"Spam" meat tied to diabetes risk in Native Americans: study

Native Americans who often ate processed meat in a can, generically known as "spam" and a common food on reservations, one subsidized by the government - had a two-fold increased risk of developing diabetes over those who ate little or none, according to a U.S. study.

Native Americans are at especially high risk of developing diabetes, with nearly half having the condition by age 55.

Researchers writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition surveyed 2,000 Native Americans from Arizona, Oklahoma and North and South Dakota to look into potential reasons for the high rate.

"A lot of communities in this study are in very rural areas with limited access to grocery stores... and they want to eat foods that have a long shelf life," said Amanda Fretts, the lead author and a researcher at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

None of the survey participants, whose average age was 35, had diabetes at the start of the study when they answered questions about diet and other health and lifestyle factors.

After five years, a follow-up survey found that 243 people had developed diabetes.

Middle age and elderly women whose diets include a lot of red meat appear to have an increased risk of developing diabetes. Dr. Simin Liu, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and colleagues examined the association between red meat consumption and the risk of type 2 diabetes, the type that doesn’t necessarily require insulin.

A total of 37,309 participants in the Women’s Health Study were followed for an average of 8.8 years. The subjects were at least 45 years of age, and had never been diagnosed with heart disease, stroke, cancer, or diabetes when the study began. Food questionnaires were used to determine how much red meat the subjects ate.

During the study, 1558 women were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

Among the 500 people in the original study group who ate the most canned processed meat, 85 developed diabetes. In contrast, among the 500 people who ate the least amount of "spam," just 44 developed the disease.

Though Spam is a brand-name pork product, the lower-case term is also used to describe any kind of processed, canned meat, Fretts said. Canned meat is available freely to many Native Americans on reservations as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food assistance program.

Fretts and her colleagues found that unprocessed meat did not have the same relationship with diabetes, with people equally likely to develop diabetes regardless of how much hamburger or cuts of pork or beef they ate.

If you’re worried about getting diabetes, you may be watching your diet, trying not to eat too many bagels, muffins, and other processed carbohydrates - but have you ever thought of skipping the steak, hot dog, or burger? A study published today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that eating as little as one serving a day of red meat increases your risk of type 2 diabetes, the kind that typically affects adults and often occurs when cells stop responding to the hormone insulin.