Eat broccoli; it is a super source of chromium, a trace mineral that seems to work wonders on blood sugar. If you have Type II diabetes, chromium can help regulate blood sugar, often reducing medion and insulin needs. If you are on the verge of diabetes, chromium may save you from the plunge into full-fledged disease (diabetes).

Indeed, if your glucose tolerence is borderline, as it is in about one-forth of ordinary Americans, chromium can fix it. Even if your blood sugar is low instead of high, chromium can yank it back up to normal. Whatever the blood sugar problem, chromium tends to normalize it, says Richard A. Anderson, Ph.D., at the US Department of Agriculture's Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland. Dr. Anderson blames soaring rates of Type II diabetes partly on deficiency of chromium in the diet and cites some fourteen studies done during the 1980s, showing that chromium improved glucose tolerance.

Chromium seems to increase insulin's efficiency so you need less to do the job. How is a mystery, but Dr. Anderson notes that in test-tube experiments, biologically active chromium attaches tightly to insulin, enhancing by up to one hundred times the hormone's main mission of oxidizing glucose into carbon dioxide.

Yet, about 90 percent of Americans get less chromium than the recommended 50 to 200 micrograms a day. Some high chromium foods are nuts, oysters, mushrooms, whole grains, wheat cerials, beer, wine, rhubarb, brewer's yeast -- and broccoli! One analysis found that one cup of broccoli contained 22 micrograms of chromium, ten times more than any other food. Barley is also rich in chromium, perhaps helping explain the grain's longtime use in Iraq as a diabetes remedy. In animal experiments, barley helps suppress insulin surges.

Don't overlook the power of fenugreek seeds, long used in the Middle East and India to treat several diseases, including diabets. Now there's evidence the seeds may indeed help control diabetes.

Scientists at India's National Institute of Nutrition recently ground up fenugreek seeds and gave the power to Type I diabetics. Their fasting blood sugar fell, their glucose tolerance improved, and their blood cholesterol went down. This caused the researchers to conclude that ground up fenugreek seeds could be a useful antidiabetic agent.

Israeli scientists at Hebrew University of Jerulsalem also have shown that fenugreek seeds can lower blood sugar and cholesterol in both diabetics and healthy people. Additionally, they have identified an active ingredient of fenugreek seeds. It is a gel-like soluble fiber called galactomannan. In animal studies, the fenugreek gel binds up bile acids, lowering cholesterol, much the way common drugs do.

Add spices to boost insulin activity. It may be more than our taste buds that inspire us to frequently use cinnamon and cloves to spice up sweet foods, such as pumpkin pie. Such spices actually have drug-like properties that help us handle the sugar in such sweets.

The USDA's Dr. Anderson discovered that various spices help stimulate insulin activity, which means the body can process sugar more efficiently and therefore needs less insulin. Dr. Anderson did some test-tube experiments in which he measured insulin activity in the presence of certain foods. Although most showed no effect, three spices and one herb triples insulin activity: cinnamon, cloves, turmeric and bay leaves. Cinnamon was the most potent.

Only a little cinnamon, such as the the small amounts sprinkled on toast, can stimulate insulin activity, he says. A dash of cinnamon on any number of appropiate foods may help keep blood sugar in check.

Eat high carbohydrate, high fiber foods, like legumes, to keep diabetes away and under control. That's mainstay advice for anyone concerned about diabetes, according to experts such as James Anderson, M.D., at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. He insists that the same foods that lower cholesterol and fight heart diseases are excellent fare for diabetics, who are at high risk heart disease. that especially means foods high in soluble fiber.
(For a list of such foods, see page 56*.) Dr. Anderson says more than 50 studies show that such high fiber foods significantly hold down blood sugar along with triglycerides and cholesterol.

High fiber diets work so well that many patients on such diets have decreased or eliminated their need for supplemental insulin and other antidiabetic medions.

Some authorities, such as James Anderson, M.D., insist that soluble fiber is the main cholesterol-lowering agent in foods, and that the more of such fiber in a food, the greater its powers to cut cholesterol. Here is Dr. Anderson's rundown of super sources of soluble fiber. He urges eating at least 6 grams of soluble fiber a day to fight bad cholesterol.

Eat foods that don't incite sharp long-lasting spurts in blood sugar. Such foods rank low on the so-called "glycemic index," a relatively new concept. For years it was assumed that simple carbohydrates (sugar) were far and away the major villain in boosting blood glucose and the complex carbohydrates (fruits, vegtables, grains and legumes, such as potatoes and carrots), which are slowly absorbed, were neutral or beneficial. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, that concept got a violent shaking up when several scientists, including Phyllis Crapo, R.D., of the University of California at San Diego, and David J.A. Jenkins, M.D., of the University of Toronto, measured blood sugar after feeding subjects a variety of foods. To virually everyone's surprise, the most rapid rise in blood sugar were stimulated not by ice cream and candy bars, but carrots, potatoes and processed cerials! The notion that complex carbohydrates are automatically safer for diabetics than simple carbos turned out to be myth.

