INS and diabetes mellitus: However, there are many other roles diet plays in affecting diabetes risk: zinc, for example, regulates insulin storage in the secretory granules of the pancreatic beta cells, and functional variants within SLC30A8, encoding a zinc transporter, affect this process [7]; and long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids are ligands for fatty acid receptors, like peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) [8].