Consuming red meat in amounts above what is typically recommended does not affect short-term cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as blood pressure and blood cholesterol, according to a new review of clinical trials from Purdue University.
"During the last 20 years, there have been recommendations to eat less red meat as part of a healthier diet, but our research supports that red meat can be incorporated into a healthier diet," said Wayne Campbell, professor of nutrition science. "Red meat is a nutrient-rich food, not only as a source for protein but also bioavailable iron."
The recommendations to limit red meat from the diet come mainly from studies that relate peoples' eating habits to whether they have cardiovascular disease. While these studies suggest that red meat consumption is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, they are not designed to show that red meat is causing cardiovascular disease. So Campbell, doctoral student Lauren O'Connor, and postdoctoral researcher Jung Eun Kim, conducted a review and analysis of past clinical trials, which are able to detect cause and effect between eating habits and health risks. They screened hundreds of related research articles, focusing on studies that met specific criteria including the amount of red meat consumed, evaluation of cardiovascular disease risk factors and study design. An analysis of the 24 studies that met the criteria is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Total red meat intake of >=0.5 servings/d does not negatively influence cardiovascular disease risk factors: a systemically searched meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.116.142521
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @10:24PM
https://assets.rbl.ms/6476885/980x.jpg [assets.rbl.ms]
This was a terrible, terrible recommendation from the late 80's, early 90's. The carb-heavy, low protein diet taught in public schools directly lead to today's obesity epidemic and the declining life expectancy among the middle-aged American population.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Tuesday January 03 2017, @10:37PM
The food pyramid is not horrible, pop had a far bigger effect on the obesity epidemic then telling people that the way they were already eating was good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @11:25PM
Fake comment!
Which version? Your answer will help us determine how wrong you are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @02:04AM
Also fruit juices. Many people think those are healthy, but they're just sugary drinks, even if the sugar is naturally present in the fruit. Eating the whole fruit is much healthier.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Wednesday January 04 2017, @04:16PM
Real fruit juice (not sugary "cocktails") isn't unhealthy though... For sugars are much healthier than refined/synthesized sugars.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 03 2017, @11:00PM
Pretty good summary of 2016's year-in-health-news. [arstechnica.com]
A lot of evidence for corruption in the formation of those recommendations came out this year, among other interesting bits.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 04 2017, @12:31AM
... diet taught in public schools directly lead to today's obesity epidemic and the declining life expectancy among the middle-aged American population.
You seriously overestimate how much kids paid attention in school.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 04 2017, @03:24PM
Don't forget the lunch ladies cafeteria with menus completely free of fats and protein. Just a steaming plate of pure carbs.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 04 2017, @09:14PM
Just a steaming plate of pure carbs.
That is actually a lesson that the kids learned in school, not between the ears, but in their gut biome...
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @10:44PM
...let's keep having the political stories.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SunTzuWarmaster on Tuesday January 03 2017, @10:49PM
"Total red meat intake of >=0.5 servings/d". The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends consuming no more than an average of 1.8 ounces of red meat daily, while this study looked at 1.25 oz. I was hoping that this study would indicate that I could regularly violate the USDA recommendation, but it doesn't. My personal diet is probably closer to 4-6 servings/day...
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday January 04 2017, @10:16AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday January 03 2017, @11:00PM
A few details are probably important to highlight here from TFA:
For example, the length of time these experiments were done ranged from a few weeks to a few months as opposed to the years or decades that it could take people to develop cardiovascular disease or have a cardiovascular event.
In other words, they were just focusing on a few blood indicators for studies that were a few months at maximum. There was no actual measurement of frequency of cardiac events or disease.
"We found that consuming more than half a serving per day of red meat, which is equivalent to a 3 ounce serving three times per week, did not worsen blood pressure and blood total cholesterol, HDL, LDL and triglyceride concentrations, which are commonly screened by health-care providers," O'Connor said.
In other words, this meta-analysis divided people only into two groups: those who ate more than 9 ounces of red meat per week and those who ate less.
9 ounces per week is not very much at all. A lot of Americans tend to eat that much in a single meal with one steak or one burger. So, even for short term indicators, this study is only really claiming eating SOME amount of red meat is not significantly worse than eating little to no red meat (by American standards). It's not exactly telling you to eat a giant burger for lunch and get the 20-ounce ribeye for dinner and "you'll be fine..."
