Every week its a different story. I try to eat chicken or fish once a day. I love my rib steaks but don't have them very often.
New guidelines certain to be celebrated by enthusiasts of the carnivore diet and denounced by others as nutritional heresy recommend most adults shouldn’t worry about eating less red or processed meat.
The recommendations — which conflict with virtually every other in existence, including the latest iteration of Canada’s food guide — are based on studies involving millions of people. The authors found lowering red or processed meat consumption had little, and often-trivial effects in reducing the absolute risk for cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart attack, cancer, diabetes or death from any cause.
Researchers at Dalhousie and McMaster universities led the panel of international scientists. On the basis of four systematic reviews assessing the risks of red and processed meat, “we suggest that individuals continue their current consumption,” the authors write in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
“We cannot say with any certainty that eating red or processed meat causes cancer, diabetes or heart disease,” said Dr. Bradley Johnston, an associate professor of community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie, and lead author of the recommendations.
“This is not just another study of red and processed meat,” he said in a statement, “but a series of high quality systematic reviews resulting in recommendations we think are far more transparent, robust and reliable.”
What’s more, a fifth review found that most omnivores are highly attached to their meat, men especially so.
The researchers didn’t consider animal welfare or environmental concerns, including meat-eating’s possible contribution to global warming. However, people who choose not to eat meat (vegetarians) report health as one of the main reasons for avoiding it, Johnston said. “However, any health benefits from staying away from meat are uncertain, and, if they exist at all, are very small.”
For years, health groups have been beating the drums that red and processed meat increase the risk of a premature death, Dr. Aaron Carroll, author of The Bad Food Bible, wrote in an accompanying editorial. In 2015, an august panel of experts, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, declared bacon, sausages, biltong, beef jerky and other salted, cured, smoked or similarly prepared meats carcinogenic, and red meat “probably” carcinogenic, too. Canada’s new food guide recommends Canadians choose proteins that come from plants, and not animals, more often. American dietary guidelines recommend limiting red meat to approximately one weekly serving.
“We have saturated the market with warnings about the dangers of red meat,” Carroll, of the Indiana University School of Medicine, writes with co-author Tiffany Doherty. “It would be hard to find someone who doesn’t ‘know’ that experts think we should all eat less. However, “Continuing to broadcast that fact, with more and more shaky studies touting potential small relative risks, is not changing anyone’s mind.”
The new recommendations, however, are already getting pushback. The authors readily admit that their recommendations come with a “low certainty of evidence,” noted Dr. Joe Schwarcz, of McGill University, “because the studies themselves have low certainty of evidence.”
Nutritional studies are mostly observational, meaning they can’t prove cause-and-effect. They rely on people to accurately report what they have eaten, and researchers follow participants over time and observe what happens. “People tend to claim that they eat more of what they think they should have eaten instead of what they ate,” said Schwarcz, director of McGill’s Office for Science in Society.
And, in the case of meat, the environmental impact can’t be ignored. “While eating less meat may not have a great benefit for the consumer,” Schwarcz said, “it can have a significant impact on the environment. And it certainly has an effect on the animal that is not consumed.”
Still, the recommendations, appearing in a reputable journal, will have some heft. Current estimates are that adults in North America and Europe consume red and processed meat about three to four times per week, on average.
https://nationalpost.com/news/no-be...-is-no-need-to-eat-less-red-or-processed-meat
New guidelines certain to be celebrated by enthusiasts of the carnivore diet and denounced by others as nutritional heresy recommend most adults shouldn’t worry about eating less red or processed meat.
The recommendations — which conflict with virtually every other in existence, including the latest iteration of Canada’s food guide — are based on studies involving millions of people. The authors found lowering red or processed meat consumption had little, and often-trivial effects in reducing the absolute risk for cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart attack, cancer, diabetes or death from any cause.
Researchers at Dalhousie and McMaster universities led the panel of international scientists. On the basis of four systematic reviews assessing the risks of red and processed meat, “we suggest that individuals continue their current consumption,” the authors write in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
“We cannot say with any certainty that eating red or processed meat causes cancer, diabetes or heart disease,” said Dr. Bradley Johnston, an associate professor of community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie, and lead author of the recommendations.
“This is not just another study of red and processed meat,” he said in a statement, “but a series of high quality systematic reviews resulting in recommendations we think are far more transparent, robust and reliable.”
What’s more, a fifth review found that most omnivores are highly attached to their meat, men especially so.
The researchers didn’t consider animal welfare or environmental concerns, including meat-eating’s possible contribution to global warming. However, people who choose not to eat meat (vegetarians) report health as one of the main reasons for avoiding it, Johnston said. “However, any health benefits from staying away from meat are uncertain, and, if they exist at all, are very small.”
For years, health groups have been beating the drums that red and processed meat increase the risk of a premature death, Dr. Aaron Carroll, author of The Bad Food Bible, wrote in an accompanying editorial. In 2015, an august panel of experts, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, declared bacon, sausages, biltong, beef jerky and other salted, cured, smoked or similarly prepared meats carcinogenic, and red meat “probably” carcinogenic, too. Canada’s new food guide recommends Canadians choose proteins that come from plants, and not animals, more often. American dietary guidelines recommend limiting red meat to approximately one weekly serving.
“We have saturated the market with warnings about the dangers of red meat,” Carroll, of the Indiana University School of Medicine, writes with co-author Tiffany Doherty. “It would be hard to find someone who doesn’t ‘know’ that experts think we should all eat less. However, “Continuing to broadcast that fact, with more and more shaky studies touting potential small relative risks, is not changing anyone’s mind.”
The new recommendations, however, are already getting pushback. The authors readily admit that their recommendations come with a “low certainty of evidence,” noted Dr. Joe Schwarcz, of McGill University, “because the studies themselves have low certainty of evidence.”
Nutritional studies are mostly observational, meaning they can’t prove cause-and-effect. They rely on people to accurately report what they have eaten, and researchers follow participants over time and observe what happens. “People tend to claim that they eat more of what they think they should have eaten instead of what they ate,” said Schwarcz, director of McGill’s Office for Science in Society.
And, in the case of meat, the environmental impact can’t be ignored. “While eating less meat may not have a great benefit for the consumer,” Schwarcz said, “it can have a significant impact on the environment. And it certainly has an effect on the animal that is not consumed.”
Still, the recommendations, appearing in a reputable journal, will have some heft. Current estimates are that adults in North America and Europe consume red and processed meat about three to four times per week, on average.
https://nationalpost.com/news/no-be...-is-no-need-to-eat-less-red-or-processed-meat
