Mediterranean Diet May Reduce Type 2 Diabetes Risk More Than Previously Thought

Published

2 years ago

April 28, 2023

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Share on Pinterest New research finds that previous studies may have underestimated how effective the Mediterranean diet is for lowering your risk of type 2 diabetes. Davide Illini/StocksyThe risk of type 2 diabetes can be significantly reduced by eating a Mediterranean diet.In a first study of its kind, researchers developed a blood test to determine the impact of eating a Mediterranean diet on type 2 diabetes risk.This test identified a stronger link between the Mediterranean diet and a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes than previous tests, which were based on self-reporting.

The Mediterranean diet may reduce type 2 diabetes risk even more than previously thought.

Thats according to new evidence from researchers at the University of Cambridge, UK who have developed a novel blood test to determine the impact of eating a Mediterranean diet on type 2 diabetes risk.

This is the first study of its kind to use a blood test to measure levels of certain molecules and calculate a biomarker score in the blood. Previous research has been limited by self-reporting.

To compare the difference, the study authors also asked participants to self-report food consumed.

Researchers found that using the biomarker score identified a stronger link between the Mediterranean diet and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes than self-reporting.

This may suggest previous self-report-based studies may have underestimated the association between following a Mediterranean diet and type 2 diabetes risk.

The study ultimately examined the biomarker scores of 340,234 people living in eight European countries.

The study authors also note that more research is needed to confirm the new findings since it is currently unknown to what extent the biomarker score is specific to the Mediterranean diet. Nutrition experts agree that the Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest

There are many reasons the Mediterranean diet keeps taking the top spot in the U.S. News and World Report annual ranking of best diets year after year.

Experts clearly agree it is one of the most sustainable eating patterns with significant health benefits, including helping to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RDN, a nutritionist and the author of Skinny Liver, who was not involved in the study, says shes not surprised to see this study yield similar results that other studies on the Mediterranean have previously concluded, but what is interesting here is the addition of the link between measured adherence to the diet and health benefit.

Rahaf Al Bochi, RDN, LD Spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and owner of Olive Tree Nutrition LLC was also not involved in the study. She says this new research provides a promising association between adhering to a Mediterranean diet and reducing the risk for type 2 diabetes.

Al Bochi also echoes the researchers in saying that more research is required, especially since the sample size is based on only participants living in European countries. What makes the Mediterranean diet healthy?

The American Heart Association has included the Mediterranean-style diet in their most recent update of an American Heart Association tool for evaluating heart health and for good reason.

The Mediterranean diet emphasizes plenty of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, fish, herbs, and olive oil, with some meat, poultry, and dairy incorporated, says Al Bochi. This means it is rich in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and unsaturated fats that have been associated with health benefits, she explains.

Kirkpatrick agrees saying the diet is very high in nutrient density and contains many foods that, on their own, have been found to decrease mortality and reduce the risk of several chronic conditions. The diet also is limited in added sugars, refined grains, and saturated fats, explains Kirkpatrick.

The American Heart Association explains this Mediterranean-style of eating can help you achieve a healthy eating pattern which plays a big role in preventing heart disease and stroke and reducing risk factors such as obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. How to successfully switch to a Mediterranean diet

Whether youre considering switching to a Mediterranean diet or you simply want to incorporate more foods in this category, health experts say there are a few simple tips to keep in mind that can help you make sustainable changes.Start slowly to begin

Take a baby steps approach, says Kirkpatrick. To do this, she suggests people may want to start with a particular area of their existing or current diet or eating habits.

For example, if you are used to utilizing high amounts of saturated fats, then limiting those and adding in more unsaturated fats like monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats might help, she says. This looks like having nuts and seeds as snacks or utilizing more extra virgin olive oil in cooking, Kirkpatrick adds.

Al Bochi suggests shifting toward a more Mediterranean-style diet by adding an extra serving of vegetables and fruits to your current meals. Prioritize your primary protein

Kirkpatrick says you can also assess your primary protein sources and add some Mediterranean factors here, focusing more on beans, legumes, and fatty fish.

