You probably stock most of these in your kitchen already. They are not the chips and candy you might expect, but ordinary groceries that end up in weekly meals.
Decades of research have followed what happens when people eat them day after day.
More than 37 million Americans live with type 2 diabetes. Decades of cohort research compiled by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health point to seven everyday foods that steadily raise that risk.
The list includes sugary sodas, fruit juice, processed red meat, unprocessed red meat, white rice, white bread and other refined grains, and French fries. Here is what the numbers look like for each.
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The seven foods researchers keep flagging
Sugar-sweetened sodas lead the list. In the Nurses' Health Study II, women who drank one or more sugary beverages a day had an 83 percent higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
Each extra 12-ounce serving a day lifts that risk by about 25 percent in pooled analyses.
Fruit juice and fruit drinks behave much the same way. The Black Women's Health Study found that women who had two or more fruit drinks a day had a 31 percent higher risk. Juice spikes blood sugar in a way whole fruit does not.
Processed red meat sits near the top of the risk list. A meta-analysis of 442,101 people in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition linked just one daily serving (two slices of bacon or one hot dog) to a 51 percent higher risk.
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Unprocessed red meat is a smaller but real risk. The same analysis linked a daily three-ounce serving of fresh red meat to a 20 percent higher risk.
White rice is the staple that most surprises readers. A review in BMJ pooling cohort studies with 352,384 participants found that each daily serving raised the relative risk by about 11 percent.
White bread and other refined grains sit alongside it. Diets high in refined, high-glycemic-index carbohydrates were linked to a 21 percent higher risk in the Shanghai Women's Health Study. The faster blood sugar climbs after a meal, the harder insulin has to work.
French fries are the newest entry. A 30-year study of more than 205,000 US health professionals, published in BMJ in August 2025, found that three servings a week were tied to a 20 percent higher risk.
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Baked, boiled and mashed potatoes did not show the same effect.
What the evidence says you can swap in
Replacing white rice with brown rice has been linked to about an 11 percent lower risk. Two to three daily servings of whole grains were tied to a 30 percent lower risk in women.
Water, unsweetened coffee or tea in place of sugary drinks removes the daily insulin spike entirely. For most of these foods, the risk is dose-dependent, which means cutting back part of the way still matters.
Anyone noticing symptoms of high blood sugar, such as unusual thirst, fatigue or frequent urination, should talk to a doctor about screening.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that adults over 35 be tested for prediabetes at least once.
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This article is made and published by Mie Hermansen, who may have used AI in the preparation.