Abstract
Many studies have reported harmful effects of red meat or processed meat on chronic diseases including cancer and diabetes, but epidemiological evidence for metabolic syndrome is limited and remains controversial. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis of observational studies to assess the association between various meat consumption and risk of metabolic syndrome. The PubMed and ISI Web of Science databases were searched through June 2017, and further included unpublished results from Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2012–2015, including 8387 Korean adults. Sixteen studies were suitable for meta-analysis, which included 19,579 cases among 76,111 participants. We used a random-effects model to calculate the pooled relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). The pooled RR for metabolic syndrome of the highest versus lowest category of meat intake was 1.14 (95% CI: 1.05, 1.23) for total meat, 1.33 (95% CI: 1.01, 1.74) for red meat, 1.35 (95% CI: 1.18, 1.54) for processed meat, and 0.86 (95% CI: 0.76, 0.97) for white meat. All of these associations did not differ significantly by study design and adjustment factors. Our findings indicated that total, red, and processed meat intake is positively associated with metabolic syndrome, and white meat intake is inversely associated with metabolic syndrome.
Highlights
A significant increase in the prevalence of metabolic syndrome has been observed worldwide [1].Metabolic syndrome consists of an aggregation of metabolic abnormalities including central obesity, hypertriglyceridemia, hyperglycemia, low HDL cholesterol levels, and high blood pressure
Accumulating evidence from previous studies indicated that a high intake of red meat and processed meat could raise the risk of chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes [6], cardiovascular disease (CVD) [7,8], and several types of cancer [9,10,11,12]
We found no evidence of publication bias for the meta-analysis of total meat (Begg’s p = 0.72; Egger’s p = 0.90), red meat (Begg’s p = 0.90; Egger’s p = 0.09), processed meat (Begg’s p > 0.99; Egger’s p = 0.70), and white meat (Begg’s p = 0.22; Egger’s p = 0.13) intake
Summary
Metabolic syndrome consists of an aggregation of metabolic abnormalities including central obesity, hypertriglyceridemia, hyperglycemia, low HDL cholesterol levels, and high blood pressure. These metabolic disorders are risk factors of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD), and a large body of evidence suggested that metabolic syndrome is positively related to high risks of CVD [2], type 2 diabetes [3], specific cancers [4], and total mortality [5]. Accumulating evidence from previous studies indicated that a high intake of red meat and processed meat could raise the risk of chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes [6], CVD [7,8], and several types of cancer [9,10,11,12]. Several subsequent observational studies have investigated the relationship between red, processed, and white meat consumption and metabolic syndrome, but the results are sparse and inconsistent [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]
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