"Why is Meat a Risk Factor for Diabetes?"
We've known that being overweight and obese are
important risk factors for type 2 diabetes,
but until recently not much attention has been paid
to the role of specific foods.
This 2013 meta-analysis of all the cohorts
looking at meat and diabetes found
significantly higher risk associated with total meat consumption,
and especially processed meat, particularly poultry.
But why?
There's a whole list of potential culprits in meat.
Maybe it's the saturated fat and animal fat.
Maybe it's the trans fats that are naturally found in meat.
Maybe it's the cholesterol or the animal protein.
The heme iron in meat can lead to free radicals,
and this iron-induced oxidative stress iron may lead
to chronic inflammation, type 2 diabetes.
Advanced glycation end products are another problem.
They promote oxidative stress and inflammation,
and food analyses show that the highest levels
of these so-called glycotoxins are found in meat,
particularly roasted, fried, or broiled meat,
though any foods from animal sources can be
potent sources of these pro-oxidant chemicals.
In this study they fed diabetics foods packed with glycotoxins,
like chicken, fish, and eggs, and their inflammatory markers shot up:
tumor necrosis factor, C-reactive protein, vascular adhesion molecules.
Thus in diabetes, dietary AGEs promote inflammatory mediators,
leading to tissue injury.
The good news though
is that restriction of these kinds of foods may suppress
these inflammatory effects.
Appropriate measures to limit AGE intake,
such as eliminating these foods or sticking to just steaming and boiling meat,
may greatly reduce the already heavy burden
of these toxins in the diabetic patient.
These glycotoxins may be the missing link
between the increased consumption of animal fat and meats
and the development of type 2 diabetes in the first place.
Since the 2013 meta-analysis was published, this study came out,
in which about 17,000 people were followed for about a dozen years.
They found an 8% increased risk for every 50 grams of daily meat consumption.
So that's just like a quarter of a chicken breast worth of meat
for the entire day may significantly increase risk of diabetes.
Yes, it could be the glycotoxins in meat, or the saturated fat,
or the trans fat in meat, or the heme iron, which could
actually promote the formation of carcinogens called nitrosamines
though they could also just be produced in the cooking process itself, but this is
new.
There appears to be a clear excess of diabetes in those that handle meat for a living.
Maybe there's some kind of diabetes causing zoonotic infectious agent
like viruses present in fresh cuts of meat, including poultry.
Over-stimulation of the aging enzyme TOR pathway
by excess food consumption may be a crucial factor
underlying the diabetes epidemic, but not just any food. Animal proteins
may not only stimulate the cancer- promoting growth hormone IGF-1,
but provide high amounts of leucine, which stimulates TOR activation,
and appears to burn out the insulin- producing beta cells in the pancreas
and contribute to type 2 diabetes. So it's not just the high fat and added sugars.
Critical attention has to be paid to the daily intake of animal proteins.
In general, lower leucine levels are only really reached
by the restriction of animal proteins.
As I noted before, to reach the leucine intake provided by dairy or meat,
we'd have to eat nine pounds of cabbage, 100 apples.
These calculations exemplify the extreme differences in leucine amounts provided
by a more standard diet in comparison to a more plant-based diet.
I've previously reviewed the role endocrine-disrupting industrial pollutants
in the food supply may play in a 3-part video series.
Clearly the standard American diet and lifestyle
contributes to the epidemic of diabetes and obesity,
but these industrial pollutants can no longer be ignored.
We now have experimental evidence that exposure to industrial toxins alone
induces weight gain and insulin resistance
and therefore may be an underappreciated cause
of obesity and diabetes.
Consider what's happening to our infants.
Obesity in a six-month old is not related to diet or lack of exercise.
They're now exposed to hundreds of chemicals from their moms,
straight through the umbilical cord,
some of which may be obesogenic -- obesity generating.
Given the millions of pounds of chemicals and heavy metals
released every year into the environment,
it should make us all stop and think
about how we live and the choices we make every day in the food we eat.
As this 2014 review of the evidence on pollutants and diabetes noted,
yes, we can be exposed through some toxic spill,
but most of the human exposure nowadays
is from the ingestion of contaminated food
as a result of bioaccumulation up the food chain.
And the main source, around 95%, of persistent pollutant intake
is through dietary intake of animal fat.