Harvard study claims eating red meat twice a week can increase diabetes risk
Previous studies have often found a link between red meat consumption and type 2 diabetes risk but a new study by experts.
At Harvard University analysed a large number of type 2 diabetes cases among participants and claimed that people who eat just two servings of red meat per week may have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on Thursday, October 19, the new study was led by researchers from Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health who analysed health data from 216,695 participants from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS), NHS II, and Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS).
Diet was assessed with food frequency questionnaires every two to four years, for up to 36 years during which, more than 22,000 participants developed type 2 diabetes hence, it was found that consumption of red meat, including processed and unprocessed red meat, was strongly associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
It was established that the participants who ate the most red meat had a 62% higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those who ate the least and every additional daily serving of processed red meat was associated with a 46% greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes while every additional daily serving of unprocessed red meat was associated with a 24% greater risk.
First author Xiao Gu, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Nutrition, revealed, “Our findings strongly support dietary guidelines that recommend limiting the consumption of red meat and this applies to both processed and unprocessed red meat.”
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On the other hand, the researchers also discovered that replacing red meat with healthy plant-based protein sources like nuts and legumes or modest amounts of dairy foods could reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes apart from helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and climate change and provide other environmental benefits. Estimating the potential effects of substituting one daily serving of red meat for another plant-based protein source, it was found that substituting a serving of nuts and legumes could lower the risk of type 2 diabetes by 30% while substituting a serving of dairy products could reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes by 22%.
Senior author Walter Willett, Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition, suggested, “Given our findings and previous work by others, a limit of about one serving per week of red meat would be reasonable for people wishing to optimize their health and wellbeing.” Other Harvard Chan School authors included Frank Sacks and Frank Hu.
Earlier, a 2018 study that appeared in the Journal of Hepatology too claimed that high consumption of red and processed meat has been linked to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and insulin resistance. In August 2011 also, a research by experts at the Harvard School of Public Health that represented the largest study of its kind and appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that two slices of bacon, a hot dog or a serving of deli meat daily can significantly boost the risk of getting type 2 diabetes.