As truly gluten free-ers, we tend to eat a lot of meat so this media hype recently could have been a little concerning. Here is a post I have just written on the Purehealth blog which you may wish to read:
You can’t fail to have noticed the latest ‘this will kill you’ media hype recently: this time about eating red meat.
I will refer you to a fab dismantling of the study at the heart of the headlines in a bit, but first my take on it.
My immediate questions were: what are they calling ‘red’ meat? If it includes processed meat products, then I would imagine they found it would. Despite the headlines saying it was unprocessed meat, I find that hamburgers were included. So, not unprocessed then.
My next question was: what kind of study was this? Is it a controlled experiment to measure the differences or an observational study? The latter using recall questionnaires, I see. That means people who can barely remember what they ate this morning had to recall what they ate days before. Also, we know people hardly ever tell the truth on these things. An observational study means we should look more into a suspected link; it does not draw conclusions, no matter what the media and researchers say.
Third question: how do we know it was the red meat that dun it? The researchers did correlate the info with other lifestyle practices and, unsurprisingly, people who were eating the most red meat were also less likely to be physically active and to smoke. So, there is no way we can say it was the meat.
Image via Wikipedia
My view is that some red meat is positively good for you. Patients are often surprised when I advise beef quite often (some lamb, never pork). But, I always qualify it by adding it should be organic, free range, cooked at low temperature and preferably grass fed. A totally different beast to the usual fare. Literally.
To read more on this, check here: Will Eating Red Meat Kill You? I’m sure there will be much more on this and I will bring anything else interesting I see to you.
Related articles
- Will Eating Red Meat Kill You? (neatorama.com)