018, suboptimal intake of these dietary factors was estimated to be attributable to 14.1 million (95% uncertainty interval (UI), 13.8–14.4 million) incident T2D cases, representing 70.3% (68.8–71.8%) of new cases globally. Largest T2D burdens were attributable to insufficient whole-grain intake (26.1% (25.0–27.1%)), excess refined rice and wheat intake (24.6% (22.3–27.2%)) and excess processed meat intake (20.3% (18.3–23.5%)).
Why this rating
Large-scale comparative risk assessment model using global data from 184 countries.
Source
Incident type 2 diabetes attributable to suboptimal diet in 184 countries
Meghan O’Hearn et al. · Nature Medicine · 2023
DOI 10.1038/s41591-023-02278-8
unknownCited 180×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Excess intake of harmful dietary factors (refined grains, processed meats, SSBs, potatoes, fruit juice) contributes a larger proportion (60.8%) of diet-attributable T2D burden than insufficient intake of protective factors (whole grains, yogurt, fruits, vegetables, nuts/seeds) (39.2%).Strong
- The proportion of T2D attributable to diet is inversely correlated with age, being highest in younger adults (83.5% for ages 20-25) and lowest in older adults (27.7% for ages 95+).Strong
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