Nothing To Do With The Bread Then?!

[Rachox]

Interesting?

The simple sandwich filler linked with a 15% higher risk of type 2 diabetes

Researchers say the findings back the recommendations to reduce meat intake

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Lamont D]

Or the spread?
Or the sauce?
Or the fries?
Or the production process?
Why is it?
On every product that wheat is in Bold letters?
Hmm!

 

[lessci]

I was shouting rude words at BBC breakfast this morning talking about research that eating ham & red meat "could" increase your risk of Type 2

 

[Jam&Scones]

I was shouting rude words at BBC breakfast this morning talking about research that eating ham & red meat "could" increase your risk of Type 2

At least the bbc were reporting on the doctors cautions around conclusions. I’d love to see the study!

I do agree about highly processed meat being something to watch out for though… a rump steak isn’t comparable to a turkey twizzler afterall!

 

[Chris24Main]

It's really a whole thing that says nothing -
Read it through looking for real evidence leading to conclusions - it's all association and "this person who had nothing to do with the study, has this opinion"
It's hard though, as soon as you start to, let's say develop an opinion on what might be a good plan for reversing T2DM, you start to become more aware of all the various articles firing opinions and seemingly good advice all over the place.
This has kind of always been the case, and to some degree it seems deliberate to me. I certainly had the feeling for years that "you just can't believe anything, because the guidance chops around from one thing to the other" - the only thing that seems to stay the same is that - you (whoever you are and for whatever reason) should limit saturated fat, red meat, salt and tend toward eating more wholegrains and fruit and veg. But it's always circular, we know this because we know this.

I'm not going to add to that with any of my own opinions, but it is interesting in the context of how you might maintain a narrative - just keep flooding the media space with conflicting stories, never let a competing narrative build up.

 

[Melgar]

Here is the full article from The Lancet, for those interested.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(24)00179-7/fulltext

 

[MrsA2]

Apparently they also "concluded" that steak has the same effect but chicken doesn't.
So they totally missed the opportunity to measure the effects of bread and other carbs in the diet...
What a biased waste of research money

 

[HSSS]

Other “oddities” include

differing results for the USA v Europe v the far east;
the 10/15% increases are relative risk not absolute so in reality the biggest increases are something in the realm of 5% to 5.5%
the study is a meta analysis meaning they reviewed and studied other studies rather did their own. Some of those relied on a single food questionnaire and a 10 yr follow up period.
this is about risk of diagnosis rather than management once diagnosed
it mentions confounding factors but they are by no means all excluded.

Overall I‘m not at all inclined to ditch meat in any kind from my diet as a result.

 

[Bcgirl]

A good short

 

[AloeSvea]

Gosh we live in interesting times when it comes to nutrition! With all the absolutely ghastly frankenfoods out there contributing, arguably, to metabolic disease - all this atttention to an ancient and basic to humans food - meat. It's too sad. It's too laughable. It's too aggravating.

Big Food must be away laughing.

 

[AloeSvea]

Here is the full article from The Lancet, for those interested.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(24)00179-7/fulltext

Big ty for that Melgar. Read the possible mechanism for how meat contributes to blood glucose dysregulation and insulin resistance.

Yes, absolutely - it's all about the protein and saturated fat. Nothing to do with excess carbs and alien additions to our diet like additives and UP vegetable oils. Hmmm.

If it was meat that screwed us up, our species would not be here today to tell the tale. How can this not be extremely obvious?! Yeah, I have to laugh, else I cry (and cry and cry).

 

[AloeSvea]

...And there it is - research funds contribution from the Weston Family Foundation.

Weston Food Group - baked goods! Cupcakes, donuts... and yes the rolls and sandwich bread.

Many thanks @Rachox for posting this.

 

[Lupf]

The article in the independent is as usual not very helpful as it leaves out any doubt that red meat is bad.

I am a scientist, but not a medical researcher and I've read the paper. It presents a meta analysis of almost 2 million individuals, ov which around 100'000 developed diabetes, so it has lots of data. Their results are as follows:
"Our findings show that the consumption of unprocessed red meat, processed meat, and poultry were each associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes." More details are given in tables, but overall the risk of developing diabetes by eating 100 g of unprocessed red meat (50 g of processed meat) per day increases by 10+-5% (15+-5%) and by eating 100g of poultry per day the risk increases less 8+-6%. These are worldwide averages, with significant geographical variations. Typically the increases in risk are slightly higher in the US than in Europe, but the results for Eastern Mediterranean, South and South East Asia and Oceania are non-conclusive.

The study states that the results are adjusted for many factors (called covariates) including food intakes and BMI. They find
"The associations varied across cohorts, but we found no specific factor (i.e., age, sex, BMI, number of incident cases, follow-up duration, levels of meat consumption, dietary assessment approach, or geographical location) that could meaningfully account for this heterogeneity."


Regarding food intake they look at a large set of covariates (fruits, vegetables, fish, dairy, legumes, soy, nuts and seeds, eggs, cereal products, whole grains, potatoes, fibre, sugar-sweetened beverages, coffee, tea, and cooking fat and total energy intake).
In Table S3 in the appendix they list that the results were adjusted for the intake of carb foods, i.e. potatoes, cereals, whole grains, pasta and rice in almost all studies that were included in their analysis. As far as I can judge these results are sound.

