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No need to cut down red and processed meat, study says
Most people can continue to eat red and processed meat as they do now. A major study led by researchers at McMaster and Dalhousie universities has found cutting back has little impact on health.
A panel of international scientists systematically reviewed the evidence and have recommended that most adults should continue to eat their current levels of red and processed meat.
The researchers performed four systematic reviews focused on randomized controlled trials and observational studies looking at the impact of red meat and processed meat consumption on cardiometabolic and cancer outcomes.
In one review of 12 trials with 54,000 people, the researchers did not find statistically significant or an important association between meat consumption and the risk of heart disease, diabetes or cancer.
In three systematic reviews of cohort studies following millions of people, a very small reduction in risk among those who had three fewer servings of red or processed meat a week, but the association was uncertain.
The authors also did a fifth systematic review looking at people's attitudes and health-related values around eating red and processed meats. They found people eat meat because they see it as healthy, they like the taste and they are reluctant to change their diet.
The five systematic reviews, a recommendation and an editorial on the topic were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @11:15AM (4 children)
I agree with most of your points but not the last one. Two or more generations back there was less fried foods, chips, processed foods, high fructose corn syrup, and pesticides used in agriculture. A far higher percentage of jobs involved manual labor. Meal preparations were slower before the microwave, so it was more convenient to grab an apple or make a sandwich than heat up canned pasta. And last but not least, many people eat poorly or eat too much when stressed, and mass media has been adding to stress. Maybe excess meat intake is a contributor to modern health problems with fatness, but there are too many changes to diet and lifestyle to be confident. I'm trying to cut meat intake for ethical and environmental reasons, but I'm not sure if it's healthier.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 02 2019, @12:11PM (3 children)
Taking 1 generation = 25 years, this means what? 1970?
Let's see:
TV dinner [wikipedia.org]
Microwave oven - residential use [wikipedia.org]
Me thinks that's all going down for healthy eating from there. Coke wasn't quite a new thing then [google.com]
---
Ah, yes, about those "less pesticides used in agriculture":
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT [wikipedia.org]
Righto. Started in '45, accumulation for 30 years make '75. Seems like they banned it very close to peak soil accumulation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @01:15PM
Good points, thanks for the corrections.
Three minor counters:
First, I was born in the 1970s, I should have clarified that I meant two generations back from my own. My grandparents were all born in the 1920s.
Second, in 1972 minimum wage was higher, adjusting for inflation, than it is today at $1.60 but a $349 microwave represented over five weeks of gross income. A $750 million dollar microwave market at that price covers fewer than 2.5 million households. My own experience growing up was that microwaves weren't common in most households until the late 1980s or even early 1990s. We had TV dinners before that, but you had to put them in a conventional oven or convection oven. I'm not sure if having to wait an extra ten or fifteen minutes for a lot of your meals impacted calorie intake, I'm just pointing out that it's a difference to consider.
Third, Coke has been around since the late 19th century and has been wildly popular for many decades but they didn't switch to high fructose corn syrup HFCS until the late 20th century. There is some evidence - I don't know whether it's trustworthy - that HFCS increases the risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes more than sugar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @01:24PM (1 child)
Damn, these last 50 years have been such a disappointment compared to the 50 years before, and the advancements they made.
And the 50 years before that gave us both GR and QED, so really, what have we been doing?!?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @02:14PM
NHST replaced science once the US government became the main source of funding after WWII. Future generations are going to have to restart from about 1950 because the sheer amount of garbage generated since is too great to dig out anything useful.
"We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and highly intelligent young men out into the world with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be. In this century, of course, they will be working on guided missiles and advising the medical profession on the control of disease, and there is no limit to the extent to which they could impede every sort of national effort."
Fisher, R N (1958). "The Nature of Probability". Centennial Review. 2: 261–274.