I missed the discussion on this last time this came up, but this fits squarely within my area of research, so it would be remiss of me not to pass comment. The

I missed the discussion on this last time this came up, but this fits squarely within my area of research, so it would be remiss of me not to pass comment. The Reddit link from Evgeny does a pretty good job of giving the gist of the research. The big puzzle here is the precise mechanism by which this kind of thing can occur. To some degree, the binding of particular sugar-binding proteins to these newly incorporated sialic acids could perhaps influence cellular processes. What exactly is binding the sugars, and which molecules the sugars are incorporated onto will help with understanding the cellular processes. The paper linked is an elaboration on Ajit Varki's work - but there's a lot more we don't understand about it than we do understand before we go about making conclusions. For what it's worth, I believe that Varki is not eating red meat [1]. I will try to get a look at his plate at the next conference dinner. edit: [1] I'm not sure if he previously ate meat, so I removed the "now".