Will your ham sandwich REALLY give you type 2 diabetes? Top experts weigh in after shock study links meat (and chicken) to deadly blood sugar condition READ MORE: Cancer doctors reveal 2 foods that could be driving young cancers By Eve Simmons Health Editor For Mailonline Published: 10:51, 22 August 2024 | Updated: 11:10, 22 August 2024 e-mail 21 View comments It's Britain's third most popular sandwich — closely behind tuna mayonnaise and cheese, according to polls. But a shock new analysis may lead ham sandwich lovers to rethink their lunch, due to striking links with deadly type 2 diabetes . According to the Cambridge University research, which looked at 31 studies involving 2 million people over the course of a decade, eating two slices of ham every day increases the risk of the blood sugar condition by 15 per cent.
It wasn't just ham; eating 100g of any red meat — the equivalent of a small steak — increased diabetes risk by 10 per cent, while links were also found with chicken, albiet weak. Now, experts have hit back against the paper, published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, claiming it 'cannot demonstrate' that red meat causes type 2 diabetes. University of Cambridge researchers didn't specify the number of years you'd have to eat ham daily in order to see an increased diabetes risk — one flaw of the study.
Dr Duane Mellor, dietician and spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, said there was 'missing data' in the studies analysed. Although .