Unless you are vegetarian, chances are that you like meat. Meat is tasty. Meat is essential in the American lifestyle. Without meat, there are no cookouts and BBQs at tailgates and parties. Without meat, the biggest and strongest athletes of our society would not be so big and strong. I cannot even fathom to imagine a life without meat.
Meat is healthy in many ways. According to this article, beef is high in protein, zinc, phosphorus, iron, and vitamin B12. Protein, which is important for building lean muscle, is a huge component in many bodybuilders and athletes. However, studies have shown that eating a diet heavy with meat may have negative consequences. In this article, cancer researchers observed in many studies in England and Germany that vegetarians were much less likely to develop cancer than those who ate meat. You may be thinking that there are many other confounding variables that can cause cancer. That is true, as tobacco and alcohol have all been linked to cancer.
An interesting article tries to explain the mechanism of how red meat can form cancer. Scientists at the University of California were able to find out that a certain sugar in red meat called Neu5Gc causes a negative response from human immune systems, Human immune systems label this sugar as foreign and therefore elicits a response that causes inflammation. When inflammation grows, it can lead to cancer. Neu5Gc is naturally produced in other animals, but not in humans. The scientists performed experiments on mice which were genetically engineered to not produce the sugar and found that the mice developed tumors when they were given the sugar.
In contrast this article by Brian Rigby, who is a performance nutrition specialist and current Master’s Candidate in Nutrition, goes on to explain how eating meat doesn’t necessarily cause cancer. Eating meat increases IGF-1 which stands for insulin-like growth factor 1. Rigby stresses that “IGF-1 does not cause cancer, but could promote the increase of already existing cancerous cells (Rigby)”. Overall, he recommends that eating meat is good for you and that you are more likely to develop a life threatening disease with low levels of IGF-1 than high levels (Rigby).
With many contrasting studies on whether meat causes cancer or not, my take is that there are so many other confounding variables that lead to cancer. One cannot say for certain that meat is the sole reason that people develop cancer and that everyone should stop eating meat.
Picture source:
http://blog.wineguppy.com/food-wine-pairings/pairing-wine-with-steak/
Very curious read. I actually have heard of meat causing cancer before, but I never paid much mind to whether it was true or not. I know the protein in meat is essential to survival, but you also shouldn’t consume too much. I’d be interested in looking at a study the opposite of the one you mentioned. Instead of vegetarians and cancer rates, maybe look at countries (like the Ukraine) where their intake of meat is very high. I know there are still many factors that could contribute, but I would be interested to see the results.
Do you know if more studies lean towards mea causing cancer or more evidence that shows it doesn’t? Also is there a way to attack or get rid of this sugar that is found in red meat? Horrifying to think that the amount of meat I eat on a daily basis could lead to negative consequences, however, finding out more on this subject could influence my opinion. I feel there are a number of food, drinks, and activities that have the potential to cause cancer as well so this is a hard deterrent from me eating meat, at least for right now.
This is a bit alarming, especially for me since I eat meat for every meal of the day. I feel more testing needs to be done and more information needs to be found before we say eating meat causes cancer. With that being said, I am now going to think about what I eat more conciously although that should have been done before. I do not think this will change how much I consume meat because it is too tasty and the benefits of eating it are too tremendous. I could not imagine being a vegetarian just to reduce my chances of developing cancer.
When I saw the title of this post I found myself holding my breath. Meat is delicious, and even though I knew that the correlation was unlikely more than just that, I worried because I love meat! It is very interesting that meat can even be linked to cancer. Although some studies do link the two I still have a hard time believing that the two can be linked. Honestly it seems to me like an illusory correlation, just like crime rates and ice cream sales.