It’s commonly said that eating breakfast fuels the day. Now there’s another reason to start off with a morning meal.

A study by University of Minnesota School of Public Health researchers has found consuming breakfast daily, regardless of diet quality, is strongly associated with a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The latest study, led by researcher Andrew O. Odegaard, Ph.D., from the School of Public Health’s Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, appears today in the online version of journal Diabetes Care.

“Dietary guidelines have recently recommended that people eat something in the morning, but the relationship between breakfast intake frequency and metabolic risk, like type 2 diabetes, hasn’t been well studied until now,” said Odegaard.

In November 2012, as part of Diabetes Awareness Month, Health Talk discussed several diabetes studies taking place at the University of Minnesota to better understand and treat the disease. One of the studies focused on diabetes’ effects in the Somali community.

The study, “Understanding diabetes in Somali children in the Twin Cities, Minnesota,” is led by Muna Sunni, M.B.B.Ch., a University of Minnesota pediatric endocrinology fellow, and Antoinette Moran, M.D., a professor of pediatrics in the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Here’s a quick recap of the study:

Editor’s note: For more news of the JAMA study please visit our Storify page.

New research from researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School shows that Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery is twice as effective for the control of type 2 diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia when compared to intensive lifestyle medical management consisting of dietary change, physical activity, exercise and medication.

The study, “Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass vs. Intensive Medical Management for the Control of Type 2 Diabetes, Hypertension, and Hyperlipidemia” appears in the June 5, 2013, issue of the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), and was led by Sayeed Ikramuddin, M.D., professor of surgery at the University of Minnesota.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have completed testing on a Type 1 diabetes treatment involving transplanting “islet cells”, or insulin producing cells known to reverse and even diminish the disease.

So far, 48 people have undergone the groundbreaking experimental treatment which seeks to eliminate one of America’s most serious health problems…

Earlier this week, a large study out of Europe made headlines for finding just one can of soda or a sugary beverage a day increased the risk of developing diabetes by more than one fifth.

According to Reuters, the study found every extra 12 fluid ounce serving of sugar-sweetened drink raised the risk of diabetes by 22 percent compared with drinking just one can a month or less.

“The study shows that there is an association between the intake of sugar beverages and a risk of developing diabetes,” Simone French, Ph.D., an obesity prevention researcher in the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health and director of the University’s Obesity Prevention Center.

According to French, there have been many studies and reviews that show a link between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity and diabetes, including data from U.S. population-based cohort studies. Now you can add this study from Europe. She wonders whether the link this study found between sugar-sweetened beverages and diabetes risk is through the higher body weight.

“Do sugar beverages cause people to gain more weight and become overweight, and thereby this increases risk of developing diabetes?”

Studies such as the recent examination by European researchers help us inch closer to the answer. Read more about the study from Reuters here.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the Spring 2013 University of Minnesota Foundation newsletter, Discoveries in Diabetes. The complete article can be found here.

Pastor Constance “Connie” Olson is a type 1 diabetic, suffering from hypoglycemic unawareness. This complication meant that she didn’t experience early warning signs of dangerously low blood sugar—such as sweating, dizziness, and extreme hunger—causing her to unexpectedly have seizures and lose consciousness.

Olson applied to and was eventually accepted into the University of Minnesota’s human-to-human islet cell transplantation clinical trial—her best hope of a cure. After undergoing two islet transplants under the care of Bernhard Hering, M.D., scientific director of the University’s Schulze Diabetes Institute, she is now free from the daily burden of diabetes.