Diabetes mellitus (honey-sweet flow, honey dysentery), commonly known as "diabetes", is one of the most common chronic diseases in middle and old age and increasingly also in younger people (disease of civilisation). The main characteristic is an elevated blood sugar level (hyperglycaemia), which is associated with a risk of serious concomitant and secondary diseases. Type 2 diabetes (colloquially known as adult-onset diabetes, but the term is outdated as the disease does not only affect older people) is the most common form of diabetes. It is caused by a lack of insulin action in the body's cells. As a result, not enough sugar can get from the blood into the tissue, the concentration of sugar in the blood is increased and yet a lack of energy can occur in the cells.
Type 1 diabetes is the rarer form, in which the pancreas no longer produces enough insulin or none at all. Without insulin, glucose (dextrose) cannot be absorbed into the cell and metabolised into energy. In contrast, insulin is not required in the first phases of fructose metabolism. On the other hand, fructose (fruit sugar) is two to three times sweeter than glucose, but considerably less blood sugar-raising. For this reason, fructose has long been used as a useful substitute for sucrose and glucose in the dietary treatment of diabetics.
In the 1990s, these medical reasons led to the definition of "diabetic wine" in Germany with corresponding labelling on the bottle. This was defined in §48 of the Wine Ordinance as follows: still wine is considered suitable for consumption by diabetics if...
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