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Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y agoI'm looking forward to the keto rebuttal.
- lukifer 7y agoThe standard objections apply: - Correlation, not causation - Self-reporting questionaire - Not controlling for meat quality/sourcing (though at least they differentiate "processed meats")
- Mikeb85 7y agoWhat rebuttal? > red meat: 0.17% over 10 years, 0.41% over 20 years and 0.62% over 30 years 0.62% increase over 30 years is next to nothing, especially when you consider that many people have shit diet habits anyway.
- rhinoceraptor 7y agoI'd actually expect that to be higher than it is, just given that red meat has been vilified for 50+ years by public health officials. I'm not sure if there's a name for the reverse of healthy user bias, but I like to think of it as blaming baseball for oral cancer, rather than the chewing tobacco common among players in the sport.
- mudsnail 7y agoThose numbers are assuming 2 servings per week. How many meat eater limits themselves to that few of servings?
- ricardobeat 7y agoThe numbers in the study are something like 2 servings meat, 3 chicken, 1.6 fish weekly.
- mudsnail 7y agoHaven't looked at the original study, but from the article >>>In terms of the actual difference eating 2 servings a week would make to an individual's baseline risk of CVD, the researchers calculated: processed meat: you would increase your risk by 0.4% over 10 years, 1.02% over 20 years and 1.74% over 30 years red meat: 0.17% over 10 years, 0.41% over 20 years and 0.62% over 30 years poultry: 0.20% over 10 years, 0.54% over 20 years and 1.03% over 30 years
- elhudy 7y agoThe way your body processes food during ketosis is so different from processing "traditional" diets that I hardly think it would be relevant enough to warrant a rebuttal. I do like hearing Mark's opinions on such things though: https://www.marksdailyapple.com/what-does-the-who-report-mean-for-your-meat-eating-habit/ https://www.marksdailyapple.com/what-does-the-who-report-mea...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- prvc 7y agoJust as bad to lump both red meat and processed food into the same category. The additives in the latter have been shown definitively to do harm, whereas there is less evidence about the former.
- eeh 7y agoDid you read the article? The analysis and results treats then separately: "processed meat: you would increase your risk by 0.4% over 10 years, 1.02% over 20 years and 1.74% over 30 years red meat: 0.17% over 10 years, 0.41% over 20 years and 0.62% over 30 years" > The additives in the latter have been shown definitively to do harm, whereas there is less evidence about the former. The article is evidence of their relative risk, and it does sound consistent with your prior.
- GordonS 7y agoI haven't read the article yet, but going from the headline, I certainly assumed they were claiming the same/similar risk for both red and processed meat. From the summary you gave, it certainly does seem like a click-baity headline. Personally I would have hoped for better from the NHS (even if I wouldn't have expected it).
- simonh 7y agoI’m sorry, but that’s simply an unwarranted assumption.
- GordonS 7y agoEh? The figures given are clear (and yes, I've read the article by now) - the risk associated with processed meat is much greater than that with red meat.
- eeh 7y agoI believe the following assumption was the one simonh disagreed could be made: "I certainly assumed they were claiming the same/similar risk for both red and processed meat" I agree. Headlines should be suggestive of content, but cannot contain all the nuances.
- bitwize 7y agoThe thing about processed food is that it came about in the 50s, at a time when many Americans still remembered the dust bowl. Processed food could be shipped long distances and stored for long times without spoiling and was available at any time of year. It was, among other things, a hedge against starvation. It's not high quality food, and you should, by all means, prefer fresh food when it is available and you can afford it. But the jihad against processed food may have unpleasant consequences the next time famine conditions arise.
- DaiPlusPlus 7y agoDefine “processed food” - I understand it often includes decidedly un-modern steps, such as salting and curing; even doing your own pickling.
- WilliamEdward 7y agohttps://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/what-are-processed-foods/ https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/what-are-processed-foo... According to the NHS who also did this study, this is the definition of 'processed food'... I think it's dangerous to use the term processed when it's clearly just the fat, sugars, or other added chemicals and usually not the process that is unhealthy. 'Freezing and baking' is not unhealthy and yet they are what the NHS considers 'processed'.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jmkd 7y agoThis is great. A calm, accessible analysis of a complex, emotive and apparently volatile topic. Well done NHS. Of interest here's a Freedom of Information request about the consultants Bazian who produced this for the NHS: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/bazian_services_to_the_nhs_and_r https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/bazian_services_to_th...
- eeh 7y agoI used to read this blog, until I realised every article was: "This study is limited and warrants further research. This alone does not warrant a change to dietary advice. We encourage people eat per the Eat Well plate, as we've done for 15+ years." At which point I stopped reading newspaper articles on diet, nor their critiques, and spent that time on following their advice.
- jmkd 7y agoNo sensible health authority would change dietary advice based on a single study. Consider research like this as discrete steps in one direction or another, with a much longer continuous waveform representing national and population-led understanding.
- orange_soda 7y ago>red meat: 0.17% over 10 years, 0.41% over 20 years and 0.62% over 30 years Isn't this essentially nothing? Am I misinterpreting these results?
- rhinoceraptor 7y agoWelcome to the world of nutrition science, where the methodology is shoddy, the evidence is poor, and the recommendations are ridiculous.
- dalore 7y ago> ... completed a food questionnaire and then were followed up for around 20 years FFQ are useless. I barely remember what I ate 2 days ago.
- zamfi 7y ago> Isn't this essentially nothing? Essentially nothing: for an individual? Yes. For a population? No. You or I may not care about a 0.62% increased CVD rate for ourselves over 30 years, but that does translate to 6,200 extra possibly-preventable cases of CVD per million people. That's about 76,000 diagnoses annually in the US alone.
