A study has been carried out on what diet is the most appropriate for type 2 diabetes - the one recommended by the American Diabetes Association or the vegetarian diet? The research involved participants that were diabetics and were split in two groups - diabetics that have followed a vegan diet and diabetics that have been on the standard diet for diabetes.

The results showed that volunteers that cut meat and dairy and lead a low fat vegetarian diet lowered their levels of blood cholesterol and lost more weight than individuals that followed the standard American Diabetes Association diet.

The diabetics on vegan diet also said that it was easier for them to keep to their diet and respect it step by step, as this did not involved calories counting or portion measuring. Out of the participants that left the experiment and dropped out, eight were on the standard diet as compared with only three from the vegan diet.

One of the leaders of the study, Dr. Neal Barnard, explained that the vegan diet was also more permissive than the standard one: "The diet did not restrict carbohydrate, it could be high carbohydrate, the diet didn't restrict calories, it didn't restrict portion size. If it was 8:30 at night and you were hungry you could go ahead and eat."

Dr. Neal Barnard is president of the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine and co-author of the study. He told Reuters Health: "I hope this study will rekindle interest in using diet changes first, rather than prescription drugs."

This statement comes as a consequence of the finding that after 22 weeks of diet, 43% of those on the greens diet and 26% of those on the standard diet experienced reversal of diabetes symptoms and improved health. The diet was as beneficial as they were able to give up taking some of their drugs, such as insulin or glucose control medications.

Dr. David Jenkins from the University of Toronto, who was also involved in the study, stated: "We're some way from the universal application of this, but I think it may provide some very interesting leads for the more imaginative patients and the more imaginative doctors."