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Significant Link Found Between Heme Iron, Found in Red Meat and Other Animal Products, and Type 2 Diabetes Risk (www.hsph.harvard.edu)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] nous 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

analysed data spanning 36 years from over 200,000 adults enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Studies I and II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

So they looked at some data and found that the more heme you ate the higher chance of developing type 2 diabetes. That sounds a lot like a correlation not causation. What was the rest of their diet like? Did the higher heme eaters also consume more in general? I could not find a non paywalled copy of the paper (though I did not look that hard tbh) so cannot tell how good the study was, but from what I read I would not put any stock into these results.

Like so many other dietary studies that make the headlines, they really don't paint the whole, or even a useful part of the picture.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You don't think the Department of Nutrition at Harvard would've thought to try and control for this?

Not on sci-hub yet but here's a similar one:

https://jn.nutrition.org/article/S0022-3166(22)02864-4/fulltext#secsect0020

[–] nous 3 points 2 months ago

Honestly I cannot tell. Nutrision studies are very hard to do and you often see contradictory studies released all the time. I don't think media should be reporting on these studies. Better to report on the meta analysis studies that take a much more holistic view on the subject.

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