Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people • Hacker News Board

Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

#61

Post by uxcolumbo » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #14

pgt wrote: post #3

The 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…

Meatless is the new “low fat” boogieman. Coincidentally, industrial food producers have discovered that it is cheaper and more profitable to sell ground up peas and plant oil as “meat”, water rinsed through oats as milk, etc. All of the “problems” with meat are market issues. Animal welfare issues are due to industrial farming practices, which will get worse if the industry declines. Land use and environmental issues…

So if factory farms reduce or disappear - animal welfare will get worse?

I don't quite follow.

Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

#62

Post by cageface » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

dagorenouf wrote: post #39

pgt wrote: post #3

The 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 conclusio…

When it was sugar all along?

Er no, people were told to stop eating fat but of course they didn't and average calorie intake went up in all categories. Sugar intake in the US peaked years ago but Americans are fatter than ever. Chicken and cheese consumption is through the roof.

Like the article says, being overweight is very unhealthy and almost any diet that keeps you from gaining weight is going to reduce your risks of a lot of illness.

The advantage of a plant based diet is that it's a lot kinder to the earth and to our animal cousins while also helping you avoid obesity.

Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

#63

Post by nextos » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #20

I'm just gonna say it: epidemiological studies suck and we need something better. Humans and their lives are just too multi-variate, even with nearly ~500k people in a study. All you end up with are correlations – I've basically never seen a study like this that manages to demonstrate causality convincingly.

To infer causality you need interventions. Although there are some methods to infer causal relationships from observational data (e.g. see Pearl or Spirtes' work, which is ignored by most epidemiologists).

I think the biggest problem is that they are not measuring low level molecular variables like metabolites, or abundances of gut bacteria. Hence, it's pretty hard to infer a causal chain. And since controlling for covariates is so hard, inferring something useful is difficult.

Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

#64

Post by pndy » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

ciceryadam wrote: post #23

pedro-guimaraes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you even find unprocessed meat these days?

Here in Czech republic / Slovakia it's enough to read the label - if it says fresh meat, it's unprocessed meat. If it's processed, the label cannot say fresh meat anymore, it has to say meat product.

Same in Poland; all information you need is on label and AFAIK is sorted by amount of components and that also applies for variety of packaged food.

Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

#65

Post by johndoe42377 » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 1:30 PM UTC

What would we do with Tibetans, Chinese, Pakistanis and other meat eating cultures?

Oh, there are other factors?

Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

#66

Post by adtac » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #49

adtac wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait till you find out how the peanut butter industry has fooled you for years! How dare they call it butter? Or hamburgers, which contain no ham?! Surely at least coconut milk is real milk right?

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I stand by my comment. It is a good response to what they said. I cited multiple examples of the same thing happening commonly in food naming to prove how their argument thta this is some PR narrative is wrong.

Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

#67

Post by blfr » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #58

Almost all studies of this kind are extremely confounded because food survey data is close to universally bad. It is especially bad on this topic in the US and UK, because many people's idea of a serving of meat is actually closer to fried breaded bread, with condiment levels of meat on top. It would be crazy to lump those people in with the "steak and eggs for dinner 3 times a week" crowd, but they always are. Resul…

Food surveys and food diaries are hilariously bad[1]. I'm surprised any studies based on them are still getting published.

There was literally a reality TV show in England based around how terribly inaccurate food diaries are. It's on YouTube[2].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4527547/figure/...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=secret+eaters

Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

#68

Post by uxcolumbo » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

dagorenouf wrote: post #39

pgt wrote: post #3

The 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 conclusio…

I don't think that's the narrative.

The narrative is factory farmed meat & dairy is not good for you, not good for the people working in that industry and it's not good for our biosphere, e.g. deforestation, pollution etc.

And of course it's absolutely bad for the animals involved, but most people don't care about animal welfare or don't even think about it.

If people must eat meat for whatever reason then the healthiest option would be to hunt or raise & kill your animals or buy from people who do, but it also comes with the associated price tag.

Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

#69

Post by theNJR » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

pachico wrote: post #50

dagorenouf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conclusio…

> 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 I think the documentary "the game changers" addresses precisely that.

That film was one big inaccurate extrapolation after another.

One of the authors of a cited study did a rebuttal here - https://ketogenic.com/debunking-the-game-changers/

Re: Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

#70

Post by onebot » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

dagorenouf wrote: post #39

pgt wrote: post #3

The 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 conclusio…

>> 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?

I mean there is just insurmountable evidence that fat is correlated to heart disease. What is so ironic is that some journalists with no medical backgrounds write a book about "The Big Fat Lie" and now it is sugar that is the cause with not much scientific research to back it up. Sugar is bad and inflammatory for sure, but mountains and mountains of research on fat and heart disease are somehow all wrong now?