It sounds like some hypothetical question that people might ask at a party, except it's not.
A recent study you've heard about here, and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, has concluded that red meat increases death from all causes including cardiovascular disease and cancer. This stands whether a person eats processed (hot dogs) or unprocessed (steak) meats.
Without exaggeration, this is big news!
Why big? First, the study is published in a mainstream medical publication, known for conservative inquiry, not an alternative health journal, in which results could be dismissed -- if unfairly -- as biased or having an axe to grind. Second, the study pool is mammoth and long-term.
The data is from the Nurses' Health Study (1980 and 2008) and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986-2008). Together, they followed more than 120,000 men and women over 2.96 million "person-years." The subjects, whose diets were determined through food frequency questionnaires, were nurses and other health professionals. Generally, as populations go, this one is educated and more likely to have an interest in, or at least knowledge of, healthy lifestyles, as well as the financial ability to obtain quality food and health care. I imagine many of the folks tracked were like you and me, and might read something about diet and health in The Huffington Post.
The authors concluded that substituting one serving per day of other protein sources (like fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, low-fat dairy and whole grains) for one serving of red meat was linked with a reduced risk of death between 7 percent and 19 percent. They estimated that 9.3 percent of men's and 7.6 percent of women's deaths could have been avoided by the end of the study if everybody had eaten less than half a serving (42 grams) per day of red meat.
So the party game gets more nuanced... Would you give up red meat if it decreased your risk of death 10 percent? What about 20 percent? Would your answer be different if the question were substituting one meal of vegan chili or broiled fish for your favorite burger? What if this lowered your risk of death by 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent? Pick the number that would get you to change your eating habits!
Perhaps this is akin to what educated people in the 1950s would have asked about quitting cigarettes when the first studies about the health hazards of smoking were published... discussed, likely, over a meal of beef steak followed by a cigarette. It took years, with many more scientific studies amplifying the dangers, before the nasty truth about smoking made a difference in people's behavior.
I don't suggest that red meat is as bad as smoking -- the study does not support this. Smoking is a far greater health hazard! However, this meat study comes on the heels of those like The China Study and others that suggest our reliance on red meat is not healthy and that we'd best shift protein sources to leaner and healthier animal proteins or, better yet, plant proteins.
As some have pointed out, there are drawbacks to the Archives study. It is unlikely that the participants partook of the grass-fed, organic, and/or free range meat widely available today, due to consumer demand. This is the kind I feed myself and my daughter when I cook red meat, which I do occasionally and enjoy immensely. It is leaner and contains a healthier omega-3/omega-6 ratio than standard grain-fed beef. Only now are we learning how pink slime has infiltrated our food chain. Study participants likely had no idea -- so results may be skewed.
Objections aside, the question is will this study on the health effects of red meat change how you eat?
The association of animal protein (especially that loaded with highly saturated fat) and increased health risks is not new. Does the threat of death, as opposed to unpleasant diseases like cancer and heart disease, make a difference in how consumers behave? The fact is that our nation is getting fatter, eating worse, getting unhealthier -- according to myriad sources. This is despite a load of research about the crummy effects on health of the wrong kinds of food.
Is the problem that these studies are only read by the converted or the healthy among us?
How will the meat industry respond to this latest rebuke? Will it persuade some to renew their love affair with beef? Will the debate fade while we return to our burgers and steaks -- avoiding the pink slime, if we're lucky, but suspicious there might be some other less-than-appetizing textured meat product brewing on the horizon?
I suspect for many, it will be burgers as usual. For others, it will involve a shift to quality grass-fed red meat sources, although the latter crowd, along with the vegans and vegetarians for that matter, likely are aware of the link between their health and the food they eat and will eat the right foods anyway.
While death may come equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes, it doesn't answer the quotidian question -- what's for dinner?
That's for you to answer.
For more by Mary Bradley, click here.
For more on diet and nutrition, click here.
For more healthy living health news, click here.
Follow Mary Bradley on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ForHealthyYou
These observational studies are essentially worthless unless the effect is huge. And no, the effect was not huge in this study. The methods were not published, nor was the data. Only a hand-waving analysis of a flawed set of data.