- graeme 7y agoHow strong is this effect relative to other effects though? With small effects, you get an increased risk of error in the analysis as there could be confounding variables not fully accounted for, reporting errors, etc. How would this compare, for example, to not smoking, drinking less alcohol, wearing sunscreen, safe sex, not exercising enough, etc. (Picked things that I think we have a high standard of evidence for and fairly large effect, but that people often neglect due to wanting to do the harmful activity, as with red meat) For years low salt recommendations were justified based on lessened harm "on a population level" even if individual gains were small. Now it seems that these recommendations were wrong, according to Cochrane reviews.
- jojobas 7y ago
- john_moscow 7y agoI would love to see the BMI as another dimension in the study. Given that a portion of meat would have _10-20x_ more calories than an equal amount of vegetables, you need to try hard to get overweight on a mostly vegetarian diet. Of course, stating that red meat causes CVD is much more sensationalist than merely confirming that extra weight does it, since it implies that ~90% of the population [0] are making an unhealthy choice. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country
- pkaye 7y agoHowever if the vegetarian diet consists of mostly starches and grains it is pretty easy to put on weight.
- john_moscow 7y agoThat's exactly I would love to see BMI as another dimension in the study, as it would fully eliminate this speculation.
- whiddershins 7y agoMeat is rarely the source of excess calories in a person’s diet. Sugars, starches, dairy.
- Axsuul 7y agoNote that this wasn't actually a study, they just looked at 6 other studies and based a consensus on that.
- Pmop 7y agoDefinitive conclusions shouldn't be derived from observational studies only. Also, the methodology used is very questionable. We should be more critical about matters concerning our diet, as studies like the former will be used by the media and professionals to back potentially life-changing advices.
- ricardobeat 7y agoInteresting how the numbers are pumped up for the headline. The risk is increased by 7% for eating processed meat, not red meat. And the actual numbers are: processed meat: you would increase your risk by 0.4% over 10 years, 1.02% over 20 years and 1.74% over 30 years red meat: 0.17% over 10 years, 0.41% over 20 years and 0.62% over 30 years poultry: 0.20% over 10 years, 0.54% over 20 years and 1.03% over 30 years
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoI'm mostly surprised poultry is worse than red meat. I realize the supermarket chickens most people eat are a far cry from their ancestors (ridiculously overfed, grain diets, selectively bred to grow faster and fatter), but cattle have many similar issues.
- ricardobeat 7y agoIt is mentioned that the results are barely statistically significant for unprocessed meat; it also states that "poultry could mean plain meat or deep-fried" which makes a huge difference.
- redka 7y agoCould someone explain to me how could researchers come to these conclusions if there are different factors at play that surely impact the results? The article states that: > Participants consumed a weekly average of 1.5 servings of processed meat, 3 for unprocessed, 2 for poultry and 1.6 servings of fish. People with higher intake were generally more likely to be smokers, drink more alcohol, have a higher body mass index (BMI) and a lower overall diet quality. If that's the case then how is it possible for a cohort study to properly control for all of these? Isn't 7% increase in risk basically telling nothing then? The other thing is the methodology. The article says that they used "standard food frequency questionnaire" which I think means Food Frequency Questionnaire. This alone seems like it would have great effects on the efficacy of the research making the results even more questionable.
- superpermutat0r 7y agoThey use statistical methods to eliminate the confounding variables. But given that they do not understand the fallibility of doing that on extremely noisy data, the conclusions are telling us nothing. They cannot control anything and it's all just questionnaires. It's fine too look at these things but they seem to get blown out of proportion every single time, even when industry funded studies come out saying eggs or bacon is fine. And yes, 7% increased risk is practically nothing. That's baseline risk multiplied by 1.07. It's noise all the way.
- stefd 7y ago> They use statistical methods to eliminate the confounding variables. Some of those anyway. You can only account for confounders that you know about a priori. And given they used Food Frequency Questionnaires, it's mostly wasted efforts imho.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- allovernow 7y agoI swear if it weren't for the many institutional problems plaguing academia including publish or perish in particular, shoddy bullshit studies like this would never see the light of day. Even bending over backwards they were barely able to show a tiny correlation from surveys. Meat consumption was the evolutionary step that enabled primates to develop and maintain biologically expensive brains that made them human. There unquestionably had to have been a strong evolutionary pressure to adapt completely to meat eating. This is just data dredging in pursuit of justification for some kind of weird anti-meat sentiment which has been growing for decades, when the real culprit is already known - it's the sugars that have most likely been killing all of us, although to be honest if the same "gold standard" methods were applied to sugar related studies I'd question those as well. The way the media continues to sensationalize these correlative, broken studies is shameful.
- medsiri 7y agoPerhaps there could be a strong evolutionary pressure to adapt to meat eating AND it could cause a slight increase in certain illnesses if consumed regularly by certain populations? If we look at blue zones where people live the longest, one commonality is 95% of their diets are vegetables, grains, and legumes, with limited meat consumption. At the end of the day it comes down to goals and priorities. If performance is a priority, I think meat consumption can be a good thing. If longevity is a priority, limiting meat consumption is probably a good thing. We have to take a nuanced approach. Nutrition science is difficult, and different populations naturally respond in different ways to a variety of diets. Some will naturally thrive on meat heavy diets while others will not.
- njarboe 7y agoNot just certain populations, but each individual is likely to have different nutritional needs for different desired outcomes. Hard to study that though.
- nwallin 7y agore: blue zones. They also don't smoke, drink, and do regularly exercise. And these things are usually prescribed by their religion. As soon as you start accounting for confounding variables, correlations between eating meat and bad health outcomes drop significantly. And you're left unable to determine whether it's observing the Sabbath on Saturday or not eating meat that makes them live longer.