All red meat is bad for you, new study says
interpolator
http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-red-meat-20120313,0,565423.storyEating red meat any amount and any type appears to significantly increase the risk of premature death, according to a long-range study that examined the eating habits and health of more than 110,000 adults for more than 20 years.
For instance, adding just one 3-ounce serving of unprocessed red meat picture a piece of steak no bigger than a deck of cards to one's daily diet was associated with a 13% greater chance of dying during the course of the study.
Even worse, adding an extra daily serving of processed red meat, such as a hot dog or two slices of bacon, was linked to a 20% higher risk of death during the study.
"Any red meat you eat contributes to the risk," said An Pan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study, published online Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
;_; WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHYYY ;_;
Replies
That said, I cut meat out of my diet last spring and have felt fucking FANTASTIC because of it. I still eat fish and eggs, just not red meat.
1: It was done by a vegetarian advocate.
2: It doesn't tell you what they are more likely to die from. Just they are more likely to die. K... from what? Getting hit by a bus on the way to the butcher?
Humans have been eating meat since the dawn of time. If anything, it isn't healthy not to. Im sorry, but all these supliments and crap for vegitarians and vegans. Somehow I doubt they are healthy for you. They are so processed to no end. Besides, there's no such thing as a true vegan now a days. Too many things come from cows.
Oxygen is even bad for you
Existing/Living is probably bad for you too
Studies can gtfo I'm still eating my Red Meat ♥
I brought this up with my girlfriend and she pointed out that we barely ever eat red meat anyway, every time we make stuff that would involve ground beef it's been ground turkey.
Cutting out red meat and processed meat while you're young will make those years a lot more enjoyable. You may not be able to enjoy the taste of a steak or burger, but you'll be in better shape overall, which makes pretty much everything you do more enjoyable. Plus, it will make your post-40 years less shitty. There's a lot of food out there to enjoy besides steak and hot dogs. I used to eat all that good shit, quit it when I was 26, and noticed an immediate improvement in my health and energy levels. Wasn't as awesome as quitting soda, but it's worth it.
Try it for a month, you might like it.
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/archinternmed.2011.2287
Hell, i even included it in the quote
2) Yeah it does
It's also worth pointing out that the cattle you eat today are nothing like the cows from ye olden days that humans grew up on. Virtually all livestock is industrialized now. Even free-range organic non-hormone treated shit isn't the same because they're rarely fed the diets they evolved to consume, most of them are fed corn.
For me it was the opposite. I'm not saying I eat ridiculous amounts of red meat, I don't even eat much, to be honest. But back when I did stop, and consumed alternatives (other foods, protein supplements, etc), I felt drained. Didn't feel too great. I even consulted a friend of mine who has been a long-time vegetarian, and it wasn't because I wasn't eating well (or eating the wrong things for that matter). As soon as I got some small amount of red meat into my diet again, I couldn't believe the energy and sheer strength I had.
Like Justin says above, it's not really something I eat that much. But I do make sure I get at least some, because my workouts suffer when I stay away from it.
Withdrawal symptoms?
My first year or so as a vegeterian was quite something, I couldn't mentally conceive a plate without the meat, it didn't feel like a full meal for me and I felt very tired.
Becoming vegeterian improved my health considerably, but I'd much rather attribute that to becomimg much better at looking at what I ate, and I ate more things than the regular default meat with a few tiny things on the side.
That image is pretty much as bad as any propaganda from a militant vegan though, full of wierd altered facts.
In fact, vegetarian fats like palm-oil is much cheaper for food-producers to use (and more unhealthy) and you're *much* more likely to bump into that than proper animal fat.
It's not hard to find out what's specifically vegeterian or vegan, there's no hidden contents in a country with proper labeling laws.
The healthy way to eat is to eat varied in healthy amounts, so red meat should be just as fine as anything.
Also, while veganism is a tough diet in terms of getting everything you need for your body, it's not impossible.
Vegetarianism however is pretty much a cakewalk.
/vegetarian.
