Red meat remains the big villain in nutritional epidemiology. No matter what disease, health condition or cause of death you choose, there are teams of researchers just itching to connect it directly to how much red meat you eat\u2014which is why every few months there seems to be a new study trying to implicate red meat as the primary cause of death, disease, and climate collapse.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why I was surprised to read the conclusion from the latest in a long line of red meat studies: The evidence against red meat is actually quite weak and even nonexistent.<\/p>\n
What did the study explore when it comes to red meat?<\/h2>\n
The funniest thing about this latest study is that they had to admit they couldn\u2019t find any strong evidence of a link between unprocessed red meat intake and six health outcomes even though they clearly were hoping to. These are the health outcomes they looked at:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Colorectal cancer<\/li>\n
- Type 2 diabetes<\/li>\n
- Ischemic heart disease<\/li>\n
- Ischemic stroke<\/li>\n
- Hemorrhagic stroke<\/li>\n
- Breast cancer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
They combined dozens of different cohorts into one massive cohort for each health outcome, drawing on studies from all over the world to extract the data. Other studies have obviously done the same thing, but this one was attempting to do something different: assess the \u201cstrength\u201d of the evidence in favor of red meat causing heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and all the other stuff using a new tool called The Burden of Proof. The very first sentence of the abstract establishes that they consider red meat to be a \u201crisk factor.\u201d They\u2019ve already bought into it. Now, they just want to figure out how strong the evidence is.<\/p>\n
It turns out that the evidence is very poor. For colorectal cancer, type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, and ischemic heart disease, the evidence of an association with red meat intake is \u201cweak.<\/strong>\u201d For hemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke, the evidence is non-existent<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
And yet these are the ones everyone always focuses on. Search Pubmed<\/em> yourself and you\u2019ll see that there are thousands of studies looking for the links between red meat intake and colorectal cancer, diabetes, stroke, breast cancer, and heart disease.<\/p>\n
Now, they\u2019re still convinced that red meat is bad. They say that a red meat intake of zero grams per day is probably ideal for health, but there\u2019s not enough evidence to justify actually recommending or prescribing that to people. \u201cWe all know\u201d red meat is pretty unhealthy, but we can\u2019t exactly make that an official recommendation\u2026\u00a0yet<\/em>. The evidence just isn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the subtext of the paper.<\/p>\n
Lots of pro-meat people were sharing this on social media, very happy that they weren\u2019t able to find any strong evidence against red meat intake. I don\u2019t think it goes far enough. I think it\u2019s still too hard on red meat. \u201cWeak evidence\u201d isn\u2019t accurate. It\u2019s too kind. The evidence is\u00a0terrible<\/em> and I suspect, if you considered all the relevant variables, it actually points in the opposite direction: toward benefits<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
But you\u2019ll never get that with a typical meta-study.<\/p>\n
Drawbacks to meta-studies<\/h2>\n
You lose granularity when you combine data from hundreds of cohorts from across time and space into one big cohort and try to make connections between red meat intake and various diseases. In nutrition and disease and biology, granularity is everything<\/i>. The little details matter. It\u2019s not just \u201cred meat intake.\u201d It\u2019s everything else. It\u2019s calcium intake. It\u2019s what kinds of oils are used. It\u2019s carb intake. It\u2019s overall fat intake. It\u2019s bodyweight. It\u2019s whether you\u2019re lifting weights or not. Whether you smoke or drink. It\u2019s ethnicity, culture, and cuisine. It\u2019s the entire food way, not just one single component of a broad diet.<\/p>\n
No one in epidemiology is considering all these factors. I don\u2019t quite blame them, as doing so would make an epidemiological paper incredibly unwieldy. Probably wouldn\u2019t work\u2014which is exactly why these papers don\u2019t tell us much at all.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s my issue with this particular paper?<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t go through each and every section of the paper. I\u2019ll look at their section on colorectal cancer. The way they characterize it, they \u201cfound weak evidence of harmful associations between unprocessed red meat consumption and risk of colorectal cancer\u201d after looking at data from 20 different studies on the subject. Results \u201cvaried.\u201d The studies were \u201cinconclusive\u201d and \u201cdidn\u2019t agree.\u201d And that\u2019s it?<\/p>\n
No, you go deeper. You look at individual studies to understand why they don\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n
Why, for instance, did the study they cite in Finnish men find that high intakes of red meat combined with high intakes of dairy are\u00a0protective<\/em> against colon cancer? In other words, the people eating more red meat and dairy in this Finnish male cohort had the lowest rates of colorectal cancer. Isn\u2019t that interesting to the authors of this new meta study? Doesn\u2019t it pique their curiosity about the effect of dairy combined with red meat on colon cancer\u2014at least enough to include dairy as one of the variables they controlled for when considering the broader data?<\/p>\n
Of course not. The only additional variables they adjusted for were BMI, energy intake, and fruit and vegetable intake. The Finnish data is simply \u201cmore data\u201d to be subsumed into the collective cohort.<\/p>\n
You also look at studies they didn\u2019t include, studies they couldn\u2019t include\u2014like randomized controlled trials\u2014because they were outside of the study\u2019s scope. Like this one, that finds when you add extra dairy to the diets of living, breathing humans, their colonic environment becomes less carcinogenic. That\u2019s a direct effect. A causal one. And it doesn\u2019t figure into the conclusions of the meta-study at all.<\/p>\n
Some might say that\u2019s just one example of something they missed. I say it\u2019s not \u201cjust\u201d anything. It\u2019s a huge factor that undermines the and calls the rest of their conclusions into question.<\/p>\n
Bottom Line<\/h2>\n
Ignore these studies. They can be interesting for generating hypotheses, but they don\u2019t provide any answers. It comes down to what it always comes down to: what do you personally get out of eating red meat?<\/p>\n
Has eating more red meat improved your health, performance, cognitive function, body composition, culinary pleasure, and overall life satisfaction? Or has it worsened it? What else matters?<\/p>\n
Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care.<\/p>\n
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