Vegan diet can help diabetes patients cut costs, doctors' group finds

Berlin (dpa) – Diabetes patients who want a thinner waistline and a fatter wallet could do worse than consider going vegan, according to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Published in BMC Nutrition, the Committee's research found that people with type 1 diabetes who ate mostly low-fat vegan food needed 28% or 12.1 units less insulin a day than others, equivalent to $1.08 less spent on the treatment. "A low-fat vegan diet could reduce insulin use and insulin costs in people with t1diabetes," the researchers say in their paper. "The reductions in insulin use in the vegan group likely reflect improved insulin sensitivity, or how well the body responds to insulin," they say, adding insulin resistance is "strongly influenced by dietary fat, which can inhibit glucose from enteri