Red meat increases cancer and heart risk!

Sid Bonkers said:

So Frank Hu has just been wasting his time for the last 28 years then pianoman.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure I understand your meaning Sid???

Frank Hu has not been doing this study for 28 years.. no-one has been sat over anyone's shoulder recording what they ate. It was general FFQ data collected (every 4 years) over 22 and 28 years from health Professionals in the USA that has been re-examined with a new spin and used to draw some [very questionable] conclusions -- interesting and worthy of follow-up with real science to be sure but not good enough to be stating "13% risk!!!" or whatever the newspapers are trumpeting.

Take a look at the questionnaire yourself and imagine how you would complete that once every 4 years... how accurately would it reflect your daily diet?

---

Here is an educational while entertaining, presentation about how to interpret research... [youtube]y1RXvBveht0[/youtube]

Incidentally, as I see that Phoenix's link to the Full Study is no longer working here is the Abstract http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/archinternmed.2011.2287 where I note that Frank Hu MD, PhD is only one of several authors, with An Pan PhD being listed first.

AND... while in the Results section they may go overboard with suggesting estimates of risk (as ravenously taken up by the news media), in the Conclusions they do correctly state the associations which are all they can honestly say based on this study.

Conclusions Red meat consumption is associated with an increased risk of total, CVD, and cancer mortality. Substitution of other healthy protein sources for red meat is associated with a lower mortality risk.

Click to expand...

borofergie said:

Here is everyone's favourite Science Writer Gary Taubes' take on this story, which is as ever thought provoking:
http://garytaubes.com/2012/03/science-p ... -and-meat/

Click to expand...

Beautiful stuff!

chain smoking alcoholic couch potatoes are usually great craic. Is my experience

al_leister said:

chain smoking alcoholic couch potatoes are usually great craic. Is my experience

Click to expand...

Not sure. Think I prefer the company of Girl Scouts.

(In a Police Station somewhere a little red buzzer just went off).

Sid Bonkers said:

So Frank Hu has just been wasting his time for the last 28 years then pianoman.

Click to expand...

:lol:

That's a great job, 28 years with nothing to do but watch people eat themselves to death.

Sid Bonkers said:

it seems the same people who loved Fu's conclusions on fats are now calling his work flawed. So if red meat is fine then by association fat must be bad

Click to expand...

:silent: :wink: :lol:

pianoman said:

Incidentally, as I see that Phoenix's link to the Full Study is no longer working here is the Abstract http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/archinternmed.2011.2287 where I note that Frank Hu MD, PhD is only one of several authors, with An Pan PhD being listed first.

AND... while in the Results section they may go overboard with suggesting estimates of risk (as ravenously taken up by the news media), in the Conclusions they do correctly state the associations which are all they can honestly say based on this study.

Conclusions Red meat consumption is associated with an increased risk of total, CVD, and cancer mortality. Substitution of other healthy protein sources for red meat is associated with a lower mortality risk.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

No problems with agreeing with that. As I already have an increased risk of CVD , I'd prefer to remain on a diet that includes some red meat but more fish and poultry, and very little factory processed meat of any variety. (though I have to admit my elderly and often very fit neighbours eat huge amounts of locally made charcuterie. I suspect though that the methods of processing and preservation are very different to the typical US factory made variety,)

As I said, I have reservations about dietary recall in any study. Do we believe anyone when they say what they eat?. Even dietitians trained to take food diaries don't do it accurately, non dietitians were even worse. http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=379)

There were of course several researchers involved with this study . Hu is the corresponding author on this paper, Dr Pan is a research fellow and probably did much of the work. These were prospective studies.

For those on low carb forums who are concerned about this study, I have suggested the same reasonable approach: LCHF is not tied at the hip to red meat (it can be done as a vegan, although vegetarian is easier) and for myself I already include around two days per week where I eat wild, cold-water fish. My local source for beef, lamb and pork is a small operation that includes both the farming and butchering... so I have no concerns over quality or processing.

I accept the limitation of both these studies and I suspect that we would have had a similar conversation had the Sat Fat study published results like "We estimated that substitutions of 1 serving per day of other foods (including saturated animal fats) for 1 serving per day of sugar and/or refined starches were associated with a 7% to 19% lower mortality risk." And I would have agreed with you that they have no basis to be making such claims; simply using data from a study that used dietary recall. That is my concern with this red meat study, they did offer baseless estimates and the press have run with them.

The Sat Fat study never did make headlines the way this red meat one has... which I also find quite telling.