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Diabetes Essay

Decent Essays

Nowadays, an increasing demand of consumption foods rich in antioxidant compounds can prevent many diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, certain types of cancer and type 2 diabetes and promote good health (Temple 2000; Kwon et al. 2007). Non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs) such as type 2 diabetes (T2D) are rising rapidly worldwide due to lifestyle and diet chances (Mishra et al. 2017). In North America these diseases disproportionately affect certain indigenous communities, who also have high prevalence of obesity in all age groups and in both sexes (Kwon et al. 2007).
Diabetes mellitus (DM), a global public health problem, is a chronic disorder characterized by hyperglycemia that affects 422 million people worldwide (Kim et al. …show more content…

2005; Mishra et al. 2017; Sarkar et al. 2016; Ramakrishna et al. 2017).
Fruits and vegetables with rich bioactive components can potentially act as a dietary antidote, and therefore targeting health-relevant bioactives of fruits and vegetables has merit (Leroy and De Vuyst 2004). Phenolic compounds are the most important for dietary applications. These compounds protect plants, fruits, and vegetables from oxidative damage and have been used as antioxidants by humans. Beyond its role as antioxidants phenolic bioactives also have diverse human health-relevant functionalities including ability to influence glucose metabolism (Hanhineva et al. 2010). Therefore antioxidants from natural sources are the great interesting for applications in natural antioxidants, nutraceuticals, and functional foods or dietary fibres (Do et al. 2014).
In the last few years, interesting in squash has increased considerably due to its nutritional properties and health benefits (Sánchez et al. 2017). Squash belongs to genus Cucurbita L. of the family Cucurbitaceae which also includes pumpkins. Squash is native to Americas where there is evidence of their culture more than 10000 years ago (Smith 1997; Rubatzky and Yamaguchi 1997). The three widely grown species, Cucurbita pepo L. (‘summer aquash’), Cucurbita maxima Duch. (‘winter squash’) and Cucurbita moschata Duch. (‘butternut squash’) are extremely polymorphic in fruit characteristics

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