Even if you don’t like sardines, this oil fish is pretty nutritious. Now there is recent findings that regularly eating sardines can prevent type 2 diabetes.
Sardines and oily fish are good for your health because they contain high levels of unsaturated fats. These unsaturated fats help to regulate cholesterol levels and prevent the onset of cardiovascular diseases.
Now you can add another benefit of sardines — preventing the onset of type 2 diabetes. It seems Nutrients found in high quantities in sardines such as taurine, omega 3, calcium and vitamin D are known to help protect against type 2 diabetes.
Two Cans of Sardines Weekly
In a recent study at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Spain, researchers looked at 152 patients who were 65 years of age or older. These patients were all diagnosed with prediabetes. In the study, one group of patients were put on a diet that had 200 grams of sardines added each week (equivalent to about two cans of sardines). They eat the sardines whole without removing the bones.
The other group (the control group) did not get the sardines in their diet.
In the group that ate sardines, at the beginning of the study, 37 percent of the members were diagnosed as high risk of suffering from diabetes but at the end of the study, only 8 percent of the members were diagnosed as high risk.
In the control group that did not eat sardines, 27 percent at the beginning were diagnosed as high risk f suffering from diabetes, and 22 percent were at high risk at the end of the study.
Eating sardines in their diet clearly reduced the number of patients who were classified as high risk from suffering from diabetes.
The study was published in the May 2021 edition of the journal Clinical Nutrition.
Forget the Supplements
So will you get the same benefit by taking supplements that have the same nutrients that are in sardines? Not according to the researchers. There is a synergy that exists for the nutrients in the sardines. The nutrients work together to produce the effects when you eat the whole sardines. Taking the nutrients in isolation in the form of supplements won’t work to the same extent
Adding Sardines to Your Diet
If you are predispose to developing type 2 diabetes, or if you know someone who is, adding whole sardines to your diet may be very helpful to prevent type 2 diabetes. Sardines are inexpensive and you can buy them from basically any supermarket.
What if you don’t like sardines or become sick of eating it after awhile? In the study, they actually used a list of recipes that included canned sardines. This helped facilitate the patients’ consumption of sardines.
So start searching for those sardine recipes and get creative in your diet. Sardines are particularly rich in calcium and vitamin D. Remember, two cans of sardines a week can keep diabetes away.
