Sugar found mostly in red meat tied to higher diabetes risk in early study

Scientists have long seen that people who eat more red meat tend to develop type 2 diabetes more often. A new study looks at one ingredient that might help explain why: a sugar molecule found mainly in beef and lamb that the human body cannot make on its own.¹

In nearly 90,000 French adults, those who took in the most of this sugar from meat had a 63% higher relative risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those who took in the least.¹ The findings are preliminary. They were presented at the yearly meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Milan, Italy, and have not yet been peer reviewed (checked by outside scientists before publication).¹ The study also cannot show that the sugar causes diabetes.¹

What happened

The sugar is called N-glycolylneuraminic acid, or Neu5Gc. It occurs naturally in most mammals. Beef and lamb are among the richest food sources, and smaller amounts are found in some dairy products.¹ Because humans do not produce Neu5Gc, it is unusual in the human diet, and researchers think it may matter for the immune system.¹

The research team used data from the NutriNet-Santé cohort, a large French study that follows people over time to look at links between diet, lifestyle and health.¹ They included 89,953 adults. Participants were about 42 years old on average, nearly four in five were women, and none had type 2 diabetes or cancer when they joined.¹

What the study measured

Each person filled in three 24-hour food records, a log of everything eaten in a day. The researchers compared those records with a database that lists how much Neu5Gc different foods contain, and used it to estimate each person’s intake.¹ They then split people into five groups, from lowest to highest estimated intake of Neu5Gc from meat.¹

Over a median follow-up of 7.2 years, 966 people developed type 2 diabetes.¹ Compared with the lowest group:

• people in the second-highest group had a 41% higher relative risk of diabetes;¹
• people in the highest group had a 63% higher relative risk.¹

The pattern showed up in both men and women.¹ It held after the team accounted for age, sex, physical activity, smoking, body size, overall diet quality and existing health conditions.¹

The researchers also looked at Neu5Gc from dairy foods. They found no statistically significant link between dairy-derived Neu5Gc and type 2 diabetes.¹ The report suggests this may reflect the lower amounts of the sugar in dairy, among other possible reasons.¹

What it does not show yet

The biggest caveat is about red meat itself. When the researchers also adjusted for how much red meat people ate in total, the link with Neu5Gc became weaker and was no longer statistically significant.¹ That makes it hard to tell the sugar apart from everything else in red meat. Red meat contains protein, fats, haem iron (the type of iron in blood and muscle) and other substances that could affect metabolism. Processed meats can also be high in salt, preservatives and compounds formed during smoking or cooking.¹ The Neu5Gc finding might explain part of the red meat link, or it might just reflect eating more red meat.¹

The headline number also needs context. A 63% higher relative risk does not mean 63% of people with high intake will get diabetes. Type 2 diabetes stayed fairly uncommon during follow-up, so the difference in absolute risk for any one person was smaller.¹

Other limits:

• It is observational. Researchers watched what people ate and what happened to them. They did not assign diets. People who eat more red meat may differ in exercise, body weight, income, food choices, cooking methods or access to health care, and no observational study can rule out every such factor.¹
• Intake was estimated. Neu5Gc was calculated from three days of food records and a database, not measured in people’s bodies.¹
• The proposed explanation was not tested. The study did not measure antibodies against Neu5Gc, so it could not check whether an immune reaction was behind the higher risk.¹
• The group was specific. Most participants were French women in early middle age, which may limit how far the result applies to others.¹

The idea behind the sugar

Neu5Gc belongs to a family of sugars called sialic acids, which sit on the outside of cells.¹ When people eat it, small amounts may be absorbed into body tissues, and the human immune system can recognise it as foreign.¹ Scientists have suggested that repeated exposure could set off a low-level immune response and long-term inflammation, sometimes called xenosialitis.¹

Long-term inflammation has been linked to insulin resistance, when the body responds poorly to the hormone that moves sugar out of the blood, which is a key feature of type 2 diabetes. It may also affect the insulin-making beta cells in the pancreas.¹ This chain of events remains unproven.¹

One finding fits with the idea, without proving it. In this study, obesity seemed to explain only about 13% of the link between meat-derived Neu5Gc and type 2 diabetes.¹ The report says that does not show inflammation is responsible, but it does suggest weight gain may not be the whole story.¹

How it fits with earlier research

The new work is notable because it focuses on one part of red meat instead of treating red meat as a single exposure.¹ The broader link between red meat and diabetes has been reported many times, though most of that evidence is also observational.¹

The largest recent analysis, led by the University of Cambridge and published in 2024 in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, pooled data on almost two million people from 31 study groups in 20 countries.² It found that eating 50 grams of processed meat a day, about two slices of ham, was linked to a 15% higher risk of type 2 diabetes over the next 10 years. Eating 100 grams of unprocessed red meat a day, about a small steak, was linked to a 10% higher risk.² A link with poultry was weaker and less certain.² That project was initially funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme.²

Another study, using a US national health survey of nearly 35,000 people and published in 2026 in the British Journal of Nutrition, found the highest red meat eaters had 24% to 49% higher rates of diabetes than the lowest.³ That paper was a cross-sectional analysis, a snapshot at one point in time.³ It was summarised by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit that promotes plant-based foods.³

Against that background, the Neu5Gc study does not add new evidence that red meat raises diabetes risk. It offers a possible biological reason for a link that has already been seen, and a target for future tests.

Who is behind it

The analysis drew on the NutriNet-Santé cohort in France and was presented at the EASD meeting.¹ The coverage available to Biohack did not name the lead researchers or say who funded the work, and the full results have not been published in a journal.¹

What to watch next

• Peer review. Whether the full paper appears in a reviewed journal, with complete methods and numbers.
• Antibody tests. The researchers say measuring antibodies against Neu5Gc should be a priority, to see whether an immune reaction is part of the link.¹
• Separating the sugar from the steak. Studies that can tell Neu5Gc apart from other parts of red meat would show whether the sugar plays its own role or is a stand-in for red meat as a whole.¹
• Other groups of people. Repeating the analysis in men, older adults and other countries would show whether the pattern holds.

For now, the finding is an early, unreviewed association in one French group of people. It raises a testable question about why red meat and type 2 diabetes keep turning up together. It does not answer that question.