Not a criticism -- just clarifying what was really claimed here. Basically, my takeaway is that vegetarians or those who claim they only ever eat chicken or fish are probably not going to see better blood indicators at their next doctor's visit than those who eat a moderate amount of red meat. How much of an impact that might have on actual disease and mortality outcomes (or whether larger amounts of meat are correlated with something bad) is not addressed.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday January 03 2017, @11:01PM
How bloody hard is it?
Everything in moderation.
Red meat isn't going to kill you any more or less than organic vegetables. Have a bit of both, don't pig out on either, eat sensibly.
We really don't need scientists to tell people this stuff.
And, if you want a full English breakfast fried in lard, have it. Just don't do it EVERY BLOODY DAY.
(Score: 4, Touché) by bob_super on Tuesday January 03 2017, @11:25PM
> We really don't need scientists to tell people this stuff.
You wouldn't believe the things people will believe from completely unreliable sources ... if you slept through 2016, that is.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by vux984 on Wednesday January 04 2017, @12:59AM
Everything in moderation.
Ok... moderation...moderation... 1.25oz of red meat is what? a mid-size meatball?
Have you ever been served a portion of red meat that small ? I'm struggling to remember one. Even a childs mcdonalds happy meal is a 2oz patty. The average adult burger is a minimum 4oz patty or larger. Steaks in restaurants are 6oz+, and usually 7-12. A scheiders all-beef weiner (not bbq size) is 375g for 12... which is one 1.32 oz per weiner. Even that's not small enough.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Wednesday January 04 2017, @03:58AM
Averaged out over a week, a month? It just points at what I said - don't have it every damn day or for every meal.
How often would a caveman gave eaten red meat? Rarely. But when he did it was a month's worth over the space of a few days before it went off.
Moderation, not sticking to guidlines to fulfill the same meal every day.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday January 06 2017, @02:01AM
Averaged out over a week, a month? It just points at what I said - don't have it every damn day or for every meal.
That study was for 1.25oz DAILY.
Now, I already don't eat red meat every single day... but a 10 oz steak once a week is 1.42oz per day; already too much -- if that's the only thing I eat all week... its already too much. If I do a burger one other day, and have some duck or bison sausage with pasta, gnocchi, or in a stir fry another day... I'm miles and miles over the so-called moderation limit... even if the other 24 meals I eat that week are all salad and yogurt.
And wait ... is pork red meat for this purpose ... culinary its not... but most nutrtitionists count it? If I have some chorizo in a kale soup... is that another portion? I had a couple slices of pepperoni pizza for lunch last week too... those each might have only had 1.25 oz meat in a serving ... but its pushing my weekly average up up up.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 04 2017, @03:23PM
A couple ounces is probably about right for a stir fry. I was sitting around thinking and my hard anodized wok is still holding up and some quick math estimates I've cooked at least a thousand meals out of that thing in the last decade. My wife made a chicken one with excessive amounts of carrots and peas last night, pretty good stuff although I would have used different ratio of veg. If you're thin serve it on rice, if you're ... not thin, serve it on a plate.
I used to diet by going to the gourmet food store and eating small amounts of great top tier stuff instead of great amounts of crap from the warehouse food store. Nothing helps portion control quite as much as $35/pound beef tenderloin. Never buy 3 pounds of burger when you can buy 1 pound of steak. Never buy a gallon of whipped vanilla ice cream when you can buy a pint of stuff that actually tastes good. Never bake a sheet cake at home and eat the entire thing when you can buy a single slice serving of the really good stuff from the local bakery. Never make 4 pounds of burger helper with carb noodles when you can make a pound of delicious stir fry with fresh produce.
You want to eat healthy delicious food, buy a wok. Not an ice-cream machine, not chocolate candy molds, not a thermometer to make peanut brittle, not a cookie press, buy a friggin wok.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday January 03 2017, @11:37PM
What? Ya mean the science isn't settled? Folks, we see these every week or so now. And it is a heck of a lot easier to study whether eating fat makes you fat, or eating red meat will actually kill you than some of the more outrageous claims we hear from "settled science."
It is all corrupted at this point. Any science without direct application should at least be suspect at this point. Materials science, the kind where if the new flash drive based on the weird new material is wrong you get a brick, can still be trusted, a few other disciplines with similar direct confirmation; with the rest it is time for skepticism first and trust only after serious efforts at verification.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @11:46PM
Who needs science when we've got the Quran?
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Wednesday January 04 2017, @12:49AM
Holy fuck me anyway. The health impacts of anything have always been clouded by the fact there are WAY too many variables, for example exercise, genetics etc etc etc etc...exercise especially I'd say is a bigger factor than anything else. When the fuck has anyone said that "It's settled: red meat will kill you."? I'm not talking about the manner in which the media reports science, but the actual science itself (don't get me started with the whole "sitting down will kill you" BS that no study ever actually stated).
