I actually feel that a lot of the reasons we are seeing so much diabetes is because we no longer eat in season.
If you analyze when fruit and vegetables are avaiable in season and what types, it becomes apparent that the higher fructose fruits and the starchy carb veg is usally available at the end of the Summer and during the Autumn.
The reason for this is to enable us to build up our fat levels for protection and 'storage' over the lean winter months.
Whilst the 'lightweight' fruit and veg is available through the Summer when we don't need the fat stores, the 'heavier' fruit and veg is designed to help us get through the Winter.
The trouble now is that the heavier foods are available all year round, and people are eating the starchy stuff all the time, even when the body doesn't need it. They also have an endless supply of sugar and glucose-producing foods all year round too, but we weren't designed to eat like this.
Of course these people on the very low-calorie diet were able to reverse their diabetes - they were no longer eating the quantity of carbs to drive the sugar spikes. As many of the commenters on that article pointed out, lowering the carb content - even moderately, would likely, at least in some, have had a very similar outcome. You don't need to starve yourself to achieve that!
The trouble with starving yourself is that a lot of the reason why people get such horrible 'complications' with Diabetes is because they are very nutritionally deficient. Starving yourself won't help that one jot, as you then get even less nutrition!
The key is to remove the 'dead' food - the stuff that isn't giving us anything of any REAL value, and replace it with stuff that is. That is far more likely to support a reversal of diabetes than anything!
I have seen diabetes reversed on all sorts of diets - from vegetarianism (Gabriel Couzens regime) to low-carb, high-fat, moderate protein, but the key is that whichever diet people choose to follow, they generally are very highly nutritious - and they all remove the sugars and starchy carbs - particularly the processed and commercially-made ones.
As you say though Catherine - they hand-picked people who were relatively newly diagnosed, and that would have made a big difference. Those like Patch and I who have been diabetic for many years might not have had anything like the result they were looking for. It is noticeable that not all remained free of the diabetes - but then if they went back to eating the same food as before, then it would be pretty obvious that eventually the diabetes would come back. From that point of view, as the 600 calories would be unnatainable in the long-term - for maintenance of non-diabetic figures, then low, oe at the very least lower-carb would have to be the way to go.
Like one of the commenters on the article I would like to have seen the food that was eaten during the study.
I bet they were blooming starving......its a good job it only lasted 8 weeks! They probably drank gallons of water to get them through - and that would have helped too.