Here's some news to ponder as you prepare your grill for a big Labor Day celebration. Could a gas grill give you diabetes? Depends on what you're cooking.

If it's a bunch of steaks, maybe. Too much red meat can overload you with heme iron, a kind of iron that may boost type 2 diabetes risk if you get too much. So shove aside a few of those T-bones and make room for some veggie kabobs and chicken, which have less heme iron than red meat does. Then round out your plate with a scoop of baked beans -- they're rich in nonheme iron.Although there are two main kinds of iron in food -- heme and nonheme -- plant-based foods contain only nonheme, which isn't associated with diabetes. But both kinds of iron are found in meat, chicken, and fish, and red meat is particularly rich in heme iron. Men need about 8 milligrams (mg) of iron a day and women need about 18 mg; most get a small fraction of that in the form of heme iron. Good thing, since it turns out that too much could spell trouble. A new study has found that adult women who get more than 2.25 mg per day of heme iron have the highest risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Results may be similar in men, but research is ongoing.

Spinach, beans, oatmeal, bagels, dried apricots, almonds, broccoli, peas, and enriched pasta are some of the healthiest sources of iron around -- and they contain only nonheme.

One catch: Iron from plant foods tends to be less bioavailable than iron from meat sources. Here are a few tricks for helping boost your absorption of nonheme iron (something vegetarians need to be particularly conscious of):

• Eat iron-rich foods with vitamin C-rich foods (oatmeal and OJ, chicken and broccoli; see, it's easy). Vitamin C helps your body absorb iron.
• Use an iron skillet to cook nonheme foods. Your food will absorb additional nonheme iron from the cookware.
• If you take a calcium supplement, wait a few hours before eating iron-rich foods; in the same way that vitamin C helps your body absorb iron, calcium blocks it.
• Don't gulp down tea or coffee with iron-rich meals. These can interfere with iron absorption.