Al Bochi agrees, suggesting adding more plant-based proteins like beans, lentils, nuts and seeds to the menu.

The American Heart Association offers the following serving size tips for people who prefer eating meat:a piece of meat about the size of a deck of cardsone small chicken drumstick or thigh3/4 cup of fish, flaked2 thin slices of lean roast beef (sliced 3? x 3? x 1/4?)Focus on what to add rather than subtract

Focus on what you can add to your diet, instead of limit, says Al Bochi. Kirkpatrick says you cant go wrong with simply adding more fruits and vegetables into your existing diet.

She says this will be a step towards a more Mediterranean approach that can be maintained over time.

Al Bochi also suggests adding more Mediterranean foods to the diet by using olive oil as your main fat. Its a lifestyle, not a diet

While following a Mediterranean eating plan is about what you do and do not consume, Al Bochi says its important to keep in mind that it is more a lifestyle than a diet.

The Mediterranean diet is a lifestyle that encourages mindful eating, socializing over food, and adding daily movement, she says. The American Heart Association echoes this by saying diet isnt the only part of Mediterranean living thats important for heart health.

According to the AHA, its an eating pattern that is historically associated with lifestyles that include exercise and social activity.

UK

Asylum hotel protests expected to swell this weekend – as Farage unveils ‘mass deportation’ plan

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9 mins ago

August 23, 2025

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Asylum hotel protests expected to swell this weekend - as Farage unveils 'mass deportation' plan

A weekend of protests and counter-protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers began last night, with dozens expected today. It comes as Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has vowed “mass deportations” of illegal immigrants if his party wins the next general election.

Saturday is set to see more demonstrations across major towns and cities in England, organised under the Abolish Asylum System slogan, with at least 33 planned over the bank holiday weekend.

The protests are expected in Bristol, Exeter, Tamworth, Cannock, Nuneaton, Liverpool, Wakefield, Newcastle, Horley, Canary Wharf, Aberdeen and Perth in Scotland, and Mold in Wales.

Counter-protests – organised by Stand Up To Racism – are also set to be held in Bristol, Cannock, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Wakefield, Horley and Long Eaton in Derbyshire.

It comes after Friday night saw the first demonstrations of the weekend, including one outside the TLK hotel in Orpington, south London.

Dozens of protesters could be heard shouting “get them out” and “save our children” next to the site, while counter protesters marched to the hotel carrying banners and placards which read: “Refugees welcome, stop the far right.”

The Metropolitan Police said a large cordon was formed between the two groups and the hotel, and later confirmed that no arrests were made.

Abolish Asylum System protests were also held in Altrincham, Bournemouth, Cheshunt, Chichester, Dudley, Leeds, Canary Wharf, Portsmouth, Rhoose, Rugby, Southampton and Wolverhampton.

Tensions around the use of the hotels for asylum seekers are at a high after statistics showed there were more than 32,000 asylum seekers currently staying in hotels, marking a rise of 8% during Labour’s first year in office.

Regular protests had been held outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, which started after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl on 10 July.

In the wake of those protests, Epping Forest District Council sought and won an interim High Court injunction to stop migrants from being accommodated there – a decision which the government is seeking permission to appeal.

Farage vows ‘mass deportations’ if elected

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has told The Times there would be “mass deportations” of illegal immigrants if Reform UK wins the next general election, vowing to remove the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights and other international agreements to facilitate five deportation flights a day.

When asked by the newspaper whether that would include Afghan nationals at risk of torture or death, he said: “I’m really sorry, but we can’t be responsible for everything that happens in the whole of the world.

“Who is our priority? Is it the safety and security of this country and its people? Or are we worrying about everybody else and foreign courts?”

Minister of State for Border Security and Asylum Angela Eagle said in response that the Reform UK leader is “simply plucking numbers out of the air, another pie in the sky policy from a party that will say anything for a headline”.

