A direct correlation between Mediterranean diet and protection against type 2 diabetes has recently been demonstrated in 7052 high cardiovascular risk subjects with genetic susceptibility to obesity and diabetes (genetic variants of FTO rs9939609 and MC4R rs17782313): when adherence to diet was low, carriers of the variant alleles had higher type 2 diabetes risk than wild-type subjects, but when adherence was high these phenomena disappeared. Here, FTO is linked to type 2 diabetes mellitus.