Nah, withdrawals don't last 3 months. I don't even think "meat withdrawal" an actual medical term.
This study probably used the cheapest meat they could get. I don't approve. As much as I support vegetarianism, this study just isn't true under the correct circumstances.
Because, we've always eaten meat. But only lately has it been so polluted.
Bah. They can keep their study!
Seriously, it getting annoying on how when someone performs a couple of a test akin of what the Mythbusters do, SUDDENLY, they're fucking scientists. They're not, there is a reason proper research takes such a bigger scope and the reason the guys at Mythbusters have a simple TV show.
Maybe these so called 'researchers' need to go back to secondary school and retake some basic statistic tests.
There's no "we found a thing in red meat that can kill you" in this, it's more comparable to the "people with pets live longer".
Anything you get addicted to in a smaller or bigger way can cause withdrawals, your body is just too used to something and experiences quite a change.
It's all in the brain.
Then again, there are medical reasons too, such as why some people can never become vegans, or why some will be allergic to certain protein supplements.
For those of you putting forth the "we've always eaten red meat" argument, keep in mind we never had this much meat available to us. For 99% of out evolutionary history, humans have never been able to eat nearly this much red meat. And our women-folk harvested plenty of non-meat for us to eat. The meat we did eat was less polluted with chemicals, better fed, we ate it less, and we got a lot more exercise in between and while chasing our meals. It wasn't until we started domesticating animals that we could eat a ton of meat, and that's about the same time we started seeing substantially more humans becoming overweight.
Also, I can't find the article, so this last bit could be total bullshit, but I swear I remember reading that cancer didn't really start showing up in humans until around that same time.
Both species are totally different now and we're well outside what we allegedly "evolved" to do.
Furthermore the evolutionary argument is crap anyway because natural selection only cares about keeping you alive long enough to reach fertility and raise children. It doesn't give a shit about saving you from colorectal cancer in your 60s. It's entirely possible that consuming red meat daily has always been bad for you, just not in the short enough term for it to matter much in evolution.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic (my sarcasm-o-meter doesn't seem to be working properly lately) or not, but the study does seem pretty legit. I'm betting on sarcasm of course, but I think it would be cool to post some info anyway.
Here's a quote from the abstract:
"We prospectively observed 37 698 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986-2008) and 83 644 women from the Nurses' Health Study (1980-2008) who were free of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer at baseline. Diet was assessed by validated food frequency questionnaires and updated every 4 years."
And here's the outline of their funding, which suggests that no private entities were involved in funding the study.
"This study was supported by grants DK58845, CA55075, CA87969, HL34594, and 1U54CA155626-01 from the National Institutes of Health and by career development award K99HL098459 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (Dr Sun)."
Plus, it is a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Medical Association.
Edit:
Instant noodles are more tasty anyway.
Epic win.
Slight sarcasm applied you could say, what I meant to say is how suddenly everyone left right are calling themselves scientists, both those for and against the paper.
Issues is, we're being bombarded by so much info, it's not even funny. How much do you wager in exactly 3 month a new research will come out saying "RGB meat is good for you" only for another paper to come out saying "You know, you can eat meat, just not too much, balance diet".
Yeah, that's how I took it. Though looking at this study (briefly, I must admit) I would be surprised to see anything like this in a while. Studies of this scale and length tend to be difficult to dismiss. The 50-years long British Doctors Study is widely accepted as the evidence for a link between smoking, lung cancer and other diseases. And that study had "only" 35k participants, all of whom were male doctors. So a study that involved 40k male and 80k female participants sounds like pretty hard evidence.
But I do agree that there is a massive amount of "studies" being talked about in mass media. What's worse, most of those are not even conducted properly and media outlets seem to be unable to differentiate between a study conducted by academics and study funded by some corporate entity for the sole purpose of obtaining data that suits their agenda.
That said, I'm not an academic person and their methods are way too anal for a lazy dude like me.
