Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-021-01922-9

by pseudolus • 5 years ago

150 252 5 years ago

bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com

m4tthumphrey• 5 years ago

So... don't eat processed meat. Doesn't this just correlate with what we already knew?

pedro-guimaraes• 5 years ago

Do you even find unprocessed meat these days?

eptcyka• 5 years ago

You can just buy cuts of meat at any grocery store in most western countries, can you not?

relativeadv2• 5 years ago

I take processed meat to mean deli meats, bacon, and cured ham. Additives are one of the things that make them damaging.

Is a filet mignon, ground beef, or chick thighs processed? Sure. But i don't think that is what we're talking about here.

ciceryadam2• 5 years ago

Here in Czech republic / Slovakia it's enough to read the label - if it says fresh meat, it's unprocessed meat. If it's processed, the label cannot say fresh meat anymore, it has to say meat product.

dmos62• 5 years ago

I'm not sure what the conclusion of this study is, but I'd like to point out that it is not the role of science to be controversial or surprising. It's really a pity that researchers who get non-exciting results feel like they've failed.

loceng3• 5 years ago

It's the role of science to be as accurate and precise as possible, and the vast majority - perhaps even all of them - fail to take into account enough variables to make it actually relevant; e.g. observational studies that target red meat being eaten don't usually differentiate from a healthy diet with red meat, high fat vs. low fat meat consumptions, nor account for what else a person is eating - e.g. ketogenic diet, if no sugars/carbs, etc.

adtac• 5 years ago

Unprocessed red meat intake was associated with a higher risk of IHD (ischemic heart disease), pneumonia, diverticular disease, colon polyps, and diabetes

Lower risk of IDA (Iron deficiency anaemia), but you have a higher risk with the above five

pgt• 5 years ago

The term "positive association" makes it hard to parse. The results state: "most of the positive associations observed for meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjustment for body mass index (BMI)", but the Conclusion says:

Higher unprocessed red meat, processed meat, and poultry meat consumption was associated with higher risks of several common conditions; higher BMI accounted for a substantial proportion of these increased risks suggesting that residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations. Higher unprocessed red meat and poultry meat consumption was associated with lower IDA risk.

So basically 'Red meat is fine but we found a correlation between heart disease and obesity'?

pedro_hab• 5 years ago

They have a "Role of BMI" section which strengthens your point.

BMI accounted for a substantial proportion

In the "Role of BMI" they also say that BMI isn't perfect to detect adiposity, suggesting even further that being fat is what you want to avoid.

Finally, given the observational nature of this study, it is possible that there is still unmeasured confounding, residual confounding, and reverse causality.

Studying human diets is hard.

autosharp• 5 years ago

No, that is not what it says.

In multi-variable adjusted (including BMI)

So after correcting for BMI, meat consumption is still bad.

tankenmate2• 5 years ago

No, that is not what it said.

The summary says "higher BMI accounted for a substantial proportion of these increased risks suggesting that residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations"

That means that a substantial proportion of the increased risk is explained by a higher BMI. Unfortunately the summary doesn't say how much "substantial" is.

jonnycomputer2• 5 years ago

After correcting for BMI, but BMI is an imperfect proxy for adiposity: "...residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations"

Spooky233• 5 years ago

Meatless is the new “low fat” boogieman.

Coincidentally, industrial food producers have discovered that it is cheaper and more profitable to sell ground up peas and plant oil as “meat”, water rinsed through oats as milk, etc.

All of the “problems” with meat are market issues. Animal welfare issues are due to industrial farming practices, which will get worse if the industry declines. Land use and environmental issues are all about the market conditions, which are literally putting sustainable meat and dairy business out of business.

The “solutions” of fake substitutes are PR driven narratives.

uxcolumbo4• 5 years ago

So if factory farms reduce or disappear - animal welfare will get worse?

I don't quite follow.

dashundchen2• 5 years ago

Coincidentally, industrial food producers have discovered that it is cheaper and more profitable to sell ground up peas and plant oil as “meat”, water rinsed through oats as milk, etc.
The “solutions” of fake substitutes are PR driven narratives.

I think you are looking for a conspiracy where there is none. Those newer alternative meat products are not the basis of a healthy plant-based diet - they are treats that actually are marketed towards meat eaters. Ask any veg/ans you know what they eat as staples; it's not expensive Impossible or Beyond burgers, but tofu, tempeh, beans, legumes, and seitan.

I also doubt that the problems with meat can be fixed at its current scale. A trope in the vegan community is every meat eater has a neighbor raising organic grass-fed cattle on acres of land that he lovingly slaughters.

