New studies build case against red meat’s effects on health

The health case against regularly eating red meat is getting stronger. At what point is the data convincing enough for Americans to change their diets? One recent study found that eating red meat increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes; another paper finds a diet low in meat, sugar and salt but rich in vegetables and legumes is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s.

And both studies — which followed thousands of people for decades — show that replacing even a few servings of meat can have an impact.

There are also implications here for the legions of people expected to try the new class of obesity drugs called GLP-1s. While studies have shown the drugs can induce enough weight loss to improve cardiovascular and kidney health, a lower body mass index doesn’t solve all ills. “Losing weight will not entirely prevent you from developing other chronic diseases. You still have to rely on a healthy diet,” says Xiao Gu, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Gu is one of the authors of the study linking red meat to diabetes. His team found that people who routinely consume more than a serving per day of red meat have a 50% higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes than those who partake less.

A meat-heavy diet is clearly bad for our hearts; the greater a person’s red meat consumption, the greater their risk of cardiovascular disease. But the link to Type 2 diabetes has been a subject of ongoing debate. Some research suggests various components of meat can impair insulin function, whether the culprit is saturated fat, the meat’s iron content or something in how the meat is prepared — grilling, curing and overcooking have all been associated with poorer health outcomes. However, causation has been hard to prove: One recent meta-analysis found the link between saturated fat in red meat and diabetes tenuous at best.

Diet’s impact on health is also notoriously hard to study. What we eat changes over time and is just one factor — our genes, environment and lifestyle matter, too, as do socioeconomic factors.

The Harvard team took special care to account for those confounders. They used data from the Nurses’ Health Studies, which have followed more than 200,000 health care professionals for more than 40 years. That meant enough cases of diabetes had accumulated — more than 20,000 — to find the association between meat consumption and diabetes. And because volunteers were interviewed every two to four years, researchers had good information about how participants’ diets changed over time; by contrast, many other studies have only looked at diet at the time a study began.

One of the biggest confounders they had to untangle was BMI. If people who eat lots of red meat eventually gain weight, it could be their weight — not the meat — that leads to insulin resistance. But the researchers found that BMI only accounts for about half the increase in risk. That means that red meat increases diabetes risk even for people who aren’t overweight. And processed meat, like sausage and salami, increased risk the most.

If that isn’t enough to convince you to cut back on meat, consider another new study. This one, which mined data from the NYU Women’s Health Study, found that people who ate more red meat, sugar and full-fat dairy had a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Between 1985 and 1991, researchers enlisted some 14,000 middle-aged women and followed up with them for decades. Using data from about 5,000 women in the cohort, they found that people adhering to the “DASH” diet (shorthand for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) had a 17% lower risk of developing two or more cognitive issues later in life. In other words, those on a heart-healthy diet favoring plant-based foods fared better than those who consumed more red meat, sodium and sweets.

The NYU team’s findings suggest the dietary choices made in midlife have a far-reaching impact on women’s health, whether they protected (or harmed) the heart or the brain, says Yu Chen, a chronic disease epidemiologist at NYU Langone who led the study.

Both studies do have some limitations. The Harvard study’s dataset is predominantly made up of white women; the NYU study was more diverse but measured cognitive challenges across a short time frame — more follow-up would better capture changes in brain health.

But the takeaway from both studies is clear: Your health will be better if you swap that steak for some lentils.