Processed Meat And Type 2 Diabetes, What’s Really Going On?
Recently a study published in The Lancet, Diabetes & Endocrinology Journal has been making some headlines. It’s a meta analysis that was looking into seeing the if consumption of processed meat affects the chances of developing type 2 diabetes. News papers have found it and are now proudly determining that a ham sandwich will give you diabetes, because shock headlines like this sell more papers than nuanced discussion. I’m here to review the paper itself and discuss said nuance so that you don’t need to freak out about your lunchtime ham sarnie just yet!
What The Study Was Looking Into
As mentioned above this study was carried out to investigate the relationship between meat consumption and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. It was a meta analysis which is a type of study that essentially collates the data from a load of studies and combines it into one average affect size. Thus the total number of subjects included in this study was 1.97 million adults from 31 cohorts across 20 countries. That is a HUGE sample size. They essentially then just looked at median meat consumption across these cohorts and incidence of type 2 diabetes after a follow up of on average 10 years. They looked at types of meat consumption too, splitting it into 3 types, unprocessed red meat, processed meat, and poultry. Now there is always some debate as to what “processed meat” includes, but for now we’ll keep it simple and say that they classed processed meat as (and i quote) “bacon, ham, sausage and hot dog”.
What Did They Find?
They found that eating more red meat, and processed meat and even poultry slightly increases the risk of diabetes. They used hazard ratios to quantify this risk, which is essentially the increase in probability of something happening across different groups. So for example, the hazard ratio for people consuming 50g/day of processed meat was 1.15 which means these people had a 15% more chance of developing type 2 diabetes. The hazard ratio for 100g/day of unprocessed meat was 1.1 and for 100g/day of poultry was 1.08.
They also found that these associations were stronger in North America, Europe and the Western Pacific regions.
So A Ham Sandwich Increases Diabetes Risk?
No. This is a very reductive view to take from this study. First of all just because there is a link in meat consumption and diabetes, it does not necessarily mean that one causes the other. Correlation does not automatically equal causation. There are many other risk factors at play, and I actually believe it’s relatively telling that the risk is higher in Europe and the Americas, regions that have been known in the past to consume lots of high GI foods, e.g. Corn Syrup in America.
There are always other risk factors when it comes to diabetes, and these risk factors are damn near impossible to control in a study like this! Things like family history of diabetes, regularity of exercise, and of course what makes up the rest of their diet all need to be taken into consideration.
Key Takeaways For Me
As i’ve mentioned above, a Ham Sandwich may not increase risk of diabetes, but cutting back your intake of processed meats is still something that will likely have a huge positive impact on your health. We know that there’s also an increased risk factor for things like bowel cancer and stroke from high processed meat diets. Again although we cannot say one causes the other, it still provides us with more information on what a healthy diet looks like!
Consuming more plant based, nutrient dense food will almost always be a good thing that will have a huge impact on many factors of health and performance. Lean unprocessed sources of protein are key for a healthy diet also. When it comes to diabetes, the impact of exercise cannot be overstated too! Moving your body, and eating well can go a long way.
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