If I gave you a set of 1000s of photos that had a handful taken in each city of the USA, and then asked you to draw a map of the country JUST based on those photos, would you trust the map? That's basically what we're being told here. It's worthless. And it doesn't matter how many photos of NY or St Louis we add to the set. Unless you have a way to connect them, you will not be able to draw a valid map. We don't know the connections, and we don't have enough photos of different places yet to draw any conclusions.
Lame, HP only lets me have 250 characters.
Here's some links http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2012/03/red-meat-mortality-the-usual-bad-science/
http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2012/03/red-meat-mortality-the-usual-bad-science/
http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.ca/2012/03/2012-red-meat-mortality-study-arch.html
http://suppversity.blogspot.ca/2012/04/meaty-gritty-on-red-meat-debate.html
http://anthonycolpo.com/?p=3143
Use your own brains, people. These purported authorities are not very smart. And sometimes they lie, like in The China Study, a propaganda book cited by the journalist here http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/cmasterjohn/2010/09/22/the-curious-case-of-campbells-rats-does-protein-deficiency-prevent-cancer/
It sounds like some hypothetical question that people might ask at a party, except it's not.
If you go around looking for studies that validate your per-existing world views on nutrition, ethics and environmentalism, guess what you'll find? Especially if you're willing to accept observational studies when they confirm your biases...
And no, if anything I'd eat MORE red meat if it meant a ticket out of here before old age.
We are most likely at far greater risk of developing heart disease (CAD) from the consumption of high glycemic index carbohydrates, which inevitably leads to Metabolic Syndrome for many people.
The 40 year dominance of the "lipid theory" of heart disease and its low-fat diet recommendation is coming under renewed scrutiny, and it's not faring well. With the most popular (and profitable) statin (Lipitor) now off patent, leaving pharmaceutical companies without a dog in the cholesterol-wars fight and little further interest in controlling the debate as they've done, stand by for some changes.
Why? For the simple fact that most research looks at red meat procured from sick animals fed an unnatural diet that results in a highly inflammatory and unhealthy product. Give these people grass-fed, healthy, cow meat, from animals in a low-stress environment, where antibiotics and other synthetics are not needed. THEN I'LL LISTEN TO WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY.
The study likely was based on the conventional meat products available in restaurants and grocery stores in the 80's and 90's and, for that matter, today. That cattle is raised on antibiotics (perhaps for not much longer), growth hormone and pallid grain feed. The quality of the resulting meat? Likely a lesser cousin to that ancient food.
Studies also suggest that we are eating more meat (both calorie-wise and per capita) today than our fore-bearers did a hundred years ago. The fact we're consuming more meat suggests that we're eating less of other foods containing important nutrients. This may also play a part in the study's results.
A major confounding factor in nutrition is that individuals with metabolic syndrome experience an increased appetite for ~everything~ so an observer can retroactively select virtually any of their foods with an elevated intake as "the cause".
And as for the study discussed in your article, you might consider reading this analysis of it before you give it a whole lot of credence: http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2012/03/red-meat-mortality-the-usual-bad-science/#utm_source This study really could have been "Exhibit A" to Dr. John Ioannidis' article entitled "Why Most Published Research Finding Are False" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/?tool=pmcentrez . (For a more accessible look at what Dr. Ioannidis has to say on th subject, here's an article about him that appeared in The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269)
Good luck.
Saturated fat is not evil. Sugar is by far more insidious than saturated fat.
I eat grass fed and free range. Near single digit body fat. 400lb deadlift. Perfect health. My vegan friends are either overweight or look like they will snap in a breeze. I'll be having beef for dinner.
Standard American Diet =/= only alternative to veganism despite what some (like the agenda-driven folks who do these kinds of worthless studies) would try and lead you to believe.
everything in moderation - but how many people actually cut down their meat consumption....
people are addicted to sugar - salt and meat .... and it takes a great deal of restraint to eat a well balanced diet...
I have had people with colon cancer admit that they could not live a day without meat ...
when I was young - there were very few overweight people ..... now it is epidemic....
and it is true - elderly people are not morbidly overweight ....
I eat meat, butter, veggies. I'm lean and strong as an Ox (but not nearly as tasty).
Overcooked food is bad. It's nutrient poor and often carcinogenic. In particular well-done + meat can be hard on the gut.
But the problem there is not meat consumption, it's "processed food product consumption" (which may include something which was once meat).