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Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review

nhs.uk

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Re: Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review

#41

Post by allovernow »

I swear if it weren't for the many institutional problems plaguing academia including publish or perish in particular, shoddy bullshit studies like this would never see the light of day.

Even bending over backwards they were barely able to show a tiny correlation from surveys. Meat consumption was the evolutionary step that enabled primates to develop and maintain biologically expensive brains that made them human. There unquestionably had to have been a strong evolutionary pressure to adapt completely to meat eating.

This is just data dredging in pursuit of justification for some kind of weird anti-meat sentiment which has been growing for decades, when the real culprit is already known - it's the sugars that have most likely been killing all of us, although to be honest if the same "gold standard" methods were applied to sugar related studies I'd question those as well. The way the media continues to sensationalize these correlative, broken studies is shameful.

Re: Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review

#42

Post by superpermutat0r »

redka wrote: post #37

Could someone explain to me how could researchers come to these conclusions if there are different factors at play that surely impact the results? The article states that: > Participants consumed a weekly average of 1.5 servings of processed meat, 3 for unprocessed, 2 for poultry and 1.6 servings of fish. People with higher intake were generally more likely to be smokers, drink more alcohol, have a higher body mass i…

They use statistical methods to eliminate the confounding variables. But given that they do not understand the fallibility of doing that on extremely noisy data, the conclusions are telling us nothing.

They cannot control anything and it's all just questionnaires.

It's fine too look at these things but they seem to get blown out of proportion every single time, even when industry funded studies come out saying eggs or bacon is fine.

And yes, 7% increased risk is practically nothing. That's baseline risk multiplied by 1.07. It's noise all the way.

Re: Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review

#43

Post by medsiri »

Axsuul wrote: post #13

Note that this wasn't actually a study, they just looked at 6 other studies and based a consensus on that.

That is what we call a meta analysis. It is probably the best thing to look at if you are going to derive conclusions from science.

Re: Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review

#44

Post by medsiri »

allovernow wrote: post #41

I swear if it weren't for the many institutional problems plaguing academia including publish or perish in particular, shoddy bullshit studies like this would never see the light of day. Even bending over backwards they were barely able to show a tiny correlation from surveys . Meat consumption was the evolutionary step that enabled primates to develop and maintain biologically expensive brains that made them human.…

Perhaps there could be a strong evolutionary pressure to adapt to meat eating AND it could cause a slight increase in certain illnesses if consumed regularly by certain populations? If we look at blue zones where people live the longest, one commonality is 95% of their diets are vegetables, grains, and legumes, with limited meat consumption. At the end of the day it comes down to goals and priorities. If performance is a priority, I think meat consumption can be a good thing. If longevity is a priority, limiting meat consumption is probably a good thing. We have to take a nuanced approach. Nutrition science is difficult, and different populations naturally respond in different ways to a variety of diets. Some will naturally thrive on meat heavy diets while others will not.

Re: Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review

#45

Post by njarboe »

medsiri wrote: post #44
allovernow wrote: post #41

I swear if it weren't for the many institutional problems plaguing academia including publish or perish in particular, shoddy bullshit studies like this would never see the light of day. Even bending over backwards they were barely able to show a tiny correlation from surveys . Meat consumption was the evolutionary step that enabled primates to develop and maintain biologically expensive brains that made them human.…

Perhaps there could be a strong evolutionary pressure to adapt to meat eating AND it could cause a slight increase in certain illnesses if consumed regularly by certain populations? If we look at blue zones where people live the longest, one commonality is 95% of their diets are vegetables, grains, and legumes, with limited meat consumption. At the end of the day it comes down to goals and priorities. If performance…

Not just certain populations, but each individual is likely to have different nutritional needs for different desired outcomes. Hard to study that though.

Re: Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review

#46

Post by droithomme »

eeh wrote: post #6
prvc wrote: post #3

Just as bad to lump both red meat and processed food into the same category. The additives in the latter have been shown definitively to do harm, whereas there is less evidence about the former.

