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New research questions the evidence for health benefits of eating less red meat

nytimes.com

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Re: New research questions the evidence for health benefits of eating less red meat

#191

Post by vnth93 »

machinelearning wrote: post #24
tlarkworthy wrote: post #9

I expect sugar will turn out to be good for your brain (in moderation) and increase your IQ.

Yea it is quite interesting how the 'invisible hand' seems to have branded sugar as a 'drug, akin to cocaine' since it signals dopamine in the brain. Refined sugar is nothing but sucrose, a natural compound found in plants and fruits. Surely not all dopamine signalling is bad, just bad/prolonged signalling. Sure, it does cause an insulin spike that causes insulin resistance in the long term but in selective use of bl…

Are people campaigning against moderate use of sugar or the pervasiveness of sugary products? In some way the drug analogy is also true concerning the dosage and manner of which the two were commercialized and not just the reward mechanic. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about the consumption of the coca leaves as the various indigenous groups had done for centuries. Coca tea is still being drank is certain places. It is only a problem after the British discovered how to profit tremendously from the extracted alkaloid.

Re: New research questions the evidence for health benefits of eating less red meat

#192

Post by gwern »

koboll wrote: post #91
ChristianBundy wrote: post #5

Actual paper: https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2752328/unprocessed-red-m... Harvard response: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2019/09/30/flaw...

The first three grey Q&A boxes on the Harvard response are a pretty devastating rebuttal to the paper. To summarize: - 3 of the 5 meta-analyses reviewed support the consensus on red meat's health dangers - The other 2 are irrelevant and shouldn't have been considered at all - The paper handwaves away the conclusions of the 3 by raising reliability issues that could be applied to any meta-analysis of nutrition, since…

> Among the five published systematic reviews, three meta-analyses basically confirmed previous findings on red meat and negative health effects.

The sheer chutzpah of handwaving away the only paper that matters - the one meta-analyzing the randomized experiments - by counting a bunch of different confounded correlational approaches as each equal in value to it.

Here is the only sentence you need to read:

https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2752326/effect-lower-vers...

'Of 12 eligible trials, a single trial enrolling 48 835 women provided the most credible, though still low-certainty, evidence that diets lower in red meat may have little or no effect on all-cause mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 0.99 [95% CI, 0.95 to 1.03]'

Re: New research questions the evidence for health benefits of eating less red meat

#193

Post by jfim »

jeremyw wrote: post #175
ChristianBundy wrote: post #5

Actual paper: https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2752328/unprocessed-red-m... Harvard response: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2019/09/30/flaw...

Note, all of these studies use a low standard of evidence (food questionnaires and the like), and they generate low signal (barely registering positive/negative). Read John Ioannidis @ Stanford for why these methods should banned, and why nutritional research currently produces mostly irrelevant data. Harvard, unfortunately, has doubled-down on this style of science. It's not helpful that the press supports these met…

> Note, all of these studies use a low standard of evidence (food questionnaires and the like)

Sounds like someone is optimizing for the number of papers written per grant dollar, as opposed to generating quality science.

Why do expensive research when you can just print a few questionnaires, get a few underpaid grad students to administer them, then trawl the data for acceptable p-values for publication?

Re: New research questions the evidence for health benefits of eating less red meat

#194

Post by gyuserbti »

jeremyw wrote: post #175
ChristianBundy wrote: post #5

Actual paper: https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2752328/unprocessed-red-m... Harvard response: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2019/09/30/flaw...

Note, all of these studies use a low standard of evidence (food questionnaires and the like), and they generate low signal (barely registering positive/negative). Read John Ioannidis @ Stanford for why these methods should banned, and why nutritional research currently produces mostly irrelevant data. Harvard, unfortunately, has doubled-down on this style of science. It's not helpful that the press supports these met…

I have a lot of respect for Ioannadis but also find it reprehensible to talk about banning or otherwise forbidding large classes of research. Science only progresses when unfettered; prohibitions never help. If a study is flawed, address the flaws. More information might not help, but it never hurts. These flawed studies exist for a reason -- ideal studies are usually the stuff of fantasy.

Re: New research questions the evidence for health benefits of eating less red meat

#195

Post by travisp »

njarboe wrote: post #72
Retric wrote: post #6

What an odd headline/article. Clearly, common food types are not going to be extremely harmful, so the magnitude of impact from dietary advice is never going to be extreme. Red Meat is still showing up as harmful in these studies, which is why it’s advice and not say a ban etc. At best this reads like spin from the cattle industry. Unless I am missing something?

About half was through the article: "Dr. Allison has received research funding from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a lobbying group for meat producers."

And Allison had nothing to do with the paper and was quoted total of one time in the article.

Re: New research questions the evidence for health benefits of eating less red meat

#196

Post by levythe »

debatem1 wrote: post #172
ses1984 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us find it incredibly hard, almost impossible, to just eat less. Also some would argue that keeping a food journal and measuring every calorie you eat is far more complicated than special diets like "don't eat carbs" which are successful for some people without measuring or recording anything.

