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The more meat you eat, the more you may be increasing your risk of type 2 diabetes, reports new research.*
Investigators at Harvard Medical School followed the dietary habits and health of more than 37,000 women ages 45 and older for eight years and found that those who ate five or more servings of red meat a week had a 29% higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes than women who ate red meat less than once a week.
Women who consumed five or more servings of processed meat like hot dogs, bacon, and deli-style meats suffered a 43% increase in their risk of getting diabetes compared with women eating less than one serving of processed meats weekly.
“This study shows that regular ‘natural’ meat is problematic, but processed meats are even worse,” notes Dr. James Kenney, Nutrition Research Specialist at the Pritikin Longevity Center® & Spa.
“The fact is, virtually any kind of heavily processed food – from hot dogs to potato chips – leads to trouble. The more you concentrate calories, add salt, fat, and other harmful things like nitrates, and remove nutrients like potassium, magnesium, calcium, and vitamins, the greater your chances of falling victim to a multitude of ills.”
“It’s no real surprise,” sums up Dr. Kenney, “that the most unnatural parts of the human diet – processed meats, refined grains, sugars, and hydrogenated fats – consistently show up in research as the worst offenders in promoting cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, obesity, and many other diseases.”
That’s why it is so important, as Nathan Pritikin urged decades ago, to return to man’s “original meal plan” – an eating plan, like the Pritikin Program, that is full of fiber-rich, nutrient-dense, straight-from-the-earth foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans.
* Diabetes Care, 2004; 27: 2108.
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