*** EDIT: The next two sentences are not correct (my misinterpretation, thanks to @HairySmurf for pointing this out), I've updated my understanding in a later entry on this thread, see https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/nothing-to-do-with-the-bread-then.205847/post-2721749.

If there would be a large correlation between carb intake and chance of developing diabetes, this analysis should have picked this up, but it hasn't. I understand that this is not what many on this forum would have expected.

I am a bit surprised by some of these findings, e.g. I would have expected a noticeable correlation with BMI as in my view the large increase in obesity and diabetes since the 1980s are linked, but if I read the paper correctly this is not what is observed. On the other hand I would have expected that they find that (too much) processed meat is is a larger risk than unprocessed meat.

By dismissing this study just because we don't like the results we are no better than medical researchers ignoring evidence that LCHF diet works for many (diabetic) people. We should welcome such studies, and continue to educate our medical practitioners, what works for us.

 

[Melgar]

@Lupf thanks for your critical eye on this large research project. It’s good to have a different perspective. It’s an emotive subject as food always is, especially as the medical community has put food, and what people with type 2 eat, firmly in the spot light. Cutting out / down carbs has been very successful for a type 2s so hearing that meat may have contributed to those raised blood sugars/IR is a tough pill to swallow.
I’m a chicken/fish and veggie person, so not big red meat, neither do I fry very often, but food apparently is not the driver of my raised blood sugars. I thought is was an interesting paper. The paper gives a much fuller picture of what’s behind those startling headlines. Again thanks for your observations on the research.

 

[Bcgirl]

Interesting discussion. I had a good, hard look into the studies, as far in as the appendix (the most interesting). The cohort studies were all self reported , and from the information I could gather some data from these questionnaires was gathered just once a year (nurses study)and some data gathered just once. Now, I know I couldn’t tell you what I ate last weekend, let alone a whole year ago. The dietary intakes category covers whole grain, pasta, rice, meat, alcohol, fruit, veg, nuts, eggs, cereal, coffee, tea and sugar sweetened beverages. Candy, candy bars, chips, ice cream, fruit juice …..not mentioned and not a category on the questionnaires.
as this is all observational data it really has no scientific hold. It’s an observation of what information people are willing to provide, and I imagine a lot of guessing and “fudging” happens when self reporting.
I love studies, but I didn’t love this one.

 

[Melgar]

The Lancet is very well respected and peer reviewed journal. One doesn’t have to like what one reads, but clearly it made it past the exacting standards set by the editorial team.

 

[AloeSvea]

Absolutely, this is a good discussion to have. And all such T2D and diet studies should absolutely be given an up close and personal view by us.

I only wish this was happening in the late 1970s when the saturated fat and bad meat info started truly hitting the mark, and I bought it hook line and - oh boy - sinker. I swapped out boiled eggs with muesli for breakfast along with everyone else I knew. I was shored up by the multiple messages that wholegrains and bread were superfoods. I spent huge parts of my youth soaking kidney beans on the kitchen bench in order not to eat that meat that I was told was rotting inside my colon. I spent my youth taking vitamin B supplements in order to avoid mouth ulcers on a vegetarian diet.

I wept tears for my sheep and cattle farmer father because I thought he was going to die young with all that meat inside him!

I was subfertile with PCOS whilst in my 20s, type two diabetic in my 50s. Buried my 90 year old father last year.

Bread raises my blood glucose (and insulin, and the insulin resistance) hugely, eggs and meat not at all. Over and over again. And again and again. After 10 years of checking. This is replicated by so many people with T2D it seems ridiculous to bring it up.

But I'm bringing it up.

 

[Melgar]

Yes it’s a good discussion. Many years ago I was doing post grad whilst teaching at uni. I would spend months in the British Library pouring through Victorian science journals. I was writing about the emergence and understanding of electricity in late Victorian London. To cut a long story short and to make it relevant I learnt that science and our understanding and application of science changes. There is no such thing as a scientific fact because these facts change. One only has to peruse through old scientific journals to see how our understanding of science is always changing. Of course, you have immutable facts, like the world is round and we orbit the sun, but in general our understanding of scientific facts are constantly changing. What we thought of a scientific fact in the 70’s has been totally debunked 50 years later. I am sure our understanding of many things around medicine and health is the same.

 

[Bcgirl]

The Lancet is very well respected and peer reviewed journal. One doesn’t have to like what one reads, but clearly it made it past the exacting standards set by the editorial team.

Totally agree, I found the study sound…..that’s why I went into the appendix, I really wanted to see the studies involved in this meta analysis. The results obtained were true to the collected data. My issue was, and is, with the initial data from all these studies, mostly collected from questionnaires. I have to admit that we really can’t test these hypotheses on humans, kind of immoral. That’s why I take the results with a grain of salt, but it‘s interesting never the less.

i am my own Guinea pig and will continue my n=1 experiments. very low carb has kept me off medications for two years. I am not type 2 but rather have a very damaged pancreas. One day it will get worse but until then I will fight the fight!
cheers

 

[Outlier]

I too am my own experiment, and so what happens to me is of far more importance to me than any amount of theories, though I am always interested in reading all the studies and testing the theories against experience and common sense. As an experiment of one, there was a long time in my life when I simply couldn't afford meat, and while I still ate healthily, there is no doubt that when finances improved and I could afford and have since eaten plenty of free-range naturally-fed red meat, I have been much healthier. I suspect there are often sub-agendas involved.