Functional Foods and Lifestyle Approaches for Diabetes Prevention and Management

Abstract

Functional foods contain biologically active ingredients associated with physiological health benefits for preventing and managing chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). A regular consumption of functional foods may be associated with enhanced anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, insulin sensitivity, and anti-cholesterol functions, which are considered integral to prevent and manage T2DM. Components of the Mediterranean diet (MD)—such as fruits, vegetables, oily fish, olive oil, and tree nuts—serve as a model for functional foods based on their natural contents of nutraceuticals, including polyphenols, terpenoids, flavonoids, alkaloids, sterols, pigments, and unsaturated fatty acids. Polyphenols within MD and polyphenol-rich herbs—such as coffee, green tea, black tea, and yerba maté—have shown clinically-meaningful benefits on metabolic and microvascular activities, cholesterol and fasting glucose lowering, and anti-inflammation and anti-oxidation in high-risk and T2DM patients. However, combining exercise with functional food consumption can trigger and augment several metabolic and cardiovascular protective benefits, but it is under-investigated in people with T2DM and bariatric surgery patients. Detecting functional food benefits can now rely on an “omics” biological profiling of individuals’ molecular, genetics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, but is under-investigated in multi-component interventions. A personalized approach for preventing and managing T2DM should consider biological and behavioral models, and embed nutrition education as part of lifestyle diabetes prevention studies. Functional foods may provide additional benefits in such an approach.

Development of Low Calorie Jam by Replacement of Sugar with Natural Sweetener Stevia

“…Modern consumers are now more concerned about the nutritional and caloric value of food they consume and more interested in preferring healthier food products in their diet. The importance of lifestyle prevention makes it necessary to investigate the protective role of healthy nutrients and foods (3). Fruits and vegetables are considered as essential source of nutrients and possess a low content of fats, proteins and calories.…”

FFC’s Advancement of Functional Food Definition

“…The discipline of functional food science is an aspect of nutritional science centered upon the research and development of these foods by using both a function-driven approach and a lifestyle approach to prevent and manage diseases, like diabetes [27][28][29][30][31]. The primary challenge is that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not have a formal definition of functional foods in the United States.…”

Knockdown of lncRNA H19 inhibits abnormal differentiation of small intestinal epithelial cells in diabetic mice

“…In summary, our findings provide the first evidence supporting the role of H19 in IECs of DM mice, and miR-141-3p targets not only protein-coding genes but also the lncRNA H19. (Alkhatib et al, 2017;Hays, Galassetti, & Coker, 2008;Meiszterics, Kónyi, Hild, Sárszegi, & Gaszner, 2017). A common complication of DM is diabetic enteropathy (DE), and the majority of previous studies on DE have focused on smooth muscle structure and function, the density of the interstitial cells of Cajal, and the health and function of the autonomic and enteric nerves of the intestine (Piper & Saad, 2017;Vella & Camilleri, 2017;Gotfried, Priest, & Schey, 2017).…”