The challenge is that diets that rely on how your body metabolizes certain foods inherently depend on a lot of details about your digestive and metabolic processes. Some of those things probably are very generalizable, but many of them will vary widely in how well they work depending on genetic factors, gut flora, and lifestyle. By contrast, calorie counting requires only that you obey the laws of thermodynamics. At…

One could spin it around and argue that what that maintenance level is depends heavily upon the individual's metabolic processes, which depend upon gut flora, diet, weight, exercise levels, timing of consumption...

Re: New research questions the evidence for health benefits of eating less red meat

#197

Post by pkghost »

pkghost wrote: post #123
someonehere wrote: post #115

I’m always skeptical when I see counter studies to businesses that have a strong financial foothold on certain industries. Case in point, did the meat industry have any weight in this study? Generally I feel through certain lobbying efforts theses types of industries will produce a counter study that gets enough backing to be read on the nightly news and now people go back to the way things were or are confused. Havi…

As if there are not other industries that benefit from meat being deemed unhealthy by science? Non-expert perspective on this: I find it very difficult to believe that there is such a thing as too much meat (and easy to believe that too much bad quality meat is the root of the problem as commonly discussed), given that most preagricultural environments lacked sufficient carbohydrate density to support anything other…

@harimau777 and theferalrobot regarding evolutionary timelines:

It appears we've been eating meat for about 2.5 million years. 12,000 years seems like the blink of an eye, relatively. Epigenetic research has definitely changed my notion of how rapidly we can adapt, but idk enough to have an opinion on how much we've changed in 12,000 years, or how much vegetarian momentum we managed to conserve over the 2.5 million years of carnivory.

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/when-hum...

Re: New research questions the evidence for health benefits of eating less red meat

#198

Post by gyuserbti »

gwern wrote: post #192
koboll wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first three grey Q&A boxes on the Harvard response are a pretty devastating rebuttal to the paper. To summarize: - 3 of the 5 meta-analyses reviewed support the consensus on red meat's health dangers - The other 2 are irrelevant and shouldn't have been considered at all - The paper handwaves away the conclusions of the 3 by raising reliability issues that could be applied to any meta-analysis of nutrition, since…

> Among the five published systematic reviews, three meta-analyses basically confirmed previous findings on red meat and negative health effects. The sheer chutzpah of handwaving away the only paper that matters - the one meta-analyzing the randomized experiments - by counting a bunch of different confounded correlational approaches as each equal in value to it. Here is the only sentence you need to read: https://ann…

Experiments have problems too. Let's say you successfuly blind people in a nutrition study (is this possible?). Randomized. How do you ensure they're following protocol? For how long? And who is adhering? How do you know you're manipulating what you think?

Experiments introduce control at the expense of generalizability, and some types of experiments more so than others.

Observational studies aren't perfect but they do have advantages, and in nutrition I wouldnt trust experiments more (maybe not less either to be fair).

We have plenty of experiments in animals for example and those arent much more interpretable, at least in nutrition.

Nothing is simple.

Re: New research questions the evidence for health benefits of eating less red meat

#199

Post by pazimzadeh »

machinelearning wrote: post #106
pazimzadeh wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think you needed my help to follow the trail of citations, but here you are. I'm sure you're going to dive right into these: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8075769 , https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/42756923.pdf Sugar does not have to be consumed. Your body can convert protein into glucose. Your microbiota can convert fiber in short-chain fatty acids that feed your cells. You can also function without s…

You seem very confused as to what the argument is. Sigh...just think about it a little more carefully before responding. Did I ever make the argument that sugar is never produced endogenously? And does that invalidate my point that some consumption of sugar is one way to keep the body functioning healthily? I don't have a doctorate but I'm very comfortable with reading academic articles - your condescension is not we…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8075769

"In-depth chromatographic analyses of illicit cocaine and its precursor, coca leaves."

At this point I can't tell if you're trolling or just can't handle disagreement.

> And does that invalidate my point that some consumption of sugar is one way to keep the body functioning healthily

That certainly wasn't your claim. The above is a very vague statement that no one would disagree with.

You made the point that sugar is a naturally occurring substance, so I and others pointed out that being "natural occurring" is in no way sufficient to suggest that a substance is healthy or not, especially if the substance is refined (e.g. cyanide, ricin, cocaine, DMT, on and on..)

Re: New research questions the evidence for health benefits of eating less red meat

#200

Post by trappist »

jeremyw wrote: post #175
ChristianBundy wrote: post #5

Actual paper: https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2752328/unprocessed-red-m... Harvard response: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2019/09/30/flaw...

Note, all of these studies use a low standard of evidence (food questionnaires and the like), and they generate low signal (barely registering positive/negative). Read John Ioannidis @ Stanford for why these methods should banned, and why nutritional research currently produces mostly irrelevant data. Harvard, unfortunately, has doubled-down on this style of science. It's not helpful that the press supports these met…

I see this as an epistemological failure in nutrition that plagues other fields as well. We have all this knowledge of human physiology and metabolism, and make very little use of it in nutrition, acting as though we can't draw logical conclusions from what we know about those things, or trust those conclusions, or at least use them to apply serious skepticism to the apparent implications of low-quality data.

For myself, until you can tell me by what means a particular food produces the claimed outcome, I dismiss your epidemiological nutrition study.

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