Red meat is killing you

"Just eat what our ancestors ate prior to the age of health dogma."

-very few of our ancestors lived past 30
-cave man didn't care if he had high cholesterol, heart disease, or degenerative disc disease; it was irrelevant from an evolutionary standpoint because he was not reproducing after 30 years.
-it seems there need to be some diet adjustments based on how my health goals differ from caveman's evolutionary needs

"Cyrus Jones 1810 to 1913
Made his great granchildren believe
You could live to a hundred and three
A hundred and three is forever when you're just a little kid
So Cyrus Jones lived forever"

VERY few of our ancestors made it one year, this greatly skews the average lifespan data.

So blessed ignorance is the solution?

No. A healthy lifestyle, moderation and not jumping on the latest bandwagon/ study is the solution. No one single study or report is going to make me change my diet, which is quite sensible to begin with.
This reminds me of another recent study and the AMA recommendation not to sleep with your infant. Numbers show it's not safe…don't do it. These numbers include parents that either drink too much, are obese, take drugs, have strangers in their bed etc. It's going to take way more than that to convince me that my daughter was not the safest right next to me as an infant. A drug addicted parent may need to be told to not sleep with their child. An overweight nurse with bad eating habits may have to be discouraged from eating yet another burger. Those of us that take a little better care of ourselves are probably not endangered by a weekly piece of meat.
Ethical reasons are another matter and legitimate at that.

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/01/13/Owning-TV-car-ups-heart-attack-risk/UPI-92901326432713/

OK, that settles it. I am going off beef. Bacon tastes better anyway.

Are you saying 9/11 wasn't an inside job?

I though Cheney planted the explosives

Who said I was talking about cavemen? Their bones tend to show little to no signs of disease and they tended to be taller and had much stronger bones than those post-agriculture, but I never mentioned cavemen.

Let's just look at the Kitavins who are still around today. They were extensively studied and found to posses NONE of the chronic degenerative diseases that we are stricken with in western civilization. Their diet? Very high in the dreaded saturated fat due to consumption of coconut. They don't eat processed foods and they don't eat grains. Their live span is shorter than in western civilization but they aren't killed by preventable disease. They die from accidents and infections that are prevelent in the region. I guess you could say I model my diet off of the Kitavins and similar hunter-gatherer peoples.

Yes, I read studies but I don't live by them. How many studies showed that phenphen was safe? Sometimes blissful ignorance is better than fretting over every morsel you put into your body. I eat whole foods, not processed crap. I know enough to know that there is not much else I can do to optimze my diet after taking that first step.

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/01/13/Owning-TV-car-ups-heart-attack-risk/UPI-92901326432713/

@ Jonathon: Brilliant! Watching TV in a car while eating red meat! Death for sure!!!

I love these kinds of discussion threads because they exhibit one of the most interesting psychological traits that people show: confirmation bias. Basically, when people have a belief, they tend to accept evidence that supports their belief, but they reject evidence that contradicts it. So, folks who think that eating meat is okay find reasons to think that this study is BS.

Sadly, this is the same reasoning that allows people to believe all sorts of demonstrably untrue things: that Obama is not a Muslim, that 9/11 was not an inside job, that Iraq didn't have WMDs.

See what I did there?

BM

Re-evaluating your assumptions in light of the emerging evidence is always a good exercise. This study should appropriately give pause to those who eat meat daily.

In terms of the study methods, Cox regression is a tricky business. It seems fairly clear, as others have mentioned, that red meat was associated with many unhealthy practices in this study. You can correct for known confounding variables (smoking,drinking), but it is a lot harder to account for the myriad of other unhealthy practices that may be associated with increased red meat consumption but are less well recognized.

One of my other concerns with the study was the inclusion of "burger" in the unprocessed meat category. It would have been useful to know how many of these harried health professionals were grabbing fast food every day at lunch or dinner. Is eating a McDonald's burger and fries every day the same as eating a lean grass-fed beef steak and veggies? To my mind, they are not, but I could be wrong.

In the end, I take "dirty" studies like these under advisement, but reserve final judgement for the randomized, controlled trial. Until you prospectively evaluate like groups of individuals, it is too easy to fall prey to confounders. In the meanwhile, moderation is a good way to navigate through life, hopefully receiving the benefits of a varied diet and minimizing the dangers associated with any individual ingredient.

"Re-evaluating your assumptions in light of the emerging evidence is always a good exercise."

It's a healthy thing all around, and it can give its own positive feedback.

"One of my other concerns with the study was the inclusion of "burger" in the unprocessed meat category. It would have been useful to know how many of these harried health professionals were grabbing fast food every day at lunch or dinner. Is eating a McDonald's burger and fries every day the same as eating a lean grass-fed beef steak and veggies? To my mind, they are not, but I could be wrong."

I wondered about that myself. There's no indication that any analysis of the amount of refined carbs entered into this at all. My guess is that if there were any people eating a low refined carb diet, they were a vanishingly small percentage. From what I've read of the endocrinology, lots of protein plus lots of saturated fat plus lots of refined carbs would be about the worst route to take, health-wise! And from the factors associated with the meat-eaters in this study (overweight, smoking, no exercise, etc), I'd bet that a Big Mac, fries and Coke were standard fare for these folks!

