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For years, there have been hints that adding cinnamon to your diet can help control blood sugar. And a recent spat of studies adds to the evidence that the effect is real.

"Yes, it does work," says Paul Davis, a research nutritionist with the University of California, Davis. He authored a recent meta-analysis published in the Journal of Medicinal Food that concluded that cinnamon lowers fasting blood glucose.

"According to our results, it's a modest effect of about 3 to 5 percent," Davis says. This is about the level of reduction found in the older generation of diabetes drugs, he says.

And that makes the findings of interest not just to the 25 million Americans who already have diabetes, but also to the 80 million other people — nearly 1 in 4 of us — who have elevated fasting blood-glucose levels. Doctors refer to this as pre-diabetes, meaning that blood sugar isn't high enough to meet the cut-off for a diagnosis of diabetes, but it puts these people at a high risk of developing the disease.

There's also a recent meta-analysis concluding that cinnamon can help lower lipid levels, including LDL cholesterol (the unhealthy type) and triglycerides.

What's not well understood is exactly how much cinnamon is optimal, and whether the effect is transient. It's hard to tell from the studies whether it leads to a significant, long-term reduction in blood sugar.

For people who already have diabetes, cinnamon is not an alternative to medication. But for people with pre-diabetes who are interested in using diet to manage their blood sugar, it's one of many strategies worth considering, says diabetes educator Emmy Suhl of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.

"The evidence is still inconclusive," Suhl notes, but cinnamon "is inexpensive," "and it tastes good."

So, is there an ideal variety of cinnamon to be sprinkling into your oatmeal, or blending into your spice rubs and salads?

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