The reality is, almost all animal agriculture in the US is factory farming style CAFOs.

[0] "Using data from the 2017 USDA Census of Agriculture, which was released this month, it is estimated that 70.4 percent of cows, 98.3 percent of pigs, 99.8 percent of turkeys, 98.2 percent of chickens raised for eggs, and over 99.9 percent of chickens raised for meat are raised in factory farms"

Cattle especially are not grass fed, they are stuffed with corn, soy, and other food grown at a rapid clip with petro fertilizer. There is not enough grazing land in the country to produce meat at the scale it's consumed here.

[0] https://plantbasednews.org/culture/factory-farms-study/

You can dive into the USDA numbers yourself here.

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2017/Full_Re...

fallingknife• 5 years ago

The plant based ones are. But there are some companies that are trying to grow meat out of cultured muscle cells, and that could be an actual solution.

tankenmate2• 5 years ago

And even with the confounding factors the increase in risk is 7% to 44% (with means for various diagnoses varying from 15% to 31%). But the study summary doesn't indicate what the rate of those diseases in the study sample population is; i.e. for example an increase in the rate of diagnosis from 0.1% to 0.12% probably isn't going to bother most people.

jonnycomputer2• 5 years ago

It is a good point, but I suppose what matters is incidence of disease in total (or all cause mortality); those small increases can add up.

YeGoblynQueenne• 5 years ago

"Positive association" means "yes, there is an association". I think of it as answering the question "is there an association?" in the positive.

"Positive association" doesn't mean that there was an association with a "positive", as in "beneficial" result.

The study found that this positive association with health risks was "attenuated" (read: reduced across its range) after adjusting for BMI, meaning there is also a positive association with BMI that confounds the effort to draw a firm conclusion from the studied data.

This is clarified further in the rest of the paper:

Role of BMI

In the present study, most of the positive associations between meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjusting for BMI, suggesting that BMI was a strong confounder or possible mediator for many of the meat and disease associations. BMI is an important risk factor for many of the diseases examined (e.g. diabetes [7]). BMI was highest in participants who consumed meat most frequently, and some previous studies have found that high meat consumption is associated with weight gain [56, 57], but it is unclear whether this indicates any specific impact of meat or an association in these populations of high meat intakes with high total energy intakes. The associations of meat with disease risk reported here which remain after adjustment for BMI might still be due to higher adiposity, because BMI is not a perfect measure of this characteristic; we observed similar effects when adjusting for waist circumference (results not shown), but, as with BMI, waist circumference is not a perfect measure of adiposity and there could still be residual confounding.

dagorenouf4• 5 years ago

Since meat is seen as unhealthy nowadays, most people who still eat lots of it also tend to be part of the "don't care about health" crowd (smokers, drinkers, people who don't exercise...).

What if don't drink, don't smoke, do regular exercise, not obese... and eat lots of high quality meat? I haven't seen anything that comes close to showing that this would be unhealthy.

These studies are quick to point to conclusions. Remember that time where every "scientific" study pointed at fat as the big culprit behind heart problems? When it was sugar all along?

30 years later the narrative has become: all animal products are bad for you. Stop eating eggs and meat, and eat grains, it's better for the planet too!

People are getting duped, even on HN, it's depressing.

NoOneNew5• 5 years ago

You bring up the point that really pisses me off in these studies. They treat a mcdonalds big mac as the same quality of meat as a grass fed steak or free range chicken breast. While grain free and free range is always best, even commercially produced grain fed cooked healthy is miles better than mickey d chicken nuggets. Lumping all these together as "meat consumption" is incredibly misleading. Most of these anti meat studies seem to still rely on the idea the "food pyramid" is still gospel.

pachico• 5 years ago

What if don't drink, don't smoke, do regular exercise, not obese... and eat lots of high quality meat? I haven't seen anything that comes close to showing that this would be unhealthy

I think the documentary "the game changers" addresses precisely that.

loceng3• 5 years ago

It's the ideologues referencing terrible observation studies, along with the health food industrial complex tapping into that arguably relatively irrational demand.

One problem is there isn't enough high quality meat available - high fat red meat in particular - however there are trends developing including ketogenic, carnivore diets, etc - as well as people buying half or full cows (much much cheaper) and then freezing it; plus then you can actually meat [freudian slip pun, I'm leaving it] the cow and see how it's cared for, etc - tying into the benefits, value of local.

smcl• 5 years ago

Don’t researchers generally try to control for such factors when making a study like this? I am at work so I’m a little too busy to pick through this one right now, but it sounds like you’re concerned about this, so it’s worth checking before drawing any conclusions

dwighttk• 5 years ago

I wonder what is a good way to love sedentary obese smokers who eat poorly.

cageface4• 5 years ago

When it was sugar all along?

