Harvard: Swapping Red Meat for Nuts and Beans Linked to 30% Lower Diabetes Risk

Replacing one daily serving of red meat with nuts and beans is linked to a 30% lower risk of type 2 diabetes, a Harvard study of more than 216,000 people has found.

Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed 216,695 people from the Nurses' Health Study, Nurses' Health Study II and Health Professionals Follow-up Study, whose diets were tracked every two to four years. There were 22,761 cases of type 2 diabetes. People eating the most red meat had a 62% higher risk than those eating the least. Swapping a daily serving of red meat for nuts and legumes was linked to 30% lower risk, rising to 41% when the swap replaced processed meat. The study is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

This is observational research. First author Dr. Xiao Gu said in the Harvard release:

Our findings strongly support dietary guidelines that recommend limiting the consumption of red meat, and this applies to both processed and unprocessed red meat.

A handful of nuts or a bowl of lentils in place of bacon or burgers is an easy win.

It follows the Harvard meta-analysis linking plant-based diets to 23% lower diabetes risk and June's review of 4.4 million people linking red meat to heart disease and diabetes.

Beans beat burgers, again!