Many people in life have confusion about “eating meat,” often hearing people say “pork has too much fat and is unhealthy” or “chicken is raised for too short a time and is also not good”… In fact, these statements are not correct. The biggest distinction in the dilemma of choosing between pork and chicken lies in the difference between “red meat” and “white meat!”
Red meat primarily refers to beef, lamb, pork, and processed red meats like bacon and sausages; white meat mainly refers to chicken, duck, fish, shrimp, and so on. Recently, a study found that eating too much of this meat could increase the risk of diabetes!
Pork and chicken Healthy Times image
Eating too much of this meat,
could increase the risk of diabetes!
In August 2024, researchers from Harvard University published a study in the journal “Nature Metabolism,” which found that people with a higher intake of heme iron in their diet had a 26% increased risk of type 2 diabetes, especially for red meat (pork, beef, lamb), where heme iron accounts for 65.6% of the type 2 diabetes risk related to red meat.â‘
Research screenshot
The study included health data from over 200,000 participants, and during a follow-up period of 36 years, it found 20,705 cases of diabetes. The research analysis revealed that a higher intake of heme iron was associated with poor metabolic and diabetes biomarker status.
The study found that heme iron intake had a roughly linear association with diabetes risk; for every additional milligram consumed daily, the risk of diabetes increased by 28%. In other words, the more red meat one consumes, the higher the intake of heme iron, especially from unprocessed red meat, thereby increasing the risk of developing diabetes!
Multiple studies have found:
Eating too much red meat is indeed detrimental to health
Many people may wonder, “I’ve eaten pork, beef, and lamb all my life. Is there a problem with the research?” In fact, multiple studies have previously shown that eating too much red meat is indeed harmful to health!
A study published in the “American Journal of Clinical Nutrition” in 2023 also found that consuming large amounts of red meat increases the risk of type 2 diabetes compared to those who consume the least:
