12 ms·

The term "positive association" makes it hard to parse. The results state: "most of the positive associations observed for meat consumption and health risks wer

by pgt 6y ago

The term "positive association" makes it hard to parse. The results state: "most of the positive associations observed for meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjustment for body mass index (BMI)", but the Conclusion says: > Higher unprocessed red meat, processed meat, and poultry meat consumption was associated with higher risks of several common conditions; higher BMI accounted for a substantial proportion of these increased risks suggesting that residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations. Higher unprocessed red meat and poultry meat consumption was associated with lower IDA risk. So basically 'Red meat is fine but we found a correlation between heart disease and obesity'?

pedro_hab 6y ago
They have a "Role of BMI" section which strengthens your point. > BMI accounted for a substantial proportion In the "Role of BMI" they also say that BMI isn't perfect to detect adiposity, suggesting even further that being fat is what you want to avoid. > Finally, given the observational nature of this study, it is possible that there is still unmeasured confounding, residual confounding, and reverse causality. Studying human diets is hard.
autosharp 6y ago
No, that is not what it says. > In multi-variable adjusted (including BMI) So after correcting for BMI, meat consumption is still bad.
- tankenmate 6y ago
  No, that is not what it said. The summary says "higher BMI accounted for a substantial proportion of these increased risks suggesting that residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations" That means that a substantial proportion of the increased risk is explained by a higher BMI. Unfortunately the summary doesn't say how much "substantial" is.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bigfudge 6y ago
    To be specific, the regression models they use assume no measurement error in predictors. In this case BMI isn't even a direct measure of adiposity, so it's kind of obvious, but even if they had a direct measure of body fat the issue could remain because error in measurement of predictors would attenuate the ability of this covariate to eliminate confounding.
- jonnycomputer 6y ago
  After correcting for BMI, but BMI is an imperfect proxy for adiposity: "...residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations"
Spooky23 6y ago
Meatless is the new “low fat” boogieman. Coincidentally, industrial food producers have discovered that it is cheaper and more profitable to sell ground up peas and plant oil as “meat”, water rinsed through oats as milk, etc. All of the “problems” with meat are market issues. Animal welfare issues are due to industrial farming practices, which will get worse if the industry declines. Land use and environmental issues are all about the market conditions, which are literally putting sustainable meat and dairy business out of business. The “solutions” of fake substitutes are PR driven narratives.
- adtac 6y ago
  Wait till you find out how the peanut butter industry has fooled you for years! How dare they call it butter? Or hamburgers, which contain no ham?! Surely at least coconut milk is real milk right?
  - kilroy_jones 6y ago
    It feels like you missed the point of his post or you're just responding in bad faith.
    - adtac 6y ago
      No, I fully understand their nonsensical argument and my comment was constructive, although with a less serious approach. Things are called by whatever is convenient. If something is intended as a meat/dairy substitute, it is perfectly natural to draw similarity to the thing it is replacing. Nobody is going to call it "oats soaked in water and then blended to a consistency and taste that you can use in your tea". It's just oat milk.
      - theNJR 6y ago
        Commenters point is that these are the wrong solutions to the wrong problems, misdirected through naming and PR.
      - Spooky23 6y ago
tankenmate 6y ago
And even with the confounding factors the increase in risk is 7% to 44% (with means for various diagnoses varying from 15% to 31%). But the study summary doesn't indicate what the rate of those diseases in the study sample population is; i.e. for example an increase in the rate of diagnosis from 0.1% to 0.12% probably isn't going to bother most people.
- jonnycomputer 6y ago
  It is a good point, but I suppose what matters is incidence of disease in total (or all cause mortality); those small increases can add up.
YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
"Positive association" means "yes, there is an association". I think of it as answering the question "is there an association?" in the positive. "Positive association" doesn't mean that there was an association with a "positive", as in "beneficial" result. The study found that this positive association with health risks was "attenuated" (read: reduced across its range) after adjusting for BMI, meaning there is also a positive association with BMI that confounds the effort to draw a firm conclusion from the studied data. This is clarified further in the rest of the paper: Role of BMI In the present study, most of the positive associations between meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjusting for BMI, suggesting that BMI was a strong confounder or possible mediator for many of the meat and disease associations. BMI is an important risk factor for many of the diseases examined (e.g. diabetes [7]). BMI was highest in participants who consumed meat most frequently, and some previous studies have found that high meat consumption is associated with weight gain [56, 57], but it is unclear whether this indicates any specific impact of meat or an association in these populations of high meat intakes with high total energy intakes. The associations of meat with disease risk reported here which remain after adjustment for BMI might still be due to higher adiposity, because BMI is not a perfect measure of this characteristic; we observed similar effects when adjusting for waist circumference (results not shown), but, as with BMI, waist circumference is not a perfect measure of adiposity and there could still be residual confounding.
dagorenouf 6y ago
Since meat is seen as unhealthy nowadays, most people who still eat lots of it also tend to be part of the "don't care about health" crowd (smokers, drinkers, people who don't exercise...). What if don't drink, don't smoke, do regular exercise, not obese... and eat lots of high quality meat? I haven't seen anything that comes close to showing that this would be unhealthy. These studies are quick to point to conclusions. Remember that time where every "scientific" study pointed at fat as the big culprit behind heart problems? When it was sugar all along? 30 years later the narrative has become: all animal products are bad for you. Stop eating eggs and meat, and eat grains, it's better for the planet too! People are getting duped, even on HN, it's depressing.
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  You bring up the point that really pisses me off in these studies. They treat a mcdonalds big mac as the same quality of meat as a grass fed steak or free range chicken breast. While grain free and free range is always best, even commercially produced grain fed cooked healthy is miles better than mickey d chicken nuggets. Lumping all these together as "meat consumption" is incredibly misleading. Most of these anti meat studies seem to still rely on the idea the "food pyramid" is still gospel.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    If someone asked me to name a meat, chicken nuggets would not even come to mind.
    - NoOneNew 6y ago
      Agreed, but it still gets classified as one in these studies. Thats my problem with all of this. Let's try something else. A teriyaki drenched piece of chicken breast doesn't have the same healthiness level of a garlic, carrot roasted chicken breast. One is slathered in sugar, the other isnt. Does it make sense to classify someone who dumps sugary BBQ sauce, ketchup and other condiments on their meats with the same person that, well, doesn't? A salt, pepper, garlic steak salad lunch does not equal a Whooper burger. Drowning the salad in a crappy dressing will though.
gexla 6y ago
And also, don't eat processed meat. There's a big difference between someone who eats a lot of high quality meat with no regard for pricing and someone who lives who gets meat consumption from cheap canned goods. I would guess the latter has a higher rate of obesity.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  Also, whatever stuff is there in the cheap meat. Antibiotics and co. Very cheap food they got. Stress hormones ...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
Sugars are far verse than meet, and for some reasons in the UK, it is an ingredient of most processed foods. (even the salty ones like cans, ready meals, pastries, pasta, sometimes they are sweetening salads...) I guess sugar does not create CO2 while it grows so (it binds Carbon), so political idea is to create a narrative that will decrease usage of meat/dairy. But even if we all stop eating meat/dairy sheer number of people and population growth will again create CO2 emission in some other way.
Shivetya 6y ago
Well I am not so sure. First off they measure very little outside of meat consumption, the chart has a line for fruits/vegetables and grains, but this surely does not account for the whole diet. I want to see the consumption of processed foods and such combined with meats. Ten percent are active smokers and the alcohol numbers look really high to someone like me who never drinks. What I want to see are numbers where people with healthy habits who consume meat and their outcomes. This means no measurable smoking or drinking. When there are some truly adverse numbers associated with smoking and drinking it really needs to have those risk factors removed as much as possible to get good results.

by pgt 6y ago

pedro_hab 6y ago

They have a "Role of BMI" section which strengthens your point. > BMI accounted for a substantial proportion In the "Role of BMI" they also say that BMI isn't perfect to detect adiposity, suggesting even further that being fat is what you want to avoid. > Finally, given the observational nature of this study, it is possible that there is still unmeasured confounding, residual confounding, and reverse causality. Studying human diets is hard.

autosharp 6y ago

No, that is not what it says. > In multi-variable adjusted (including BMI) So after correcting for BMI, meat consumption is still bad.

tankenmate 6y ago
No, that is not what it said. The summary says "higher BMI accounted for a substantial proportion of these increased risks suggesting that residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations" That means that a substantial proportion of the increased risk is explained by a higher BMI. Unfortunately the summary doesn't say how much "substantial" is.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bigfudge 6y ago
  To be specific, the regression models they use assume no measurement error in predictors. In this case BMI isn't even a direct measure of adiposity, so it's kind of obvious, but even if they had a direct measure of body fat the issue could remain because error in measurement of predictors would attenuate the ability of this covariate to eliminate confounding.
jonnycomputer 6y ago
After correcting for BMI, but BMI is an imperfect proxy for adiposity: "...residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations"

Spooky23 6y ago

Meatless is the new “low fat” boogieman. Coincidentally, industrial food producers have discovered that it is cheaper and more profitable to sell ground up peas and plant oil as “meat”, water rinsed through oats as milk, etc. All of the “problems” with meat are market issues. Animal welfare issues are due to industrial farming practices, which will get worse if the industry declines. Land use and environmental issues are all about the market conditions, which are literally putting sustainable meat and dairy business out of business. The “solutions” of fake substitutes are PR driven narratives.

adtac 6y ago
Wait till you find out how the peanut butter industry has fooled you for years! How dare they call it butter? Or hamburgers, which contain no ham?! Surely at least coconut milk is real milk right?
- kilroy_jones 6y ago
  It feels like you missed the point of his post or you're just responding in bad faith.
  - adtac 6y ago
    No, I fully understand their nonsensical argument and my comment was constructive, although with a less serious approach. Things are called by whatever is convenient. If something is intended as a meat/dairy substitute, it is perfectly natural to draw similarity to the thing it is replacing. Nobody is going to call it "oats soaked in water and then blended to a consistency and taste that you can use in your tea". It's just oat milk.
    - theNJR 6y ago
      Commenters point is that these are the wrong solutions to the wrong problems, misdirected through naming and PR.
    - Spooky23 6y ago

tankenmate 6y ago

And even with the confounding factors the increase in risk is 7% to 44% (with means for various diagnoses varying from 15% to 31%). But the study summary doesn't indicate what the rate of those diseases in the study sample population is; i.e. for example an increase in the rate of diagnosis from 0.1% to 0.12% probably isn't going to bother most people.

jonnycomputer 6y ago
It is a good point, but I suppose what matters is incidence of disease in total (or all cause mortality); those small increases can add up.

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago

"Positive association" means "yes, there is an association". I think of it as answering the question "is there an association?" in the positive. "Positive association" doesn't mean that there was an association with a "positive", as in "beneficial" result. The study found that this positive association with health risks was "attenuated" (read: reduced across its range) after adjusting for BMI, meaning there is also a positive association with BMI that confounds the effort to draw a firm conclusion from the studied data. This is clarified further in the rest of the paper: Role of BMI In the present study, most of the positive associations between meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjusting for BMI, suggesting that BMI was a strong confounder or possible mediator for many of the meat and disease associations. BMI is an important risk factor for many of the diseases examined (e.g. diabetes [7]). BMI was highest in participants who consumed meat most frequently, and some previous studies have found that high meat consumption is associated with weight gain [56, 57], but it is unclear whether this indicates any specific impact of meat or an association in these populations of high meat intakes with high total energy intakes. The associations of meat with disease risk reported here which remain after adjustment for BMI might still be due to higher adiposity, because BMI is not a perfect measure of this characteristic; we observed similar effects when adjusting for waist circumference (results not shown), but, as with BMI, waist circumference is not a perfect measure of adiposity and there could still be residual confounding.

dagorenouf 6y ago

Since meat is seen as unhealthy nowadays, most people who still eat lots of it also tend to be part of the "don't care about health" crowd (smokers, drinkers, people who don't exercise...). What if don't drink, don't smoke, do regular exercise, not obese... and eat lots of high quality meat? I haven't seen anything that comes close to showing that this would be unhealthy. These studies are quick to point to conclusions. Remember that time where every "scientific" study pointed at fat as the big culprit behind heart problems? When it was sugar all along? 30 years later the narrative has become: all animal products are bad for you. Stop eating eggs and meat, and eat grains, it's better for the planet too! People are getting duped, even on HN, it's depressing.

NoOneNew 6y ago
You bring up the point that really pisses me off in these studies. They treat a mcdonalds big mac as the same quality of meat as a grass fed steak or free range chicken breast. While grain free and free range is always best, even commercially produced grain fed cooked healthy is miles better than mickey d chicken nuggets. Lumping all these together as "meat consumption" is incredibly misleading. Most of these anti meat studies seem to still rely on the idea the "food pyramid" is still gospel.
- giantg2 6y ago
  If someone asked me to name a meat, chicken nuggets would not even come to mind.
  - NoOneNew 6y ago
    Agreed, but it still gets classified as one in these studies. Thats my problem with all of this. Let's try something else. A teriyaki drenched piece of chicken breast doesn't have the same healthiness level of a garlic, carrot roasted chicken breast. One is slathered in sugar, the other isnt. Does it make sense to classify someone who dumps sugary BBQ sauce, ketchup and other condiments on their meats with the same person that, well, doesn't? A salt, pepper, garlic steak salad lunch does not equal a Whooper burger. Drowning the salad in a crappy dressing will though.

gexla 6y ago

And also, don't eat processed meat. There's a big difference between someone who eats a lot of high quality meat with no regard for pricing and someone who lives who gets meat consumption from cheap canned goods. I would guess the latter has a higher rate of obesity.

hutzlibu 6y ago
Also, whatever stuff is there in the cheap meat. Antibiotics and co. Very cheap food they got. Stress hormones ...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

Sugars are far verse than meet, and for some reasons in the UK, it is an ingredient of most processed foods. (even the salty ones like cans, ready meals, pastries, pasta, sometimes they are sweetening salads...) I guess sugar does not create CO2 while it grows so (it binds Carbon), so political idea is to create a narrative that will decrease usage of meat/dairy. But even if we all stop eating meat/dairy sheer number of people and population growth will again create CO2 emission in some other way.

Shivetya 6y ago

Well I am not so sure. First off they measure very little outside of meat consumption, the chart has a line for fruits/vegetables and grains, but this surely does not account for the whole diet. I want to see the consumption of processed foods and such combined with meats. Ten percent are active smokers and the alcohol numbers look really high to someone like me who never drinks. What I want to see are numbers where people with healthy habits who consume meat and their outcomes. This means no measurable smoking or drinking. When there are some truly adverse numbers associated with smoking and drinking it really needs to have those risk factors removed as much as possible to get good results.