Good news! Once again a study has confirmed that eating fresh fruits is associated with a lower incidence of type 2 diabetes. And even better - there is a dose related relationship - the more one eats daily, the better. So don't worry about the "sugar content" of fruit - the key is to eat fruit (as well as vegetables) to lower the risk of getting diabetes. And if you have type 2 diabetes, it will lower the incidence of death and complications from diabetes.
Here are the numbers for the 7 year study done in China of almost half a million people: eating fresh fruit was associated with a 12% lower risk of developing diabetes (compared to those never or rarely consuming fresh fruit). And in those who already had diabetes at the start of the study, consuming fresh fruit more than three days a week was associated with a 17% lower relative risk of dying from any cause and a 13%–28% lower risk of developing diabetes-related complications than those who consumed fruit less than one day per week.
Yes, I remember the advice that used to be given and is still given in parts of the world - that if you have diabetes, to restrict fruit, but studies are showing that advice to be wrong. Note that eating fresh fruits and vegetables has lots of other health benefits also - including lower rates of heart disease, stroke, and better mental (cognitive) functioning. From Science Daily:
Fresh fruit consumption linked to lower risk of diabetes and diabetic complications
In a research article published in PLOS Medicine, Huaidong Du of the University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom and colleagues report that greater consumption of fresh fruit was associated with a lower incidence of diabetes, as well as reduced occurrence of complications in people with diabetes, in a Chinese population.
Although the health benefits of diets including fresh fruit and vegetables are well established, the sugar content of fruit has led to uncertainty about associated risks of diabetes and of vascular complications of the disease. Du and colleagues studied nearly 500,000 people participating in the China Kadoorie Biobank over about 7 years of follow-up, documenting new cases of diabetes and recording the occurrence of vascular disease and death in people with pre-existing diabetes.
The researchers found that people who reported elevated consumption of fresh fruit had a lower associated risk of developing diabetes in comparison with other participants (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 0.88, 95% CI 0.83-0.93), which corresponds to an estimated 0.2% reduction in the absolute risk of diabetes over 5 years. In people with diabetes, higher consumption of fresh fruit was associated with a lower risk of mortality (aHR 0.83, 95% CI 0.74-0.93 per 100g fruit/d), corresponding to an absolute decrease in risk of 1.9% at 5 years, and with lower risks of microvascular and macrovascular complications. [Original study.]