She added: “This Labour government has substantially increased returns with 35,000 people removed from the country in the last year alone, a huge increase on the last government.

“We are getting a grip of the broken asylum system. Making sure those with no right to be here are removed or deported.”

Labour has pledged to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this parliament in 2029.

Conservative MP and shadow home secretary Chris Philp also accused Reform UK of recycling Tory ideas on immigration.

“Nigel Farage previously claimed mass deportations were impossible, and now he says it’s his policy,” he added. “Who knows what he’ll say next.”

Home Office stops Norfolk hotel

It comes after South Norfolk Council said it had been told that the Home Office intends to stop housing asylum seekers at the Park Hotel in the town of Diss – which has also seen demonstrations over the last month.

Protests broke out there after officials said they would send single men to the hotel rather than women and children. The hotel’s operator had warned it would close if the change was implemented.

A Home Office spokesperson said on Friday that “we are not planning to use this site beyond the end of the current contract”.

In response, Conservative council leader Daniel Elmer said: “The Home Office thought it could just impose this change and that we would accept it.

“But there is a right way of doing things and a wrong way, and the decision by the Home Office was just plain wrong.”

He added that while “I welcome the decision, in reality it does mean that the women and children who we fought so hard to protect will now be moved elsewhere, and that is a shame”.

UK

Labour may have walked into political trap over housing asylum seekers in hotels

Published

9 mins ago

August 23, 2025

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Labour may have walked into political trap over housing asylum seekers in hotels

Has the government just walked into a giant political elephant trap by attempting to reverse the Epping hotel ruling?

Already on the back foot after a judge ordered the Bell Hotel to be emptied of asylum seekers, the Home Office is now being attacked for trying to appeal that decision.

“The government isn’t listening to the public or to the courts,” said Tory shadow home secretary Chris Philp.

The politics is certainly difficult.

Government sources are alive to that fact, even accusing the Tory-led Epping Council of “playing politics” by launching the legal challenge in the first place.

The fact Labour councils are now also considering claims undermines that somewhat.

After all, the party did promise to shut every asylum hotel by the next election.

Figures out this week showed an increase in the number of migrants in hotels since the Tories left office.

And now, an attempt to keep people in a hotel that’s become a flashpoint for anger.

That’s why ministers are trying to emphasise that closing the Bell Hotel is a matter of when, not if.

“We’ve made a commitment that we will close all of the asylum hotels by the end of this parliament, but we need to do that in a managed and ordered way”, said the security minister Dan Jarvis.

The immediate problem for the Home Office is the same one that caused hotels to be used in the first place.

There are vanishingly few accommodation options.

Labour has moved away from using old military sites.

That’s despite one RAF base in Essex – which Sir Keir Starmer had promised to close – seeing an increase in the number of migrants being housed.

Back in June, the immigration minister told MPs that medium-sized sites like disused tower blocks, old teacher training colleges or redundant student accommodation could all be used.

Until 2023, regular residential accommodation was relied on.

But getting hold of more flats and houses could be practically and politically difficult, given shortages of homes and long council waiting lists.

All of this is why previous legal challenges made by councils have ultimately failed.

The government has a legal duty to house asylum seekers at risk of destitution, so judges have tended to decide that blocking off the hotel option runs the risk of causing ministers to act unlawfully.

So to return to the previous question.

Yes, the government may well have walked into a political trap here.

But it probably had no choice.

UK

US Justice Department releases Ghislaine Maxwell interview transcript

Published

9 mins ago

August 23, 2025

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US Justice Department releases Ghislaine Maxwell interview transcript

The US Justice Department has released a transcript of an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell – the jailed ex-girlfriend of paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell, who is reported to be keen on a presidential pardon, said in the interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last month that she never saw US President Donald Trump in an “inappropriate setting”.

According to the transcript, Maxwell said: “I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody.”