Er no, people were told to stop eating fat but of course they didn't and average calorie intake went up in all categories. Sugar intake in the US peaked years ago but Americans are fatter than ever. Chicken and cheese consumption is through the roof.

Like the article says, being overweight is very unhealthy and almost any diet that keeps you from gaining weight is going to reduce your risks of a lot of illness.

The advantage of a plant based diet is that it's a lot kinder to the earth and to our animal cousins while also helping you avoid obesity.

uxcolumbo4• 5 years ago

I don't think that's the narrative.

The narrative is factory farmed meat & dairy is not good for you, not good for the people working in that industry and it's not good for our biosphere, e.g. deforestation, pollution etc.

And of course it's absolutely bad for the animals involved, but most people don't care about animal welfare or don't even think about it.

If people must eat meat for whatever reason then the healthiest option would be to hunt or raise & kill your animals or buy from people who do, but it also comes with the associated price tag.

onebot7• 5 years ago

> These studies are quick to point to conclusions. Remember that time where every "scientific" study pointed at fat as the big culprit behind heart problems? When it was sugar all along?

I mean there is just insurmountable evidence that fat is correlated to heart disease. What is so ironic is that some journalists with no medical backgrounds write a book about "The Big Fat Lie" and now it is sugar that is the cause with not much scientific research to back it up. Sugar is bad and inflammatory for sure, but mountains and mountains of research on fat and heart disease are somehow all wrong now?

Broken_Hippo• 5 years ago

What if don't drink, don't smoke, do regular exercise, not obese... and eat lots of high quality meat? I haven't seen anything that comes close to showing that this would be unhealthy.

If this is the case, you are also more likely to be financially comfortable as this is an expensive diet. It just isn't possible if you are poor enough, but plenty of vegetarian meals based on beans, rice/grain, and vegetables are.

dennis_jeeves• 5 years ago

People are getting duped, even on HN, it's depressing.

Welcome to my world!. ( Not just HN really, it extends to most people on this planet)

gexla• 5 years ago

And also, don't eat processed meat.

There's a big difference between someone who eats a lot of high quality meat with no regard for pricing and someone who lives who gets meat consumption from cheap canned goods. I would guess the latter has a higher rate of obesity.

hutzlibu• 5 years ago

Also, whatever stuff is there in the cheap meat. Antibiotics and co. Very cheap food they got. Stress hormones ...

NiceWayToDoIT• 5 years ago

Sugars are far verse than meet, and for some reasons in the UK, it is an ingredient of most processed foods. (even the salty ones like cans, ready meals, pastries, pasta, sometimes they are sweetening salads...)

I guess sugar does not create CO2 while it grows so (it binds Carbon), so political idea is to create a narrative that will decrease usage of meat/dairy. But even if we all stop eating meat/dairy sheer number of people and population growth will again create CO2 emission in some other way.

Shivetya2• 5 years ago

Well I am not so sure. First off they measure very little outside of meat consumption, the chart has a line for fruits/vegetables and grains, but this surely does not account for the whole diet. I want to see the consumption of processed foods and such combined with meats.

Ten percent are active smokers and the alcohol numbers look really high to someone like me who never drinks.

What I want to see are numbers where people with healthy habits who consume meat and their outcomes. This means no measurable smoking or drinking. When there are some truly adverse numbers associated with smoking and drinking it really needs to have those risk factors removed as much as possible to get good results.

fr2null• 5 years ago

From my personal experience, people that eat less or no meat have a healthier lifestyle in general. I am wondering if that also plays a part in the results.

skinkestek• 5 years ago

It is a general thing.

Back when being atheist was a tough choice and being some kind of religious was the default choice I think there was more thoughtful people in the atheist camp.

Today as the tides turn one finds that the same annoying thoughtless people are atheists if that is the default.

Im the same way it doesn't surprise me at all that one find some of the healthiest people are vegerarians (or mostly meat), I think there's a huge overlap between those groups and those that generally think carefully about what they eat instead of just eating whatever processed food is cheap.

Going forward I think we'll see more unhealthy vegetarians.

bena4• 5 years ago

You already do. Oreos are technically vegan. Margarine is already a plant-based butter substitute.

The Impossible Whopper is no better or worse for you than a regular Whopper by any metric.

