If you love cold cuts, we've got some bad news.
Eating both red and processed meats substantially increases your risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a new study in The Lancet journal Diabetes & Endocrinology, with your chances soaring even higher if you consume a meager two slices of ham per day.
The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, discovered this association after analyzing health data from 1.9 million participants from across the world in the InterConnect project, a European Union-funded initiative meant to study diabetes and obesity.
One finding: regularly consuming unprocessed red meat — about 100 grams per day — increased the risk of developing diabetes by about 10 percent.
And eating 50 grams of processed meat every day — the equivalent of just two ham slices — increases diabetes risk by some 15 percent.
"Our research provides the most comprehensive evidence to date of an association between eating processed meat and unprocessed red meat and a higher future risk of type 2 diabetes," Cambridge epidemiology professor and the study's principal author Nita Forouhi said in a statement about the findings. "It supports recommendations to limit the consumption of processed meat and unprocessed red meat to reduce type 2 diabetes cases in the population."
Overall, the takeaway seems to be that meat consumption has a surprisingly strong correlation with diabetes risk. Even eating 100 grams of poultry per day increased the chances of developing diabetes at a rate of eight percent, the study found, though further analyses of the data revealed this association was weaker compared to the links with red and processed meat.
"While our findings provide more comprehensive evidence on the association between poultry consumption and type 2 diabetes than was previously available, the link remains uncertain and needs to be investigated further," Forouhi said.
The overall conclusion from the study is surprising because it's established conventional wisdom that the consumption of refined carbohydrates is a leading risk factor for type 2 diabetes.
"The underlying mechanisms that link meat intake with the development of type 2 diabetes are not fully established," the study reads, suggesting that eating certain types of meat disrupts insulin sensitivity or people's gut biome, leading to type 2 diabetes.
Further study is warranted, according to the researchers.
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