The Latest Study on Red Meat and Heart Disease: A Red Herring

The Latest Study on Red Meat and Heart Disease: A Red Herring
unsettledscience.substack.com

A - Are meats unhealthy, or, is it the food fed (grains on a foodlot) to the animal that negatively influences the health profile? [1]

B - If meats are so unhealthy, why are the bushmen superfit and incredibly healthy into old age despite having a significant amount of meat ~25% in their diet? [2] & [3]

I recognize that some animals raised on healthy grass-fed diets may have health profiles more similar to healthy fish than conventional grain fed red meat [4] & [5]

[1] https://chriskresser.com/why-grass-fed-trumps-grain-fed-and-...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWUlrTJoE70

[3] https://www.exploring-africa.com/en/botswana/san-or-bushmen/...

[4] https://www.fda.gov/food/metals-and-your-food/mercury-levels...

[5] https://blog.dana-farber.org/insight/2016/02/are-grass-fed-b...

Look, the discussions around bad health effects of meat consumption all resolve around heart disease and cancer. The numbers are pretty irrelevant for people below 60 or so. We are essentially optimizing lifespan and are wondering what causes diseases in old age, like 70+.

It makes zero sense to look at bushmen or ask the paleo fairy, because most of them die earlier than most people in developed nations.

If we talk about health and well-being, yes, the average bushman alive is probably healthier than the average 60 year old westerner, because the sick people died in the bush but not here and because they move around a lot more. It is literally comparing the fittest 10% against a society that includes also the sick-but-still-alive.

You know, consuming calories is immensely beneficial and good for your body if you haven’t had a meal for a day. Doesn’t really matter if it’s refined grains or whatever.

Consuming some vitamin-rich whatever is healthy for you if you’re low on those vitamins, otherwise it’s calories and a bunch of work for your liver.

There’s stuff that is objectively bad for your health, almost no matter the circumstances. Like some fried sugar-rich dessert, unless you’ve been starving for a few days it’s probably going to be bad for you on all accounts.

If that's true, it would imply that they don't die of ill health (disease) but of accidents (eaten by lion) or incredibly curable stuff (e.g. bacterial infection).

So their lifestyle is definitely something to mimick / learn from, as we can easily prevent the healthy person dying causes of death in the first world.