Blueberries and grapes ‘cut diabetes risk’

Experts including a team from Harvard School of Public Health in the US examined whether certain fruits impact on type 2 which affects more than three million Britons. People who ate three standard servings a week of blueberries had a 26 per cent lower chance of developing the disease, they found.

Those eating grapes and raisins had a 12 per cent reduced risk and apples and pears cut the chances by seven per cent. Prunes also had a protective effect, giving an 11 per cent drop in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Other fruits such as bananas, plums, peaches and apricots had a negligible impact but drinking fruit juice increased the risk by eight per cent, according to the study.

In fact, people who replaced all fruit juice with eating whole fruits could expect a seven per cent drop in their risk of developing type 2.

For individual fruits, replacing three servings a week of fruit juice with blueberries cut the risk by 33 per cent while replacing juice with grapes and raisins cut the risk by 19 per cent.

The risk was also 14 per cent lower if juice was replaced with apples and pears, 13 per cent lower if replaced with bananas and 12 per cent lower if replaced with grapefruit.

The research, published in the British Medical Journal, includes data on 187,382 people taken from three separate studies, of whom 12,198 developed type 2 diabetes.