The science linking meat and animal protein consumption to bad health (a highly westernised diet) is no new thing. Dr. T. Colin Campbell of Cornell has been harping on about it for years. The China Study (or the "China-Oxford-Cornell Study on Dietary, Lifestyle and Disease Mortality Characteristics in 65 Rural Chinese Counties") is one of the largest scale medical studies ever conducted and the correlation between animal protein consumption and many western diseases are right there.
There will always be arguments for both sides. I just tend to go with the side that causes zero unnecessary deaths to animals, keeps me healthier than I've ever been and lets me get all high and mighty when I feel the need.
We're all logical folks here so it's no stretch to see that the western world really hasn't gotten it right. 3 of 4 Americans are overweight and half of the children being born now will have type 2 diabetes before they're barely out of nappies. I don't know about you, but I don't think that's very cool at all.
</veganrant>
Actually the guardian had this to say "Victoria Taylor, a dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, said: "This study links red meat to deaths from CVD [cardiovascular disease] and cancer.
"Red meat can still be eaten as part of a balanced diet, but go for the leaner cuts and use healthier cooking methods such as grilling. If you eat processed meats like bacon, ham, sausages or burgers several times a week, add variation to your diet by substituting these for other protein sources such as fish, poultry, beans or lentils."
so they are recommending eating it in moderation eg less than 500grams a week says gizmodo (http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/03/red-meat-is-responsible-for-10-of-early-deaths/) as part of a few meals. This is apparently old news from 2005 too http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/jun/15/research.sciencenews?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
at the hospital I worked at for several years, I'd say a third of the nursing staff were overweight, not morbidly, but enough. not picking on nurses but they were one of the subject groups. using healthcare workers as a baseline gives the false impression that they're a more healthy group then the rest of us.
I'll preface by saying I haven't read the book, but I have to call Bs. Infections caused by tooth decay was one of the primary causes of death among early people. Not only that, almost all groups of early people were primarily carnivores because of pure efficiency. One bison is going to feed a lot of people.
As for this study... I'm not buying it. They said the same thing about cholesterol, despite the fact that your cholesterol levels aren't (at least directly) related to heart disease at all, and are in no way related to the amount of cholesterol you ingest. Correlation, not causation all over.
People were pushing trans fats in the same way, saying they were healthier. Then they all flipped their positions and pretended they always were against trans fats all along. All this just to avoid animal fats, despite the fact that animal fat (technically saturated fats) are required for proper brain function. Ever gone on a fat free diet and get depressed? Yah, that's why.
/rant off
But it's a nice warm day today and I'm grilling a porterhouse and washing it down with a good import beer. Omnivores unite!
Only aborted feti slushie, those stemcells do wonders!
I'm not sure if it's what you were implying or not, but 3 of 4 americans being overweight has nothing to do with eating too much red meat or lack of vegetarianism/veganism. It's downn to overindulgence nothing more or less.
You can eat complete crap and not gain weight so long as you eat at or under your required calories. It comes down to overindulgence plain and simple, over a long period of time.
This has been my general experience. I haven't cut it out entirely yet (if its on pizza or something), but it's a pretty rare occurrence. My wife is a vegetarian, and I'd decided some time ago that I might as well go that route as well, or make my way towards it. I've never been huge on meat (except delicious bacon...) anyway, I like my dairy a hell of a lot more. And tofu/other soy products are cool as hell!
Ever since I've started eating less junk and significantly less meat, I've been feeling great. Still not entirely vegetarian, but I'm a good ways through phasing my diet over that way and I just feel...better.
My biggest problem is that I'm trying to cut meat entirely out of my diet, yet, I also HATE vegetables. Always have, if it's green - fuck it. Won't get me anywhere near a salad. But there's lots of alternatives, and experimenting and branching out has made me appreciate food a whole lot more. (Which is good, because at 110lbs I could really stand to eat a few more meals).
...it's a damn good thing I'm not trying to turn vegan.
"It may not be as simple as calories in, calories out. New research reveals a far more complex equation for weight gain that places at least some of the blame on organic pollutants."
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/whats-really-making-us-fat/254087/