Red meat eaten daily raises early death risk

[SivVulk]

New research from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests even moderate consumption of red meat — as little as one serving a day — poses a more serious health risk than first thought.

Investigators followed more than 37,000 men from the Harvard Health Professionals Follow-Up Study and more than 83,000 women from the Harvard Nurses Health Study for up to nearly three decades. Participants filled in detailed questionnaires about their diet and lifestyle every four years.

A total of 23,926 deaths were found during the study period, including 5,910 from cardiovascular disease and 9,464 from cancer. The results were reported by Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard, and his co-authors in this week’s issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

None of the participants had cardiovascular disease or cancer when the study began.

http://www.canadaka.net/link.php?id=74352

Eating one serving of red meat daily is considered moderate?

How many of you actually do ?

[Sparkly Mary]

Now I want a nice porterhouse, medium rare with a really good red wine demi-glase. Or however the hell you spell it...

[Solar]

I mostly eat poultry and fish. I hardly ever eat red meat. I don't wanna be obese at 30 and have heart disease at 50 and be unable to live my life how I want to physically.

[Zordar]

Eating one serving of red meat daily is considered moderate?

How many of you actually do ?

I was wondering when SivVulk would post this.

Anyway, the serving size in this observational study is pretty small. Much smaller than a nice porterhouse.

Here's a pretty good debunking of the idea behind this study (that red meat is a killer). If you can afford regular red meat in your diet, there are a lot of other factors (too many calories, being sedentary, etc.) to take this observation at its face value:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/will-...meat-kill-you/

[optimus]

There's nothing wrong with "red meat." It's food humans evolved on.

[Šñøü†ê®]

What a sec, a "study" was done based on a questionnaire of American idiots! Come on. That is not science. They probably consider a Big Mac to be red meat.

[Mrmint]

Wouldn't be surprised by this. I stick to fruits and veg's and couldn't be more ripped.

[the incredible b]

Wouldn't be surprised by this. I stick to fruits and veg's and couldn't be more ripped.

i dont eat any meat or fish or birds either and i'm kinda chubby. 'vegetarianism' doesnt mean 'healthy diet' any more than meat-eating does. also, neither means 'unhealthy diet'.

[Caffeine]

Saw this follow up article about the Harvard observational study on red meat and increased mortality risk. Harvard is even admitting there wasn't much to the study. If you do not have an allergy to milk and beef, you should be fine. From Dr. Feinman's sight:

"Crimson Slime – Making Americans Afraid of Meat."

http://rdfeinman.wordpress.com/2012/...fraid-of-meat/

...Having turned the media loose to scare the American public, Harvard now admits that the bloggers are correct. The Health NewsBlog allocutes to having reported “relative risks, comparing death rates in the group eating the least meat with those eating the most. The absolute risks… sometimes help tell the story a bit more clearly. These numbers are somewhat less scary.” The figure from the Health News Blog:

Deaths per 1,000 people per year

1 serving unprocessed meat a week 2 servings unprocessed meat a day
Women
7.0

8.5
3 servings unprocessed meat a week 2 servings unprocessed meat a day
Men
12.3

13.0

Definitely less scary. For men, the absolute difference in risk going from 3 servings a week to 14 servings a week is less than 0.1 % per year (the units in the two columns of the table are different, presumably, in order to maintain the deception coefficient). Put another way, you would have to drastically change the eating habits (from 14 to 3 servings) of 1, 429 men to save one life. Well, it’s something. After all for millions of people, it could add up. Or would it? We have to step back and ask what this study is about.

Observational Studies Test Hypotheses but the Hypotheses Must be Testable....

[garyd]

I would like to know exactly how you eliminate all other possibiities from the mix. And let's not forget that a lot of those interviewed work in a very demanding high stress environment. Given that I'd expect the number of early deaths to be much higher.