Dr. Alison Duncan

Consuming soy can help reduce the risk of heart disease, lower cholesterol and control glucose levels. This is good news for the growing number of Canadians with Type 2 diabetes. But are the people who can benefit most getting the message?

That’s the focus of a new, one-year study led by University of Guelph Prof. Alison Duncan, Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences. By examining soy consumption, perception and knowledge in adults who have Type 2 diabetes, Duncan hopes to make it easier for dietitians and nutritionists to encourage their patients to include soy in their diet.

“People are looking for prevention strategies,” says Duncan, “but before we can start making recommendations, we have to know more about the current state of awareness.”

Duncan will distribute 200 questionnaires to adults with Type 2 diabetes to determine their awareness and beliefs about soy’s health benefits, as well as how often and how much soy they consume. The study will also identify reasons people use or don’t use soy, and barriers that prevent consumers from choosing soy. The study may also make it possible to predict who is likely to use soy and who isn’t. The results, expected next summer, could help guide nutrition education programs for patients with Type 2 diabetes.

This project follows several studies into the health benefits of soy. Duncan, who trained as a Registered Dietitian in Toronto before completing her Ph.D. in Nutritional Science at the University of Minnesota, won the Young Canadian Innovator Award in June 2005 for her research about incorporating isoflavones – the compounds in soy that help protect the body against hormone-related diseases and some cancers – into bread and other foods.

Duncan’s other research projects include soy protein’s effect on prostate cancer risk, soy isoflavones and fish oil’s impact on postprandial triglycerides (a risk factor for cardiovascular disease) and oxidative stress (damage to cells caused by normal body functions), and natural health product use among adults with Type 2 diabetes. Duncan also recently finished a study that suggests soy can benefit healthy young males too.

One of the challenges of studying soy’s role in reducing disease risk is what Duncan calls the human factor.

“When you are dealing with people, there is a great deal of variation in data,” says Duncan. “So in a way, some control over the experiment is lost.”

On the other hand, this same variability can add a dimension of realism to the experiment, says Duncan.

In the future, Duncan says she looks forward to more opportunities for collaboration with researchers from other disciplines, such as food science, plant agriculture and agricultural economics, as she continues to study soy’s impact on human health.

Duncan’s research projects are supported by the Ontario Soybean Growers, American Institute for Cancer Research, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the Hannam Soybean Utilization Fund, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and Health Canada.

As a member of the University of Guelph Research Ethics Board and several professional associations including Dietitians of Canada, Duncan also regularly writes and reviews articles for journals such as Nutrition and Cancer, and Journal of Nutrition. She teaches graduate and undergraduate human health and nutrition courses at the University of Guelph, and is overseeing the research of numerous graduate and undergraduate students.

Photo by Martin Schwalbe

Written by Heather Filby, a writer with SPARK, the University of Guelph’s student research writing program.

Web Site: http://www.uoguelph.ca/hbns/faculty/faculty_duncan.shtml

For further information, please contact Dr. Alison Duncan using the Email contact form or by phone at 519 824-4120 ext 53416