Red meat is not associated with heart disease, cancer, or early death
A new analysis of the PURE study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports no association between eating red meat and the risk of early death, heart disease, cancer, or stroke. Does this study completely clear red meat’s reputation?
The short answer? It does, and it doesn’t.
Here’s why the study doesn’t mean red meat is “innocent”: This analysis is still a low-quality nutritional epidemiology study that can’t prove cause and effect. The study can’t “prove” red meat doesn’t increase risk, but it can certainly suggest it.
Here’s why it might show red meat is “innocent”: This study did not appear to have the usual “healthy user bias” among the different groups of meat-eaters and found a beneficial result to red meat.
What do I mean by that? As we’ve written about before, in many concerning observational studies about red meat, those who ate more red meat were overall less healthy. They consumed more calories, smoked more, drank more alcohol, and exercised less. Also, they had different socioeconomic backgrounds; they were less educated, made less money, and were more likely to be men.
Just as we can’t conclude that eating more meat caused them to smoke or be less educated, we also can’t conclude that eating more meat caused them to get heart disease or diabetes.
But the PURE results did not suffer from the same dramatic difference in baseline characteristics between the meat-eating and non-meat-eating participants. Perhaps the multinational population in this study canceled out the inherent healthy user bias that occurs in Western societies.
Additionally, when a sizeable observational study fails to find a harmful association between red meat and heart disease or cancer, it calls into question the other studies that found a minimal increased risk. How significant can the risk be if a large study, like the one from PURE, didn’t detect any risk?
The risk can’t be very significant — if it exists at all.
This study did find a small increased risk (hazard ratio ranging between 1.3 to 1.8) of heart disease, cancer, and death for those who ate more than 150 grams per week of processed meat.
Those who ate more processed meat were more likely to be men and live in urban settings, but the baseline characteristics were otherwise similar.
As we wrote about before, the science supporting increased health risk from processed meat is mostly from low-quality studies, and the risk appears to be small.
However, processed meat does seem to have a stronger association than less processed red meat. But whether that is a significant risk remains to be definitively proven.
Along similar lines, a new review of existing systematic reviews, looking at fat intake and health outcomes, was published in Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism. This study concluded:
“(Systematic reviews) found mainly no association of total fat, monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA), polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA), and saturated fatty acid (SFA) with risk of chronic diseases. ”
The study also reported: “A higher intake of total trans-fatty acid (TFA), but not ruminant TFA, was probably associated with an increased risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease based on existing (systematic reviews).”
This means industrially created trans fats — such as margarine, or fats found in fried foods, and baked goods — are worse for you. But natural trans fats — from cows or other animal sources — are not associated with poor health outcomes.
The two published studies provide more evidence that meat or fat may not be the issue. Instead, industrial processing and taking the meat or fat further away from its natural state may be what increases health risk.
If you are a meat lover, eat up! There is no high-level science to suggest you shouldn’t. Here are some of our favorite meat recipes to get you started.
Thanks for reading,
Bret Scher, MD FACC
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16 comments
But honestly if I forward this article to someone who questions red meat diet, this article talks it does and it doesn’t, which does not convince the reader. I think you need re-write the article to get the impact your looking for.
People are watching Netflix “the game changers” and they are convincing people red meat is bad and we know it is not. Your argument needs to be more clear,
Can you start adding more recipes limit the above products.
Thank you in advance---------Keep safe and healthy-------------
Red Meat is one of the most nutritious foods that we can eat with vitamins and minerals that are more easily absorbed by our bodies. The foods that we eat can only heal us and help us to beat disease if our bodies are absorbing the nutrients within them. Even though there are vitamins and minerals in plant foods, they are not as easily absorbed by our bodies as with animal meats. I challenge myself and I hope you would agree, to always seek after truth and then make sure to stand up for it and stand on the facts and not opinion and to discern between opinion and fact. Sincere Regards!
What about India?
Indians only eat on average 7 pounds of meat per year.
Indians life expectancy is at 68.3 years. With such a large amount of India’s population being vegan and vegetarian you would think they have less cardiovascular issues. But do they? Nope. India has a major cardiovascular problem. 32% of India’s adult deaths are the result of cardiovascular disease.
Another epidemiological study showed that Red Meat plus Dairy was beneficial for a healthier longer life.
This study looked at diets from 218,000 adultsover 50 countries and saw that those who ate three portions of dairy (animal products) and 1.5 unprocessed meat per day chopped the risk of dying early by 1/4. Also the chances of dying from a heart attack dropped by 22 percent.
Andrew Mente one of the researchers behind this study even said, “regarding meat, we found that unprocessed meat is associated with a benefit.”
STUDY - Vegetarian cavemen died off, meat-eaters lived on - https://dailycaller.com/2012/08/14/scientists-vegetarian-cavemen-died...
How Humans Became Meat Eaters - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/when-humans-becam...
Here is a link to our dairy free recipe collection.
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/recipes/dairy-free
The family did not want an autopsy so the medical examiner who said he died of a heart attack made assumptions based on an external observation that were completely inaccurate.