Harvard Study Linking Red Meat to Diabetes ‘Makes No Logical Sense’: Expert

Trays of beef arefor sale in the meat section of a supermarket in McLean, Virginia, on June 10, 2022. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

A Harvard study that claimed eating red meat can increase the risk of diabetes has come under fire from a nutrition expert who says that the researchers’ data fail to support their conclusions—and that the overhyped headlines that followed amounted to disinformation.

The study, which was published on Oct. 19 in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, claimed that people who ate just two servings of red meat per week could have an increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes compared to people who ate fewer servings, and with the risk rising higher with the more meat consumed. Researchers also found that replacing red meat with plant-based protein sources, such as nuts and legumes, was associated with a reduced risk of diabetes.

The study’s first author, Xiao Gu, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Nutrition, said in a press release that the “findings strongly support dietary guidelines that recommend limiting the consumption of red meat, and this applies to both processed and unprocessed red meat.”

The study’s release spurred several headlines touting what appeared to be a breakthrough in nutrition science as news of the findings was picked up by major news organizations, including The New York Times, Yahoo, CBS News, New York Post, and others.

“Eating red meat significantly increases risk of type-2 diabetes - study,” read one headline from the Jerusalem Post, which was then picked up by MSN.

However, the basis of the study, and the countless articles that followed, appear to have been based on unsound science that is also mired in potential conflicts.

Nutrition Coalition founder Nina Teicholz, an investigative author and science journalist, told The Epoch Times that the type of data used in the Harvard study cannot establish a causal relationship between red meat and diabetes.

“This was an observational epidemiological study, which gives us very weak data,” said Ms. Teicholz. “In terms of the science, the main issue is that there have been multiple randomized clinical attempts to test the hypothesis that red meat causes diabetes, and the results are that no, there is currently no evidence from the highest quality gold standard studies that red meat causes diabetes.”

The study also appears to be tainted by potential conflicts of interest. The team of researchers who compiled the data work at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which is sponsored in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates is an investor in Upside Foods, one of the two synthetic meat producers approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Mr. Gates has stated that he believes meat alternatives are needed to save the world from upcoming catastrophic climate events caused by greenhouse gasses.

In a 2021 interview with Technology Review, Mr. Gates said that all well-off nations need to switch to be completely weaned off of living, breathing cows.

“All rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time,” Mr. Gates told the interviewer. “Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the people or use regulation to totally shift demand. So for meat in the middle-income-and-above countries, I do think it’s possible.”

Ms. Teicholz said it remains unclear if money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation can be traced directly to the study or if it goes toward other operations at the school. However, she said there are financial connections to other food industry giants and the research.

“It is clear they take in a vast amount of money from food industry companies that have a vested interest in removing meat from the dinner plate,” said Ms. Teicholz.

Further, one of the study’s authors, Walter C Willett, a well-known vegan activist, has long argued that the reduction of meat consumption is needed to avert a planetary crisis.

However, just 2 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States come from beef cattle production, while energy production and transportation produce a combined 53 percent of emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

History of Controversy

Harvard’s program for nutrition science has had a long history mired by controversy.

The founder of Harvard’s School of Nutrition, Frederick Stare, repeatedly asserted through the 1960s and 1970s that eating large amounts of sugar was not unhealthy, even touting Coca-Cola as a “healthy between-meals snack.”

Meanwhile, during his 44-year career as a nutritionist, Mr. Stare claims to have raised nearly $30 million, largely from industry—including millions of dollars from Kellogg’s and General Foods, both of which sell sugary cereals—to conduct his research, according to his autobiography, “Adventures in Nutrition.”

Ms. Teicholz says that in promoting the study as settled science, researchers, along with the media that amplified their work, are doing public health a disservice.

“There is contradictory evidence that keto and low carbohydrate diets, which include a lot of meat, can actually reverse diabetes, and yet people may follow this advice because they see it is coming from Harvard,” she said.

“This study makes no logical sense and should not be taken seriously.”