Sugar causes diabetes not only from sweet foods.

Internal medicine specialist at Seribu Islands Regional Hospital, Dr. Nur Rahmah Oktariani, said excessive sugar consumption that causes diabetes is not only obtained from sweet foods or drinks but also from added sugar such as flour-based foods.

"Actually, all this time we think that sugar comes from sweet foods, from sweet drinks. But we forget that there are other sources of sugar, especially from the carbohydrates that we consume, whether it's from rice, from potatoes, from flour, that also produces carbohydrates," he said in an online discussion on diabetes. 

He said that a lifestyle that often combines rice as the main carbohydrate with other sources of carbohydrates from flour can increase the risk of diabetes mellitus, such as from meatballs, rice vermicelli, plus packaged drinks with a sugar content of more than 20 grams.