LOW DIETARY FIBER AND HIGH-PROTEIN INTAKES ASSOCIATED WITH NEWLY-DIAGNOSED DIABETES IN A REMOTE ABORIGINAL COMMUNITY

The high prevalence of diabetes mellitus in North American aboriginal populations may be due to recent changes in lifestyle, including the a doption of a high-fat, low-fiber diet. To determine whether fat or fib er intakes were associated with new cases of diabetes, we studied 72% (728/1018) of residents aged > 9 y from a remote aboriginal community in northern Ontario using the 75-g oral-glucose-tolerance test and 24- h dietary recall. The mean fat intake of this population (36% of energ y) was typical for North America, but fiber intake (1.2 g/MJ) was very low. Logistic-regression analysis, adjusted for age, sex, and body ma ss index, showed that a 1-SD increase in fiber intake reduced the risk of having diabetes by 39% (P = 0.026) whereas the same increase in pr otein intake increased the risk by 38% (P = 0.027). There was no signi ficant effect of energy, fat, starch, or simple sugars. These data sup port Trowell's original dietary-fiber hypothesis that ''... dietary fi ber depleted starchy foods are conducive to the development of diabete s mellitus in susceptible human genotypes.''.