But yea, this story proves that science is totally corrupt and full shit and there's no such thing as climate change right? Are you really that big of a fucking asshole (don't answer...it's a rhetorical question...that one at least is settled).
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 04 2017, @04:34AM
Why yes, yes he is. This guy's got an axe to grind, and he grinds it so much I'm amazed it hasn't been reduced to a small knife by now.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Wednesday January 04 2017, @02:20AM
I think you need to clarify your point. My take is that a lot of stuff is called ‘science’ because it has a dignified, trustworthy aura. In Law School (which I attended) they call law a ‘science’ but I, being an engineer first, had to suppress laughter. There is no ‘science’ in law, at least as I understand it. (In one class they actually tried to use formal logic to prove some point or another, I just shook my head. I did study logic and the presentation was terrible; clearly done by a lawyer who had come into contact with Logic but had no understanding of it.)
In my mind, Science, with a capital S, is Mathematics first, Physics second and maybe Chemistry third. As someone said, everything else is stamp collecting.
Most other endeavors are the study of their subject matter, like Sociology, History , Law and Economics. They might attempt to use the scientific method but until one can derive general laws (like Newton’s, Maxwell’s or Shannon’s) from such studies, one need to be careful, as you point out.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @06:11AM
If you study the philosophy of science, you'll get a slightly broader view.
For starters (depending on where you draw lines) there are three different kinds of science:
a) Analytical sciences, where deductive proofs are actually possible. Mathematics is the poster child here.
b) Empirical sciences, where proofs are really inductive, or evidence-based, but where the measurements can be independently verified, duplicated and analysed. Physics, we're looking at you.
c) Human sciences, where human measurements and reports are integrally involved. Necessarily, analyses have to be statistical, and either deductive or inductive proofs are not really viable. Psychology, economics and so on fit in here.
There's a lot of snobbery about the so-called hardness of sciences, but what a lot of people also forget is that Mathematics itself is just an applied science; an application of formal logic (i.e. a branch of philosophy) to axiomatic systems (notably set theory). It's really a matter of perspective. (Yes, XKCD's diagram on that point was incomplete.)
This isn't to say that people in the human sciences can get their perspective on things radically wrong - obviously they do - but that doesn't make those fields of study invalid or unimportant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @06:40AM
but that doesn't make those fields of study invalid or unimportant.
They're not invalid or unimportant, but until they improve in rigor and objectivity by a significant amount, they are extremely suspect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @01:20PM
You mean things like buildings that are designed to take advantage of the greenhouse effect? /jmorris trolling
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 04 2017, @03:34PM
I don't disagree in general but its fascinating how food science WRT agribusiness counting beans (literally) when raising mammal livestock is genuinely scientific, vs food science for humans where its all propaganda bullshit based almost entirely on payment and politics.
Its funny when you research how farmers feed mammals to max out their fat percentage and its basically the food pyramid. Gosh you'd almost think the food pyramid makes fat americans or something, LOL. And if you look at the effects of a low carb diet or a paleo diet on livestock, the farmers make fun of it being the best way known to make skinny scrawny your farm gonna go out of business if you slop your hogs that kind of stuff.
You sell corn to humans to fatten them up and you're the bad guy unless you buy a lot of advertising in which case corn syrup is teh greatest. You sell corn to farmers to fatten hogs and its like duh what you think grains do to mammals, the whole point is fattening them up. In hog feed corn is great, in human feed like Doritos its pretty evil.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bogsnoticus on Wednesday January 04 2017, @06:14AM
That's the problem with many of these studies, they just group everything under "red meat", without actually differentiating between the species of animal it came from, the animal's diet, how much the animal roamed, domestic or game, and other factors which would greatly affect the nutritional and fat content of the meat.
Personally, at least 50% of the red meat I consume is wild kangaroo. Higher in iron and protein compared to pretty much anything else except whale/dolphin, very minimal fat content even on the "bad" cuts, and far tastier than domesticated cow or sheep.
Eating low grade hamburger mince counts as "red meat", but the high fat content would pretty much be coronary-inducing if that was the only source of protein for many.
Until they clarify what they define as red meat, I'll take their findings with a grain of salt. Maybe a pinch of pepper too.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by choose another one on Wednesday January 04 2017, @08:57AM
Kangaroo is damned good, but very pricey unless it is running wild outside your door, which is only true in one country. For the rest of us it'll stay a rare treat.
