Meat & T2D again

Introduction

I don’t think I have ever received so many emails, so quickly, about one article. We woke on Wednesday 21st August to the news that “Eating just two slices of ham per day could raise diabetes risk” alongside a picture of a ham sandwich (Ref 1). I tweeted “blaming the ham for what the bread did (rolling eyes icon).”

The day’s headlines were mostly UK based and they emanated from a press release from Cambridge university with the title, “Red and processed meat consumption associated with higher type 2 diabetes risk” (Ref 2). Under the title was a picture of a ‘full English breakfast’ – bacon, egg, sausage, baked beans and fried bread. Blaming the bacon and egg for what the bread and beans did (where’s that icon again?)

The press release was about a paper published in the Lancet called “Meat consumption and incident type 2 diabetes: an individual-participant federated meta-analysis of 1·97 million adults with 100 000 incident cases from 31 cohorts in 20 countries” (Ref 3).

The reason I received so many emails is because the idea that meat can, let alone does, have anything to do with type 2 diabetes (T2D) makes no sense. Diabetes is essentially the inability to handle glucose. People with T2D are unable to keep blood glucose levels within normal ranges due to impaired insulin functioning. Meat contains no glucose (other than the glycogen in liver) and so the notion that meat can possibly be associated with diabetes is absurd to sensible people (Ref 4). Carbohydrates contain glucose. An association with carbohydrate makes sense, of course.

The senior authors of the Lancet paper were jointly Professors Nita Forouhi and Nicholas Wareham – both from the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit, at Cambridge University. The lead author was Li, so I’ll refer to this paper as Li et al. There were several authors, as the paper was a multi-nation collaboration.