Hamburgers and fried chicken significantly increase type 2 diabetes risk, according to an upcoming article for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Researchers found that African-American women who ate two or more restaurant hamburgers per week were 40 percent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, while two or more fried chicken meals led to a 68 percent increase in diabetes risk. The research followed 44,072 participants who were originally diabetes-free and were part of the Black Women’s Health Study. Consumption of restaurant meals were counted and categorized in the following groups: hamburgers, fried chicken, fried fish, Chinese food, Mexican food, and pizza. All categories were associated with increased diabetes risk except for Mexican food and pizza.

The prevalence of diabetes among African-American women is twice that of white women.

Krishnan S, Coogan PF, Boggs, DA, Rosenberg L, Palmer JR. Consumption of restaurant foods and incidence of type 2 diabetes in African-American women. Am J Clin Nutr. Dec 16, 2009. DOI:10.3945/ajcn.2009.28682.

McDougall offers a pretty straightforward take on the recent cancer screening changes: “Physicians, screening clinics, hospitals, medical associations, and medical societies must be forced, under the penalty of law if necessary, to tell the truth: Their testing does more harm than good.”

He also weighs in on our holiday tradition of eating nuts: “These days, eating nuts is as convenient as unscrewing the lid of a glass jar, and then pouring an ounce of shelled, oil-roasted, nuts directly into your mouth. After seven chews and a swallow, in fewer than five seconds, 120 calories of fat are gulped down. Within three hours much of that fat is stored as metabolic dollars to be spent during the next famine.”

McDougall also holds back on his view of blood pressure drugs: “blood-pressure-lowering drugs function by poisoning the body in various ways.”

On the recipe front, this is a great time of year for some Three Sisters Stew (corn, beans, and squash). Yumm…

Soy consumption improves breast cancer survival, according to a report in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers found that women diagnosed with breast cancer who consume soy products, such as soymilk, tofu, or edamame, have a 32 percent lower risk of recurrence and a 29 percent decreased risk of death, compared with women who consume little or no soy. The report included 5,042 women in the Shanghai Breast Cancer Survival Study, the largest population-based study of breast cancer survival, and followed them for a four-year period.

In the past, soy has been a controversial topic for cancer patients. However, an editorial accompanying this new study suggests that inconsistencies in prior research may be attributable to the comparatively low soy consumption in the United States, making beneficial effects harder to identify. In China, soy intake is higher and diets tend to include traditional food sources of soy, rather than soy supplements.

Shu XO, Zheng Y, Cai H, et al. Soy food intake and breast cancer survival. JAMA. 2009;302:2437-2443.

Ballard-Barbash R, Neuhouser ML. Challenges in design and interpretation of observational research on health behaviors and cancer survival. JAMA. 2009;302:2483-2484.