What is the best way to prevent diabetes?  Research points to coffee. Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health set out to establish how changes in coffee and tea consumption affected the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and their surprising results show that increasing your coffee consumption over several years may make you less likely to become diabetic.

After analyzing data from over 100,000 people who participated in a long-term study of how lifestyle affects health, the researchers found that people who upped their coffee intake by more than one cup per day for four years had an 11% reduction in diabetes risk over the next four years. Conversely, people who cut down on coffee by more than one cup per day had a 17% higher risk of diabetes.

The risk reduction was limited to caffeinated coffee: people who drank more decaf or caffeinated tea didn’t see the same benefit. Previous research has already established that coffee drinkers are less likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, but this study is the first to look at how a change in coffee consumption can affect diabetes risk over time. Even if you’ve never been a coffee drinker, maybe this will sweeten the pot?

(Source: Diabetologia, April 2014, doi:10.1007/s00125-014-3235-7.)