Dietary predictors of type 2 diabetes have been studied at a number of levels including nutrients, foods, and food groups (2 f ). The magnitude of their effect has generally been small to moderate relative risks ranging from 0.4 to 0.9 and 1.1 to 1.6 when extreme intake levels were compared. More recently, dietary pattern approaches such as the more exploratory factor and cluster analyses (19,22) and a priori methods such as dietary indexes (23,24) have attempted to capture the effect of total dietary behavior. In U.S. populations, a "prudent" and a "western" dietary pattern have been identified (25), but associations with diabetes have again been rather modest (26,27).