It is pretty easy to be a fat vegetarian today.

digitalsushi• 5 years ago

I wonder if the general avoidance of a specific food or ingredient is enough extra conscious effort to generally improve the baseline quality of what that individual is consuming.

Without resorting to an anecdote, my point is that it might simply be easier to accidentally eat healthier food when one has to abide by the contents of the packaging.

satellite2• 5 years ago

So it seems that high BMI / adiposity is still the leading cause for those 25 adverse health outcomes and that high meat consumption is simply correlated with high total energy consumption.

It will be interesting to see if WHO revise its recommendations regarding meat consumption.

dawg-• 5 years ago

Interesting. Maybe the new rule should be "Eat red meat if you want, just don't let it make you fat".

virtuallynathan3• 5 years ago

If you eat almost exclusively red meat, and not the things that commonly go with it, it’s quite hard to get fat. Meat is very very satiating.

joncrane• 5 years ago

Isn't it more "eat red meat if you want, just don't BE fat?"

I mean a person can eat a hamburger a day and still be thin, in my experience it's the fries, coke, twinkies and pop tarts and stuff that make you fat.

vitus2• 5 years ago

I doubt it. The WHO recommendations are based on extensive research linking red meat consumption to increased risk of colorectal cancer. This article explores the association of meat consumption with various non-cancer conditions.

(background section describes that in more detail)

hvidgaard• 5 years ago

It's it the searing that contains the problematic components and not so much the red meat in and of itself?

irjustin• 5 years ago

The title seems to muddle the conclusion.

    higher BMI accounted for a substantial proportion of these increased risks suggesting that residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations.

I'm confused. What is a "substantial portion" of the increased risk?

tralarpa• 5 years ago

You can see that in table 6ff in the "additional file 1" (it's a docx file). For example, before adjustement for the BMI, the increase of ischemic heart disease per 70g/daily red and processed meat consumption is 1.26 (model 2). With BMI adjustment (model 3) it's 1.15.

fastball2• 5 years ago

I'm just gonna say it: epidemiological studies suck and we need something better.

Humans and their lives are just too multi-variate, even with nearly ~500k people in a study.

All you end up with are correlations – I've basically never seen a study like this that manages to demonstrate causality convincingly.

nextos• 5 years ago

To infer causality you need interventions. Although there are some methods to infer causal relationships from observational data (e.g. see Pearl or Spirtes' work, which is ignored by most epidemiologists).

I think the biggest problem is that they are not measuring low level molecular variables like metabolites, or abundances of gut bacteria. Hence, it's pretty hard to infer a causal chain. And since controlling for covariates is so hard, inferring something useful is difficult.

hntrader2• 5 years ago

controlling for covariates is so hard

Especially when the purported effects are small/clinically insignificant.

diydsp• 5 years ago

The gold standard to establish causation is the 2x blind random placebo-controlled study. There are many of them assessing various types of foods, from meat to lychee to soy and everything in between. Many biomarkers in the body can be studied such as stress hormones, markers of inflammation, lipid panels, arterial wall thickness, etc. If you poke around on youtube, you can find smart people presenting this research! Most of them are health influencers. Personally, I follow Drs. Gregor, Rhonda Patrick, Fung, Mike Hetzel Thoms Delauer and the rest of this particular cohort. They all have their separate biases and areas of interest, such as fasting, muscle gain, veganism, grass-fed beef, ketosis, etc, but if you find the intersection of their work, you'll have an excellent idea what is good and bad for you and how much you can get away with!

To distill two of the most valuable things I've learned:

1. The Mediterranean diet seems to be the healthiest and closest to the Western and American diets, although its actual form has some key differences from the received wisdom. In particular, its pasta is a whole-grain variety and the fish consumption is less than once per day.

2. Most people are not fat-adapted and their bodies do a poor job of metabolizing fat! Typically this requires fasting or other forms of intermittent ketosis to get the body producing fat-burning enzymes. This is likely the source of a lot of conflicting info on fat. It's perfectly excellent for you - if you are fat-adapted, you will use it for energy and won't experience 3pm brainfog. But if you're not, it will very quickly create adipose tissue (body fat!) that continuously emits cytokines (poison) that sabotage your health.

3. Stress alters our metabolism for the worse! Since so many of us are stressed we're not performing proper digestion and not getting the right benefits from what we eat! Breathing exercises, etc. can help improve this.

Bakary• 5 years ago

The Mediterranean diet is only superficially close to the American one. It would be more accurate to speak of separate lifestyles than diets. The relationship to food that Americans have is almost completely alien to what most Italians experience, although with the spread of American culture this might not last beyond a few generations.

