So, for someone who isn't good at reading scientific papers - if my BMI is low but I consume a lot of meat, how much worse is that than being vegetarian?
Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
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Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
#32>Higher consumption of unprocessed red and processed meat combined was associated with higher risks of... pneumonia (1.31, 1.18-1.44 [95% CI])
That surprised me. The article later gives a hypothesis that plentiful iron is good for pathogens, citing a separate and interesting article:
Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, that is not what it says. > In multi-variable adjusted (including BMI) So after correcting for BMI, meat consumption is still bad.
No, that is not what it said. The summary says "higher BMI accounted for a substantial proportion of these increased risks suggesting that residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations" That means that a substantial proportion of the increased risk is explained by a higher BMI. Unfortunately the summary doesn't say how much "substantial" is.
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Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. Maybe the new rule should be "Eat red meat if you want, just don't let it make you fat".
If you eat almost exclusively red meat, and not the things that commonly go with it, it’s quite hard to get fat. Meat is very very satiating.
Study: Exclusive Meat Consumption and Risk of Rickets and Scurvy in Low BMI Individuals
Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you even find unprocessed meat these days?
I take processed meat to mean deli meats, bacon, and cured ham. Additives are one of the things that make them damaging. Is a filet mignon, ground beef, or chick thighs processed? Sure. But i don't think that is what we're talking about here.
I thought pre-cook and/or treated meats meant processed in terms of the general consumer. Raw cuts of steak, pork loins and drumsticks isnt typically considered processed for the consumer. From what I know, you only call cut up raw meat "processed" if you handled the full carcass, like a butcher.
But like you said, it's the additives that we really think of as "processed". If you home make sausage with just ground meat and pork casing is that "processed" if you didnt add nitrates or edta? Technically yes, but that's where I think clear cut definitions need to be in place.
Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
#36The term "positive association" makes it hard to parse. The results state: "most of the positive associations observed for meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjustment for body mass index (BMI)", but the Conclusion says: > Higher unprocessed red meat, processed meat, and poultry meat consumption was associated with higher risks of several common conditions; higher BMI accounted for…
And even with the confounding factors the increase in risk is 7% to 44% (with means for various diagnoses varying from 15% to 31%). But the study summary doesn't indicate what the rate of those diseases in the study sample population is; i.e. for example an increase in the rate of diagnosis from 0.1% to 0.12% probably isn't going to bother most people.
It is a good point, but I suppose what matters is incidence of disease in total (or all cause mortality); those small increases can add up.
Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. Maybe the new rule should be "Eat red meat if you want, just don't let it make you fat".
If you eat almost exclusively red meat, and not the things that commonly go with it, it’s quite hard to get fat. Meat is very very satiating.
Yeah, but there's also gout.
Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
#38The term "positive association" makes it hard to parse. The results state: "most of the positive associations observed for meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjustment for body mass index (BMI)", but the Conclusion says: > Higher unprocessed red meat, processed meat, and poultry meat consumption was associated with higher risks of several common conditions; higher BMI accounted for…
"Positive association" means "yes, there is an association". I think of it as answering the question "is there an association?" in the positive.
"Positive association" doesn't mean that there was an association with a "positive", as in "beneficial" result.
The study found that this positive association with health risks was "attenuated" (read: reduced across its range) after adjusting for BMI, meaning there is also a positive association with BMI that confounds the effort to draw a firm conclusion from the studied data.
This is clarified further in the rest of the paper:
Role of BMI
In the present study, most of the positive associations between meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjusting for BMI, suggesting that BMI was a strong confounder or possible mediator for many of the meat and disease associations. BMI is an important risk factor for many of the diseases examined (e.g. diabetes [7]). BMI was highest in participants who consumed meat most frequently, and some previous studies have found that high meat consumption is associated with weight gain [56, 57], but it is unclear whether this indicates any specific impact of meat or an association in these populations of high meat intakes with high total energy intakes. The associations of meat with disease risk reported here which remain after adjustment for BMI might still be due to higher adiposity, because BMI is not a perfect measure of this characteristic; we observed similar effects when adjusting for waist circumference (results not shown), but, as with BMI, waist circumference is not a perfect measure of adiposity and there could still be residual confounding.
Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
#39The term "positive association" makes it hard to parse. The results state: "most of the positive associations observed for meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjustment for body mass index (BMI)", but the Conclusion says: > Higher unprocessed red meat, processed meat, and poultry meat consumption was associated with higher risks of several common conditions; higher BMI accounted for…
Since meat is seen as unhealthy nowadays, most people who still eat lots of it also tend to be part of the "don't care about health" crowd (smokers, drinkers, people who don't exercise...).
What if don't drink, don't smoke, do regular exercise, not obese... and eat lots of high quality meat? I haven't seen anything that comes close to showing that this would be unhealthy.
These studies are quick to point to conclusions. Remember that time where every "scientific" study pointed at fat as the big culprit behind heart problems? When it was sugar all along?
30 years later the narrative has become: all animal products are bad for you. Stop eating eggs and meat, and eat grains, it's better for the planet too!
People are getting duped, even on HN, it's depressing.
Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
#40The term "positive association" makes it hard to parse. The results state: "most of the positive associations observed for meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjustment for body mass index (BMI)", but the Conclusion says: > Higher unprocessed red meat, processed meat, and poultry meat consumption was associated with higher risks of several common conditions; higher BMI accounted for…
And also, don't eat processed meat.
There's a big difference between someone who eats a lot of high quality meat with no regard for pricing and someone who lives who gets meat consumption from cheap canned goods. I would guess the latter has a higher rate of obesity.