Because we talk a lot of about lifestyle changes lowering your odds of cancer and how hard some of them may be to make, you may be surprised how little it takes to lower your risks of type 2 diabetes, according to this British review of six studies encompassing some 220,000 patients.

Eating just an extra 1.5 servings of green, leafy vegetables lessens one's chances of type 2 diabetes by 14 percent. Making this one lifestyle change wouldn't be hard to do, but you could argue the payoff isn't that huge either. Unless, of course, you consider the estimated 2.6 million lives that were lost worldwide in 2000 merely because people didn't eat enough fruits and vegetables.

The importance of green, leafy vegetables in the prevention of serious disease has to do with its antioxidant content, scientists say, like spinach with its high magnesium content.

The one caveat worth remembering, if you decide to incorporate more green, leafy veggies into your daily diet: Lettuce, spinach, kale, collard greens and celery reside at or near the bottom of the Environmental Working Group's 2010 list of whole foods containing the most pesticides, which is why you should be looking for locally grown and organic foods as often as possible.

British Medical Journal August 19, 2010 Free Full Text Study

insciences.org August 20, 2010