It’s sugar-free, unprocessed and comes from an animal.
Yet according to top scientists at Harvard, eating red meat can increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Eating 2.5 ounces of beef every day, the rough equivalent of one single patty In-N-Out Burger, was associated with a 26 percent higher risk of being diagnosed.
The researchers behind the new paper assured DailyMail.com that all other diet and lifestyle factors were accounted for (type 2 diabetes is normally linked to high sugar, low fiber diets, junk food and sedentary lifestyles).
New research suggests that people who eat a diet high in animal meat could be at higher risk of developing diabetes
This is a roughly 100 gram, or 3.5 oz serving of beef, compared to the size of a hand. The people in the study most at risk of developing diabetes ate less beef than that daily, about 2.5 oz
The problem, according to the study of over 200,000 adults over 36 years, is heme iron – a type of iron found in meat and dairy.
They suggest that heme iron causes inflammation in your body. This makes your body less responsive to insulin, a hormone which controls blood sugar, and together, these two factors could raise your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
These findings suggest that eating a plant based diet could help protect against developing diabetes, study author Dr Frank Hu, a Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard told Dailymail.com.
‘Reducing heme iron intake, particularly from red meat, and adopting a more plant-based diet can be effective strategies in lowering diabetes risk,’ Dr Hu said.
This is crucial considering how common type 2 diabetes is in the United States. 38 million adults in the US had diabetes in 2021, according to the CDC.
That’s about 14 percent of the population.
The condition causes problems with processing sugar and regulating energy. If left untreated, diabetes can cause severe problems like cause nerve damage, heart disease and stroke.
Type 1 diabetes is usually caused by an autoimmune disease. By contrast, Type 2 diabetes is often caused by lifestyle choices, like eating a high sugar diet and not exercising.
Most people who want to avoid diabetes are told to steer clear of sugar at all costs. But meat isn’t usually taken off the menu.
Animal meat has been increasingly targeted as a contributor to a host of health problems, like cancer, despite the fact that its rich in protein and nutrients like Vitamin B.
Dietitians are well aware of these concerns, Michelle Routhenstein, a preventative cardiology dietitian and founder of Entirely Nourished who was not involved in the research, told DailyMail.com.
‘We want to reduce back our red meat consumption,’ she said. But added that it’s crucial for those who eat less animal meat to consume enough protein and iron through other sources.
It can be found in leafy vegetables like kale as well as legumes and nuts.
Heme iron might increase inflammation and make the body less sensitive to insulin, the researchers said, both of which can contribute to increased diabetes risk
Research has also increasingly linked animal meat to diabetes.
In this study, which was published in the journal Nature Metabolism, the Harvard researchers narrowed in on one component of animal meat they thought could be causing this link: heme iron.
This is a type of iron that comes from hemoglobin, the chemical found in blood that helps the body move oxygen around. Most animal products contain it, but in varying levels.
Beef and lamb are particularly high in the nutrient.
In this case, the researchers sorted the 204,600 participants into five groups based on their iron intake from animals, plants and supplements.
They also controlled for factors like race, body weight, exercise, sugar intake, fat intake, smoking, blood pressure, family history and more.
‘Therefore, the results are unlikely to be influenced by other dietary choices,’ study author Fenglei Wang, a research associate in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told DailyMail.com
People who got the most heme iron, about one and a half mg per day, roughly two and a half ounces of beef or three ounces of lamb, had a 26 percent higher risk of developing diabetes than those who took in the least heme iron.
A typical serving of beef is about three ounces, an In-N-Out burger with one patty contains roughly two ounces of beef. Eating one Big Mac, which contains a little more than three ounces of beef, per day would put you over that limit.
The group that had the highest risk of developing diabetes consumed the equivalent of five Big Mac’s per week.
Because previous studies had found a similar link, Mr Wang said their findings were ‘not very surprising’.
Researchers aren’t certain what might explain the link between heme iron and type 2 diabetes. But Mr Wang said that people who consume a lot of heme iron also show signs in their blood of insulin resistance and inflammation.
When the body becomes resistant to insulin, it stops processing blood sugar as effectively, which can lead it to building up in the blood stream, turning into diabetes.
Inflammation can also cause diabetes by causing strain on the pancreas or other digestive organs, making it harder for the body to process sugar.
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