Harvard School of Public Health (US) team finds that men who eat diets high in meats and low in carbohydrates may be at 12% increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes.
In that carbohydrates have been linked to raising glucose levels, some medical experts have proposed that a low-carb, higher protein diet may help to shift the bulk of calories to minimize insulin sensitivity and altered metabolism characteristic of type-2 diabetes. Lawrence De Koning, from Harvard School of Public Health (Massachusetts, USA) and colleagues studied 41,140 men enrolled in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, who were free of type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer in 1986, following them for 20 years, during which dietary habits were surveyed and incidence of onset of type-2 diabetes were tracked. The researchers found that, after adjusting for confounding factors, low-carb diets were associated with a 12% elevated risk of type-2 diabetes onset, with the incidence progressively increasing higher low-carbohydrate diets. Observing that: “Low-carbohydrate diets that are high in animal protein and fat may increase the risk of [type-2 diabetes], particularly if they contain large quantities of red and processed meat,” the team concludes that: “Low-carbohydrate diets high in vegetable protein and fat are not associated with changes in type-2 diabetes] risk.”