So why, I wondered, do so few chinese suffer with diabetes type II? So I did some research and it seems that there is a product called the Lo Han Gua fruit which is a member of the cucumber family (which also includes gourds, squash and melon's). This fruit, which I ought to refer to as 'this amazing fruit', is around 300 times sweeter than sugar but has the following attribute:
It cannot be metabalysed by the human body. So diabetics and hypogylcaemics suffer no rise in blood sugar levels. That alone is not what makes this fruit amazing, it also helps promote the metabolization of stored body fat. An article in Whole Foods June 2003, Lo Han: A Natural Sweetener Comes of Age" by Peilin Guo and Dallas Clouatre has shown that Lo Han extracts help relieve gastritis, constipation and respiratory inflammations, and they also appear to inhibit the Epstein-Barr virus and display anti-carcinogenic properties.

Now the quandry for me is that I don't use sugar in any of my food or drinks, and so i can't actually use it as a sugar substitute, and more importantly as a fat metabolyser. see here