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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, @04:34PM
So. They took a bunch of studies that already involve statistics, and analyzed them with even more statistics.
This is the exact opposite of the direction in which we need to go.
We've all got stories of relatives who ate a lot of meat, drank, smoked and lived to be 90. We've got the stories of relatives who had heart attacks in their 40s, and most of us are somewhere in between.
The average is "all of us, yet none of us". Statistics just gives us averages at the highest level, and says nothing about the MECHANISM THAT DRIVES DISEASE.
I'd be more interested in studies along the lines of "people with gene X6B5 are 80% more likely to have heart disease if they eat more than 5 servings of read meat per week". That is still statistics, but it's closer to the mechanism, not further.