Can eating red meat increase the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes?

Abstract

1 ISSN 1758-1907 10.2217/DMT.13.56 © 2014 Future Medicine Ltd Diabetes Manage. (2014) 4(1), 1–4 The global prevalence of diabetes has doubled in the last 30 years and is predicted to continue to rise at an alarming rate, particularly in developing countries. Recent data suggest that more than 366 million people were living with diabetes in 2011 and the number is projected to grow to 552 million in 2030 [101]. The associated health and financial burdens are enormous [101]. Diet has been widely acknowledged as playing an essential role in the development of diabetes and healthy dietary choices have been recommended to decrease diabetes risk [1]. In many of the widely studied healthy diet indexes that are beneficial for diabetes prevention and management (e.g., the prudent diet pattern, Alternative Healthy Eating Index and the Mediterranean diet), low consumption of red meat is a major component. Global meat production and consumption have increased rapidly in recent decades, particularly in developing countries [102]. A growing body of evidence suggests that high red meat consumption is related to an elevated risk of Type 2 diabetes. An early report from the Seventh Day Adventists Study found a positive association between total meat intake and risk of Type 2 diabetes [2]; however, it was argued that the study sample had a large proportion of vegetarians and may not represent the general population. Subsequently, a series of studies in the USA and Europe have shown that red meat consumption is clearly a modifiable risk factor for Type 2 diabetes. A very recent meta-analysis summarized data from nine prospective cohort studies and reported that the relative risk (95% CI) for Type 2 diabetes was 1.19 (1.04–1.37) for 100 g/day of unprocessed red meat and 1.51 (1.25–1.83) for 50 g/day of processed red meat [3]. The meta-analysis included over 28,000 incident diabetes cases from more than 442,000 participants followed for between 4 and 28 years [3]. The positive association was also confirmed by another recent publication from the large prospective case-cohort study nested within the European Prospective