I frankly doubt that many meat-eaters here would fit the same profile!

In my experience health workers are some of the un-healthiest people around. Kind of like, how do you know you are in a plumber's house? The toilet is broken.

Did you ever see The Road to Wellville? Weird movie, doubly weird for the parts that where historically accurate. Anyway, this is hardly the first study to fault red meat.

I personally am with the "moderation in all things" crowd, and would "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" if I had more self-control.

(please note that I am not making any paleo comments here. just offering some more balanced history of what happened with the food industry in the States during the 60's and 70's… concerning the McGovern Commission and Ancel Keys, the man behind the 40 year long anti-fat and meat campaign)

I get that vegans and vegetarians can be obnoxiously sanctimonious and smug, but we've known for decades that red meat is incredibly bad for us. The McGovern commission in the 70s recommended we eat less meat, but industry completely flipped out about it and buried the suggestions.

I'd like to suggest two books that will very much open your eyes, "Good Calories, Bad Calories", by Gary Taubes (very balanced and well-researched and as objective as possible) and "The Omnivore's Dilemma", by Michael Pollan, which takes you through the entire process of growing, processing, and selling basic foods, and also talks about the American political history around food.

Go Pollan! An excellent book.

The sweet irony is that in most cases our food is the safest it has ever been. Of course it doesn't help we also have access to the most food ever in history – at low prices (really) – so low that even the poorest people eat too much often in first world countries. But…most of our "food" isn't food really. It is designer food – calories, nothing more. It is very easy to over indulge.

When it comes to eating moderation is the key with ALL of it. Enjoy life. Enjoy food. Don't eat the same foods every day. Eat a lot of fresh foods. Enjoy meat once in awhile and when you do – enjoy the best you can afford. Eat what your body craves – listen to it. And by that I don't mean Doritos and Coke. Listen to what it really wants. COOK and PREPARE the majority of your eating so you know what you eat. Don't fill your body with artificial colorings and flavorings and wood pulp.

Btw, on the coconut oil harping? Coconut oil is a different form of saturated fat than animal fats. But….if you consume it, only buy cold extracted virgin RAW oils. Processed tropical oils ARE bad. But also remember the ethical dilemma of those oils. To grow them forests are being wiped out at an increasing rate – the demand is too high.

70% of US burgers contained this. Ammonia treated animal waste products. Also known
as sieved chicken.

http://upstrm.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/pink-slime/

In my experience health workers are some of the un-healthiest people around"

Yes. They all look wrung out. Bad, dull hours.
I seldom meet a doctor who looks healthy.

Meh, these "studies" come up every once in a while. Coralation is not causation-
There are people who will never give up attacking real food, nothing new here.
Also: define moderation, is it the same for an 80lb man as a 200lb man? Define low calorie,is it the same for an 80lb man as a 200lb man? What if they are not at the same level of athleticism? Subjective safe terms, puritanical guilt ,and psuedoscience have never failed to keep the population sick.

THIS is a must have book if you have an iPad….

Kat wrote….

"No. A healthy lifestyle, moderation and not jumping on the latest bandwagon/ study is the solution. No one single study or report is going to make me change my diet, which is quite sensible to begin with."

and

"Those of us that take a little better care of ourselves are probably not endangered by a weekly piece of meat."

Took the words right out of my mouth. I'm walking-hiking-running proof of that seeing as I did what the Diabetes educators and internist said I couldn't… reverse diabetes in a relatively short time. The key – moderation in all things and a physically active, healthy lifestyle. Diets, cleanses, all the different fad fasts and such don't work over the long term and that's why it's a multi-billion dollar industry. Sensible eating is the way to go. Too bad it took me a few decades and too many fad diets to figure that out.

If one chooses to be vegetarian or vegan for a multitude of reasons, that's a choice and one that I support. While we eat like vegetarians/vegans a few times a week, we also enjoy beef about once every 8-10 days.

Exercise also plays a huge role in how our body processes what we eat. A sedentary sofa-spud who eats a high fat steak is going to absorb the food differently than someone athletic who works out several times a week.

I also slept with baby girl next to me from time-to-time… and I carried her in a Moby Wrap and a sling even though "they" said it was dangerous. I also took her hiking and on a wilderness canoe trip. I had her camping at a mere 7 weeks old. All horrible choices according to some.

For every study there is an opposing study saying something different. We are what we eat… if you eat junk, your body will treat you like you ate junk.

Like I said earlier in the thread… all things in moderation.

This all things in moderation dogma is bizarre to me. Certain things are just bad for you. Period. All things in moderation, including mercery? Heroin? Cigarettes? A doctor friend of mine (who is an avowed carnivore) said there's some speculation that predates this study, but is potentially bolstered by it, that meat is more like poison than food–that eating red meat may cause dangerous changes in your body even at very low levels of consumption. I'm not sure I'm willing to go that far, and I like my meat occasionally, but this fetish for moderation is strange to me.

This "they said but I proved differently thing" is also strange. I forgot to buckle my seatbelt the other day, but I didn't die horribly, so that means I proved the "experts" wrong about wearing a seatbelt.

With all due respect, heroin is in quite a different category of substance than meat. I see the point you're trying to make, but that comparison is silly.

We're breathing too much. Less breathing, everyone!