STUDY: A Little Extra Red Meat Could Make Your Diabetes Risk Spike

Raising your daily red meat intake by just a half a serving a day might increase the risk of getting Type-2 Diabetes by almost 50%, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on July 17.

Red meat eating has been linked to diabetes in the past, but this new study accounts for the changes people make to their diets throughout their lives.

An Pan, a scientist at the University of Singapore, sought out and followed up with almost 150,000 people who had already participated in different diet studies at Harvard.

Pan followed up with the participants four years after the first study, and asked them about their diets. They checked in again another four years later to see if they had Type 2 diabetes (T2DM).

People who ate less red meat at the four year check in were slightly less likely (14%) to have diabetes at the third check in that people who did not change their eating habits at all. Increasing red meat intake was worse — adding a half a serving of red meat a day increased their risk of diabetes by 50%.

"Our results confirm the robustness of the association between red meat and T2DM and add further evidence that limiting red meat consumption over time confers benefits for T2DM prevention," the researchers said in a press release.

But because this is an observational study, researchers can't say for certain that red meat is to blame — there could be other factors that contribute to the risk.