The metabolic syndrome increases the risk of developing diabetes and is characterised by insulin resistance, systemic inflammation, abdominal obesity and alterations to blood lipoprotein levels. High levels of fructose in the diet are associated with metabolic syndrome, because fructose is readily converted to fatty acids in the liver via de novo lipogenesis. These saturated fatty acids are then packaged into very low density lipoproteins and exported to peripheral tissue, where it is believed they may cause insulin resistance in muscle tissue and inflammation in white adipose tissue. Because fructose is converted to the saturated fatty acid palmitate, it is possible that high levels of this saturated fat in the diet may be associated with metabolic syndrome. Red meat contains high levels of saturated fat and research suggests that there may be a link between red meat consumption, inflammation and development of the metabolic syndrome.
Research published in the Journal of Nutrition in 20091, investigated the relationship between red meat, systemic inflammation and metabolic syndrome. A frequent food questionnaire was used to assess red meat consumption amongst 482 female subjects from Tehran, and tests were performed to measure blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose, lipid profiles and plasma levels of C-reactive protein (CRP). The mean red meat intake was 45.9 g/d. The results suggested that the highest red meat eaters had a greater chance of having metabolic syndrome than those that ate the least red meat, and the association between red meat and metabolic syndrome was present even after adjustments for confounding variables. Red meat intake was directly related to plasma CRP concentrations across increasing quintile categories (1.48, 1.61, 1.65, 1.77 and 1.91mg/L), the percentage differences being 11, 19, 29 and 38% for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th quintiles, respectively.
In this study red meat intake was also associated with low levels of serum HDL-C, elevated triglyceride concentrations and high systolic blood pressure. Previous studies have reported associations between red meat, systemic inflammation and metabolic syndrome, and this study confirms these earlier reports. Plasma CRP is a clinical marker for systemic inflammation and is also associated with obesity. Obesity is increasingly being thought of as a disease characterised by systemic inflammation which may suggest a common link between metabolic syndrome and obesity. The researchers made adjustments in the analysis to account for total protein and iron intakes, but the associations between red meat and CRP and metabolic syndrome remained. This may tend to suggest that saturated fatty acids in the red meat are the explanation for the association, which would fit with known mechanisms of insulin resistance.
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