Maxwell also recalled knowing about Mr Trump and possibly meeting him for the first time in 1990, when her newspaper magnate father, Robert Maxwell, was the owner of the New York Daily News.

“I may have met Donald Trump at that time, because my father was friendly with him and liked him very much,” Maxwell said, according to the transcript.

Maxwell said her father was fond of Mr Trump’s then-wife, Ivana, “because she was also from Czechoslovakia, where my dad was from”.

She was sentenced in the US in June 2022 to 20 years in prison following her conviction on five counts of sex trafficking for luring young girls to massage rooms for Epstein to abuse. She has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn her conviction.

Epstein, 66, was found dead in his cell at a Manhattan federal jail in August 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.

Trump ‘was always very cordial’

His case has generated endless attention and conspiracy theories due to his and Maxwell’s links to famous people like royals, presidents and billionaires, including Mr Trump. No one other than Epstein and Maxwell has been charged with crimes.

Mr Trump knew Epstein socially in the 1990s and early 2000s. During Maxwell’s trial in 2021, Epstein’s longtime pilot, Lawrence Visoski, said Mr Trump flew on Epstein’s private plane several times. Mr Trump has denied flying on the plane.

Maxwell, 63, said in her interview with the Justice Department that she never saw Mr Trump receive a massage.

She told Mr Blanche that Mr Trump “was always very cordial and very kind to me”, adding: “And I just want to say that I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now.”

Maxwell denies introducing Epstein to Prince Andrew

Maxwell also denied in the interview that she had ever introduced Prince Andrew to Epstein, and that the Duke of York could not have had sex at her house with Virginia Giuffre.

Ms Giuffre, who died in April, sued the Duke of York for sexual abuse in August 2021, saying Andrew had sex with her when she was 17 and had been trafficked by Epstein.

The duke has repeatedly denied the claims, and he has not been charged with any criminal offences.

In March 2022, it was announced Ms Giuffre and Andrew had reached an out-of-court settlement – believed to include a “substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights”.

Maxwell told the Justice Department: “I did not introduce [Epstein] to Prince Andrew or to Sarah Ferguson. That is a flat untruth. I’ll start with that.”

She insisted Epstein and the duke met separately, and said “I think Sarah [Ferguson] is the one that pushed that”, before saying that allegations Andrew had sex with Ms Giuffre were untrue, as she was at her mother’s 80th birthday celebrations in the countryside outside the city.

She then claimed Ms Giuffre’s allegation that she and Andrew had sexual contact in the bathroom of Maxwell’s London flat was not true, as the room was not big enough.

She also claimed that an image of her standing alongside Andrew with his arm around Ms Giuffre’s waist was “literally a fake photo”.

The release of the transcript comes after Mr Trump has faced criticism from Republican supporters and Democrats over his Justice Department’s decision not to release further details relating to Epstein, after the now US president promised to do so during the election.

The Justice Department previously said a review of the Epstein case had found “no incriminating ‘client list'” and “no credible evidence” the jailed financier had blackmailed famous men.

In the transcript of the department’s interview with Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend said that she is not aware of any Epstein ‘client list’.

After her interview in July, Maxwell was moved to a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas, by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) after she was held at a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, that housed men and women.

The Texas camp houses solely female prisoners, the majority of whom are serving time for non-violent offences and white-collar crimes.

Neither Maxwell’s lawyer nor the BOP gave a reason for the move.

Maxwell’s legal team have maintained that she was wrongly prosecuted and denied a fair trial, and have floated the idea of a pardon from Mr Trump.

The president said earlier this month that “nobody” had asked him about pardoning Maxwell, but insisted that he has “the right to do it”.

Mr Trump said: “I’m allowed to do it, but nobody’s asked me to do it. I know nothing about it. I don’t know anything about the case, but I know I have the right to do it.

“I have the right to give pardons, I’ve given pardons to people before, but nobody’s even asked me to do it.”