Red meat mmmmm or hmmm???? Red meat and death, processed meat, saturated fat, sodium
There is a study about red meat and earlier death. Doesn’t sound good does it? The researchers studied 500, 000 people and determined that people who ate mostly processed meat and red meat compared to people who ate mostly white meat died earlier. They did not study vegetarians. In other words this study is not comparing eating red meat versus no meat, but red meat verus white meat. The take home message is that it is better to eat wild fish and white meat(chicken, turkey) than red meat(beef, goat, pork) and processed meat. The study didn’t look into cause of death just association.
What wrong with processed meat? Well, they are high in saturated fat, sodium, and contain chemicals like sodium nitrite which makes meat look fresh when you buy it. What about red meat? It is high in arachadonic acid content which is an inflammatory eicosanoid, and saturated fat. You know about good fats(fish and flax are anti-inflammatory) and bad fats(trans fats and low omega 3 foods are inflammatory). So you can think of arachadonic acid as leading to bad fat.
One problem with the study is that researchers lumped all types of red meat containing food into the same group such as lasagna, processed meat, stews, pizza, hamburgers and hot dogs together. So if we have lasagna with cheese(which is high in saturated fat then we don’t know how much the red meat alone had a negative impact on the subjects health versus the lasagna alone because of the extra fat and calories in lasagna. Also, lean meat is different than hot dogs which are different than hamburgers because of different fat content and preparation.
But at any rate, people who generally eat more red meat also have a variety of those meats and there was still an increase in overall mortality in men and women who ate more red meat versus white meat. So looking at overall mortality, they said that 11% of deaths in men and 16% of deaths in women would have been prevented by significantly avoiding red meat.
Eat a balanced diet and limit red meat intake, have more fruits , veges and fiber
Meat intake and mortality: a prospective study of over half a million.