Living in a healthy neighborhood with ample access to fresh fruits and vegetables and enough green space for walks can cut down a person's chance of developing Type 2 diabetes, says new research.

The study examined 2,285 individuals aged 45 years and above at three of the six sites involved in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA).

The assessment of their neighborhood was done by asking residents questions about whether it's pleasant to walk in their community and whether the local stores carry fresh groceries, fruits and vegetables.

Average neighborhood scores were 3.68 for physical activity and 3.36 for healthy foods as discovered by the researchers.

The increase in the number of Type 2 diabetes in the past 30 years makes it essential to find environmental features that could mitigate risk, as concluded by the authors.

They wrote, "Current efforts to foster health-promoting environments include designing and modifying physical environments, such as zoning residential neighborhoods to require safe sidewalks, creating parks and attractive public green spaces and improving public transportation so that residents rely less on their cars; supporting fresh-food farmers' markets in low-income, urban neighborhoods; and assisting stores in those neighborhoods in improving their selection of healthy foods".

246 million in the world and about 23.6 million people in the U. S. have diabetes. A large number of them have Type 2, which is linked to a bad diet and with lack of exercises.