Could Eating Certain Types of Fat Help Teens Control Diabetes?
July 5, 2000 — Eating monounsaturated fats such as olive oil, canola oil, and peanut oil instead of saturated fats like butter could help teenagers with type 1 diabetes control their disease, as long as they keep being careful about calories, a study from Australia suggests. One thing the Australian researchers found was that getting teens to stick to a diet plan — any diet plan — is difficult at best. But they found that even the small, incremental change of substituting monounsaturated fats for animal fats improved their conditions. The idea of increasing monounsaturated fat began with type 2 diabetics. Their blood fat and sugar levels have been found to improve when they consume a diet higher in monounsaturated fat and lower in carbohydrates. This works in type 2 diabetics because of a condition known as insulin resistance, a phrase that has been much touted lately with regard to the high-protein diet fad. And there may indeed be something to the idea that reducing carbohydrates
