Are You Getting Diabetes… From Vegetables?!
It’s the advice you’ve been getting since you were a kid…
Eat your vegetables – they’re good for you.
And, for the most part, that’s absolutely true.
But could the vegetables you eat every day be sending your blood sugar haywire – and even putting you on the fast path to diabetes?
They could be – if they’re covered in this…
The American produce industry is just mind-boggling sometimes.
They take some of the healthiest food around… and absolutely drench it in poison.
Case in point?
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health and the University of Texas recently tracked nearly 30 years of health data on agricultural workers, looking for links between common pesticides, herbicides, and diabetes.
And, boy, did they find it…
Some of the biggest risks were with pesticides that aren’t legal anymore, like DDT and chlordane – although they can continue to linger in soil and water.
But there were plenty of legal pesticides and herbicides – being sprayed on our veggies and fruits right now – that significantly increased diabetes risk.
Some of the worst offenders included:
- Butylate: 26% higher diabetes risk
- Carbaryl: 26% higher risk
- Phorate: 22% higher risk
Pesticides and herbicides like these can disrupt insulin signaling, interfere with hormones, damage mitochondria, and trigger inflammation.
And all of that could put you on the road to diabetes.
Now, again, this was a study on agricultural workers who are exposed to heavy amounts of these pesticides and herbicides.
But it makes a lot of sense that spending years eating foods covered in these chemicals could do similar damage to your health.
Washing your fruits and vegetables before you eat them is a great place to start – but it doesn’t completely eliminate your exposure.
That’s why it’s a good idea to choose organic produce whenever possible. Sure, it can be a little pricier – but if it helps you avoid the toxic chemicals being sprayed all over our foods, it’s an investment worth making.
View Sources
Christine G. Parks, Qian Xiao, Jesse Wilkerson, Jonathan N. Hofmann, Laura E. Beane Freeman, Dale P. Sandler, Pesticides associated with incident diabetes among licensed private pesticide applicators in the Agricultural Health Study cohort (1993–2021), Environment International, Volume 208, 2026, 110082, ISSN 0160-4120, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2026.110082.
