When I was much younger, my family would prepare a type of red meat for dinner about 3 times each week. When I hit around the age of 12, I got so sick of the constant red meat intake that I stopped eating it all around. I solely would eat chicken, turkey, and fish; and I never went back. Now I have red meat, on an average, only twice per year. I have heard some controversy about whether or not is healthier for one to stick to a red meat free diet or not. Before researching, i assumed that it would be much healthier for people to give up eating red meat all together. I hypothesized this because of the high fat content that red meat contains, which could cause many health problems for individuals.
There are many risk factors that consuming red meat causes:
- Hardens blood vessels
- Ups risk for type 2 diabetes
- Cancer
- Cardiovascular diseases
Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health, and his research team, conducted a study between death rate and red meat intake. Their study included 37,000 men and 83,000 women who did not have cardiovascular disease or cancer prior to the start of the study. Every 4 years these individuals filled out questionnaire about their eating habits and every 2 years the scientists gathered information on each participants body weight, if they smoked cigarettes, their physical activity level and other important health factors. “Almost 24,000 participants died during the study, including about 5,900 from cardiovascular disease and about 9,500 from cancer.” These were the individuals who consumed the largest amounts of red meat. This was an observational study meaning that some of the individuals could have lied on their questionnaire or other third variables effecting how the results could have been altered. Also, if their was a control group and an experimental group for this study it could have better linked red meat to mortality rates. Ultimately, to get fully accurate results more research would have to be conducted on this topic.
What is known, is that carnitine, a bacteria found in red meat, can greatly increase ones chance of getting a heart attack, stroke, or die. Researchers found that replacing 1 serving a day of foods such as “fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, low-fat dairy and whole grains” for red meat could lower ones death rate from 7 to 19 percent. This is a large enough percentage that individuals should consider substituting some of their food intakes for a healthier substitute to have a better positive impact on their overall heath. The high intakes of cholesterol, and saturated fats in red meat are what can also cause these many health risks.
Even though, it is not 100% proven that red meat should be completely eliminated from humans diets, does not mean that we all should not look at the many risk factors that are associated with large intakes of red meat. Their are many substitutes, such as having a chicken or turkey burger instead of regular hamburger. As long as individuals are conscientious of how much red meat they are really eating they can continue having it but have more proportional amounts of it less often.
This pretty much makes up my mind for never eating red. I never understood how people enjoyed red meat and looked at me weird for ordering well done. After reading this I’m going to be the one looking at them weirdly. That study is very convincing and very hard to argue. After doing some research it can be seen that red meat in small proportions is alright. However there is better red meat to eat then others when it comes to the small proportions you are choosing, like lean cuts of beef and pork. Even with that I will continue to stay completely away from red meat as I see no health benefits and do not find any taste benefits in it either.
You have chose a very nice topic for all of us who saw this post. You explained your hypothesis with lots of very effective references. Thanks for your effort.
It is quiet surprising to hear that what I consume almost everyday have such a bad influence on my health, especially after knowing that it could lower the death rate by 7-19% if replace those raw meets by others. I never expect to hear theories like this based on the fact that dated back to the old days our ancients are consuming lots of red meet to survive. Evolution could makes us different and I could only thinking how our body get used to red meet though evolution rather than how red meet put our life in danger. But I indeed heard about similar theories regarding eating less red meet from elders several times, but all they mentioned were eating seafood, especially fish is somehow a better option to us. I guess none of them knows the fact that it could differs this much. I mean red meet could even shorten our life period. No one wants that.
I did not see the detail of how the Harvard team figured out it could reduce our death rate by 7~19%, but it seems quiet likely suffer the Texas Sharpshooter problem since they needs lots of data to monitor those people’s lifestyle.
We should consider the way we cook the materials also. Studies shows that red meet may makes us have a higher chance of cancer, type-2 diabetes, heart attack. While what we should also consider is how we cooked those meet. Since less people are grill white meet than red meet that could also be a reason why red meet seems so dangerous to us.
I do believe that we needs to have a healthy routine no matter what we are eating. As long as we could manage ourself, I’d rather to take the acceptable risk instead of say no to a huge general.
http://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/article/red-meat-bad-or-good-for-you
http://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/article/grilling-good-or-bad-for-health
Thank you for posting this, because I too do not eat red meat anymore. I started about 9 months ago when my stomach started to feel gross when I ate red meat, and I have rarely turned back since. This article does make a lot of sense, but another reason not to eat as much red meat such as beef would be environmental impact. I know, doesn’t make sense at first, but cows produce methane and put it into the atmosphere, there is also a lot of deforestation, mostly rainforests, to make cattle ranching farms. So eating a bit less steak is not only good for you, but if enough people did it it would help the environment!
http://www.prevention.com/food/healthy-eating-tips/10-reasons-stop-eating-red-meat?slide=6
It’s very interesting how red meat could actually lead to a wide range of diseases in one’s life or later on down the line. Though red meat is undoubtedly a great source of protein, iron, zinc, phosphorus and other valuable nutrients maybe it really could be harmful if eaten on a daily basis over a long period of time. Now what I wonder is if what type of red meat can affect these results. I’ve heard a few years ago that pork for example has higher rates of fat and cholesterol than cow meat and could potentially be detrimental to one’s health. Also, we have to keep in mind that everything should be consumed in moderation. In the study you cited the participants that died had the higher rates of consuming red meat but in reality how much red meat did they actually eat and how many times per day? If they were individuals who ate red meat for every meal of the day one can see why that could lead to health complications. Over consumption of any foods could lead to complications, specially protein which is harder for the body to digest overall.
I think that it would be very interesting to see if this is the reason that certain religions don’t allow the consumption of red meat. Also, I agree with what you said about the observational study. People aren’t always too accurate on questionnaires and even if one was being honest, perhaps a third variable could be that those taking in the most red meat also take in an abundance of other foods high in cholesterol, causing the cardiovascular disease. Overall, great blog!
This is a really interesting blog post. I’m curious about why there is a higher percent of women (69%) of women in the study compared to men (31%). I did some research about cardiovascular disease, that they were studying as a result of red meat. It turns out that cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women. Source. That makes sense then for them to recruit more women. As for other studies, Stanley Hazen of the Lerner Research Institute, that looked at the affect of red meat on the heart. The results show that red meat increases indigestion and chances of heart disease. Source.