Did you read the article? The analysis and results treats then separately: "processed meat: you would increase your risk by 0.4% over 10 years, 1.02% over 20 years and 1.74% over 30 years red meat: 0.17% over 10 years, 0.41% over 20 years and 0.62% over 30 years" > The additives in the latter have been shown definitively to do harm, whereas there is less evidence about the former. The article is evidence of their rel…

I noticed the risk is higher for poultry than for red meat.

So people eating poultry only can reduce their risk by switching from poultry to steak.

Re: Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review

#47

Post by nwallin »

medsiri wrote: post #44
allovernow wrote: post #41

I swear if it weren't for the many institutional problems plaguing academia including publish or perish in particular, shoddy bullshit studies like this would never see the light of day. Even bending over backwards they were barely able to show a tiny correlation from surveys . Meat consumption was the evolutionary step that enabled primates to develop and maintain biologically expensive brains that made them human.…

Perhaps there could be a strong evolutionary pressure to adapt to meat eating AND it could cause a slight increase in certain illnesses if consumed regularly by certain populations? If we look at blue zones where people live the longest, one commonality is 95% of their diets are vegetables, grains, and legumes, with limited meat consumption. At the end of the day it comes down to goals and priorities. If performance…

re: blue zones.

They also don't smoke, drink, and do regularly exercise. And these things are usually prescribed by their religion.

As soon as you start accounting for confounding variables, correlations between eating meat and bad health outcomes drop significantly. And you're left unable to determine whether it's observing the Sabbath on Saturday or not eating meat that makes them live longer.

Re: Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review

#48

Post by droithomme »

mudsnail wrote: post #26
orange_soda wrote: post #11

>red meat: 0.17% over 10 years, 0.41% over 20 years and 0.62% over 30 years Isn't this essentially nothing? Am I misinterpreting these results?

You should really include that this was under the assumption of only 2 servings a week, where a serving is about 3.5 ounces. I wonder how the rates change when you assume 2 servings per meal, which seems more in line with peoples actual diets.

7 ounces of steak per meal is average? That's an expensive diet.

Re: Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review

#49

Post by allovernow »

medsiri wrote: post #44
allovernow wrote: post #41

I swear if it weren't for the many institutional problems plaguing academia including publish or perish in particular, shoddy bullshit studies like this would never see the light of day. Even bending over backwards they were barely able to show a tiny correlation from surveys . Meat consumption was the evolutionary step that enabled primates to develop and maintain biologically expensive brains that made them human.…

Perhaps there could be a strong evolutionary pressure to adapt to meat eating AND it could cause a slight increase in certain illnesses if consumed regularly by certain populations? If we look at blue zones where people live the longest, one commonality is 95% of their diets are vegetables, grains, and legumes, with limited meat consumption. At the end of the day it comes down to goals and priorities. If performance…

>If longevity is a priority, limiting meat consumption is probably a good thing

But 90% of people don't seem to understand that literally all studies on meat are of this quality and there's zero reliable evidence that red meat is actually harmful.

However there is reason for bias considering meat gets a bad rap for being environmentally unfriendly and cruel, although both of those things can be solved with modern technology. But neither are valid reasons to dig for dirt with an agenda. That's bad science and studies like these are potentially the results. Not to accuse the authors specifically, but the bias is very likely influencing the direction of research in the field.

Re: Red meat and processed food 'not back on the menu' according to new review

#50

Post by eeh »

GordonS wrote: post #17
eeh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? The analysis and results treats then separately: "processed meat: you would increase your risk by 0.4% over 10 years, 1.02% over 20 years and 1.74% over 30 years red meat: 0.17% over 10 years, 0.41% over 20 years and 0.62% over 30 years" > The additives in the latter have been shown definitively to do harm, whereas there is less evidence about the former. The article is evidence of their rel…

I haven't read the article yet, but going from the headline, I certainly assumed they were claiming the same/similar risk for both red and processed meat. From the summary you gave, it certainly does seem like a click-baity headline. Personally I would have hoped for better from the NHS (even if I wouldn't have expected it).

The NHS Choices blog's purpose is to critique the news's coverage of health research. It uses excerpts of other newspaper's articles to refer to those articles.
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