Certain foodstuffs can have a larger impact on your chances of getting type 2 diabetes than your genetic code (Image: Getty) Harvard scientists have uncovered a "significant link" hinting that red meat lovers might be at a higher risk of succumbing to type 2 diabetes, which they believe is due to a nutrient called "heme-iron", abundant in red meat and absent from plant-based proteins. Ditching the limitations of ordinary survey methods, these researcgers from Harvard School of Public Health dug deeper by tracking energy-associated biomarkers and utilising "cutting-edge metabolomics" to unravel the ties between heme-iron and an increased potential of developing diabetes later in life. They started their study by sifting through the biological data from a whopping 200,000 individuals, eventually honing in on a targeted group of dietary patterns.
Exclusively found in animal products, but at its highest levels in red meats, heme-iron, an easily digested from of the nutrient, came under the spotlight after the Harvard team assembled the jigsaw of data, revealing a startling 26 per cent spike in type 2 diabetes jeopardy amongst those with meat-rich diets with a high concentration of heme-iron in their body. "Compared to prior studies that relied solely on epidemiological data, we integrated multiple layers of information, including epidemiological data, conventional metabolic biomarkers, and cutting-edge metabolomics," elucidated Fenglei Wang, a research whiz in the Department of N.