> but the high fat content would pretty much be coronary-inducing if that was the only source of protein for many.
There isn't even any scientific proof of that in my experience. There is proof of a correlation between high fat in your blood and coronary problems, but nothing to show that high fat in diet leads to high fat in blood, that seems to be just a "must be so" that has made lots of $$$ for the "low fat" food industry.
My experience: I used to eat a relatively high fat (well, normal) diet, plenty of variety, almost all cooked from scratch, but I cooked with olive oil and butter, full fat milk, cream, and didn't worry about what I ate at all. Then I ended up in hospital after a minor stroke, found my blood pressure was through the roof and my cholesterol was 6. The doctors were adamant I needed to go on a low fat diet, to get it down to 4, so I did. After nearly two years of eating low fat low salt low taste virtually everything, my cholesterol has now gone up to 9. Go figure.
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Wednesday January 04 2017, @07:12PM
My point about "coronary-inducing" was pointed at, as Ayn mentions below, fat=energy. Without actually burning off that high level of energy being introduced into your system, your body has a tendency to store it for future use.
Even if it doesn't leech into the bloodstream and cause blood vessels to narrow, having the extra weight to carry around without corresponding muscle mass to assist would be putting extra pressure on the heart.
For the record: for the last year I have literally had kangaroo bouncing around outside my door. I used to just buy it from the shops, but every once in a while, the neighbour and myself will break the bow and rifle out, and bring down a big male to divvy up between us, and also to barter with other neighbours for fresh fruit and veggies.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @10:19AM
There is absolutely nothing wrong with eating fat. In fact, it's absolutely essential.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 04 2017, @12:59PM
Really? That's awesome. I tried it once at a high-end place in Sydney and quite enjoyed it. But wouldn't eating as much as you do make you jumpy?
In all seriousness, I'm intrigued. I remember reading in the 80's that Australian authorities were trying to convince people to eat kangaroo because they had grown so numerous as to become a pest. Did you start eating it then, or has it always been part of your hunting tradition?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Wednesday January 04 2017, @07:33PM
I first tried kangaroo in the late 80's, but being city slicker, access to it was rare. Wasn't until the late 90's that it got to the point where the hunters doing the culls had access to affordable refrigerated vehicles to make butchering it for consumption cost effective.
That's when I started eating it more, and it was actually due to getting a bad serve of roast beef, which ended up turning me off beef for over a decade. Lamb was too expensive to substitute for beef, so after finding it at the local markets, learning how to properly cook it (which is an art form in itself), I never looked back.
Due to its taste, you become satiated with a much smaller serve. It's just as versatile as beef, so I've had it in tacos, stews, stroganoff, you name it.
Only problem is when you try and have roo burgers. The lack of fat makes the patty very crumbly, so you need to use an extra egg and some flour to help bind it together.
For those wondering what it tastes like, best comparison I can think of would be elk/deer.
Dark red meat, very strong and pronounced flavour, and should be served rare-medium rare. "Blue" is just asking for trouble, as being game meat, you could end up with a parasite, and well-done is just sacrilege.
Partner it with steamed veg, sweet potato, and either red wine or a robust dark ale/porter, and it's a meal fit for royalty.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 2) by Ayn Anonymous on Wednesday January 04 2017, @08:40AM
What do your body need to survive ?
- Water............. Basic material for most functions
- Protein........... Basic material for complex functions
- Fat................. Energy
- Vitamins.........Basic material for elementary functions
- Minerals..........Basic material for elementary functions
- Fibre...............Transport of the other elements
These are the vital elements
None of them can be omitted without dying in a short time.
OK. You can survive without fibre for a while but that is Months not years.
What is not vital ?
- Sugar.............(Suctose / Fructose) Energy
- Carbohydrate..Energy
What does a hamburger contain?
- Water
- Protein
- Fat...................Energy
- Sugar...............Energy
- Carbohydrate...Energy
- Vitamins
- Minerals
- Fibre
I think you see what the problem is ?
Three times energy.
That is the problem.
What is the (mainstream) recommendation for a healthy diet?
Many vitamins, carbohydrates, minerals, fiber, protein.
Little fat and sugar.
Does not really work.
Problem:
Fat is vital.
Carbohydrates can not replace fat.
But carbohydrates are not vital.
And I give a shit what the mainstream recommendation is.
It is driven and influenced by the Argo-Industrie NOT science.
You spend probably less than 2% of the time that I spend to study and research that topic but now it better ?
I'm not interested in your uneducated opinion.