A ten year scientific argument has ensued over whether this sugar-boosting potential of individual foods, now called the "glycemic index," is of any practical significance. When you mix foods up in your stomach, does it really matter? Dr. Jenkins insists it does. His research indes that eating foods low on the glycemic index improves overall blood sugar controlin patients with both types of diabetes. Moreover, he stresses, the diets lower triglycerides.

Both Dr. Jenkins and others point out that even people without diabetes benefit from eating foods low on the glycemic index. For one thing, such foods help prevent surges in insulin that may create insulin resistance, leading to diabetes. Also, new research shows that hig levels of insulin in the blood are undesirable and may have other consequences, such as acting as a growth factor to promote cancer. Eating low-glycemic foods helps keep blood sugar down and hence insulin levels needed to process it.

Here is the glycemic index, or impact on blood sugar, of common foods when compared with glucose, which produces the most potent blood-sugar rises.

The higher the percentage, the greater the food's ability to spike blood suger.

• 100 percent: Glucose
• 80 - 90 percent: Corn Flakes, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, (instant mashed), maltose, honey
• 70 - 79 percent: Bread (whole meal), millet, rice (white), broad beans (fresh), potato (new)
• 60 - 69 percent: Bread (white), rice (brown), Muesli cereal, shredded wheat, water biscuits, beetrout, bananas, raisins, Mars bar
• 50 - 59 percent: Buckwheat, spaghetti (white), sweet corn, All-Bran, oatmeal biscuits, peas (frozen), yams, sucrose, potato chips
• 40 - 49 percent: Spaghetti (whole wheat), oarmeal, sweet potato, beans (navy), peas (dried), orange juice
• 30 - 30 percent: Butter beans, lima beans, haricot beans, blackeyed peas, chickpeas, apples (Golden Delicious), ice cream, skim and whole milk, yogurt, tomato soup
• 20 - 29 percent: Kidney beans, lintels, fructose
• 10 - 19 percent: Soybeans, peanuts
• source: Dr. David J. A. Jenkins

Here's the best antidiabetic diet, according to most experts in the United States and the United Kingdom: Eat 50 to 60 percent of your calories in carbohydrates, less than 30 percent in fat (less than 10 percent in saturated fat) and 30 to 40 grams of fiber a day. But few diabetics meet the recommendations, according to a recent survey. Only 3 percent of ninety-two patients studied ate 50 percent or more of their calories in carbhydrates; in most the figure was about 40 percent. Only 14 percent kept their fat intake below 35 percent of total calories; most ate 60 to 80 percent more saturated fat than was deemed good for them. Forty percent of the men but only 10 percent of the women got the advisable dose of fiber.

The researchers explained the disheartening situation by saying that "many diabetic patients had not seen a dietitian for years" and were possibly following outdated advice that once curbed carbohydrates.

If you have diabetes, be extra sure to eat foods high in antioxidants, such as vitamin E and vitamin C and beta carotene, advises James Anderson, M.D., of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. The reason: The artery-clogging process appears abnormal and more severe in diabetics. Specifically, diabetic's bad-type LDL cholesterol is more susceptible to oxidation, and thus more likely to become "toxic."
In turn, such oxidized LDL is theoretically more apt to clog arteries. This might help explain why the risk of heart disease is two to three times higher in diabetics, says Dr. Anderson.

What causes the dangerious oxidized cholesterol? Probably diabetics' sustained high levels of sugar in the blood. As sugar is metabolized, it releases the oxygen free radicals that tend to make cholesterol toxic. You may help counteract them by zapping them with antioxidants.

• To help prevent Type I diabetes, avoid giving dairy foods to infants for at least the first year of life.

• To ward off Type II diabetes, eat more fish, legumes, nuts, and high-chromium foods such as grains and broccoli, and lose excessive weight. Also restrict fat, for it promotes insulin resistance.

• If you have diabetes, the diet recommended by most experts is high-fiber, high-carbohydrate starchy diet, heavy in whole-grain breads, pasta, rice, oats, and especially legumes, which are extremely low on the glycemic index. It takes such high-fiber starches longer to break down, so they are more gradually absorbed into the blood.

• Especially recommended are foods high in water-soluble fiber, such as legumes and oats. Such fiber turns into a gel in the digestive tract, stretching the time required for absorption of sugar in the foods and preventing dangerous post-meal blood sugar surges.