It's a bit like what used to be called the 'French paradox' in that American observers mistook a tradition of rich foods as the constant ingestion of such food.

fastball2• 5 years ago

Double-blind random placebo-controlled doesn't automatically demonstrate causation either. Humans are just too multi-variate.

argvargc• 5 years ago

John Robbins (would-be heir to the Baskin & Robbins empire) wrote a book examining the social, exercise and diet cultures of four of the known longest-living cohesive groups of people in the world. These were/are isolated or otherwise somehow physically-bounded societies who regularly have members living healthy lives at over 100 years of age (for example, no cancer, no degraded eyesight etc), and in a much higher proportion than is normally expected.

He was curious as to whether these groups of people, known to live a long time and even be healthy in their old age, had anything in common.

And they did.

They all exercised a lot.

They all had very strong social and community connections.

The all ate a mostly-vegan diet, punctuated with small amounts of animal product (in quantities varying from a portion every few weeks, to a few times a week but for only a couple of months of the year - for seasonal reasons).

He attempted to also prove, that taking any one of the above three commonalities away, was enough to invalid the results.

It's an interesting book, for sure.

Unfortunately, it has the terrible, baity title of: "Healthy At 100", and an even worse sub-title I won't repeat. But other than that mis-step (possibly at the hands of a publishing company), it's a good, well-referenced read.

amarant• 5 years ago

Good study! Results aren't terribly surprising, but verification needs doing too!I for one applaud it!

samblr• 5 years ago

Wish there was a better way to represent these stats.

zpeti• 5 years ago

So, for someone who isn't good at reading scientific papers - if my BMI is low but I consume a lot of meat, how much worse is that than being vegetarian?

qayxc4• 5 years ago

No one can say. It depends on many factors: your general health, age, genetic disposition, the composition of the rest of your diet, your general lifestyle (e.g. exercise, drug consumption, social status, mental health, ...).

If you are a homeless drug addict, being a vegan or vegetarian won't help improving your overall health. Likewise, being a well-off employed young individual in a stable and happy relationship who does regular health-checkups is more than enough to counter the daily 250g rare steak...

vlod8• 5 years ago

Depends what kind of death you're trying to avoid. :) BMI is not the 100% indicator of being healthy.

i.e. you can still be 'skinny as a rake' and be type-2 diabetic.

vharuck• 5 years ago

Higher consumption of unprocessed red and processed meat combined was associated with higher risks of... pneumonia (1.31, 1.18-1.44 [95% CI])

That surprised me. The article later gives a hypothesis that plentiful iron is good for pathogens, citing a separate and interesting article:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23684303

hfsp• 5 years ago

Let's follow the money.

Said "scientific study" is funded by Wellcome. An arm of WHO, unelected crisis manufacturer supreme. On wellcome's site:

"Reducing meat intake, particularly in the USA where meat consumption is highest, should be a global priority."

Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome.

boldslogan2• 5 years ago

Can you link to the part of Wellcome being against meat consumption? They look like a charity about vaccination or such?

I couldn't find anything here about meat consumption:

https://wellcome.org/about-us

nathanasmith• 5 years ago

The page on the site with the specific quote by GP is here: https://wellcome.org/grant-funding/people-and-projects/grant...

You may already realize this but if you type

site:wellcome.org "Reducing meat intake, particularly in the USA where meat consumption is highest, should be a global priority."

into Google you'll find it.

La1n• 5 years ago

This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust, Our Planet Our Health (Livestock, Environment and People - LEAP) [grant number 205212/Z/16/Z]; Cancer Research UK [grant numbers C8211/A19170 and C8211/A29017]; and the UK Medical Research Council [grant number MR/M012190/1]. AP-C is supported by a Cancer Research UK Population Research Fellowship [grant number C60192/A28516] and by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF UK), as part of the WCRF International grant programme [grant number 2019/1953].

And cancer research. But you didn't bring that up.

edit: Also not "An arm of WHO", they partner with them cause priorities (public health) are aligned.

qayxc4• 5 years ago

I don't get the unhealthy obsession with "unelected" in some people.

A proper -mediocracy- meritocracy (i.e. it's actual skills and qualification that counts) is preferable over any kind of popularity contest. That's not to say the WHO in particular works by this standard, I just find it very irritating if people insist on every position or institution - especially very specialised ones - being subject to elections.

That just doesn't make sense and can have horrifying consequences (see [1] for an example). There are positions (in my example: medical examiners), that simply cannot be adequately filled by laypeople and amateurs. That's not how a complex society works. It's not the middle ages anymore and most professions and many official positions require training, experience, and qualifications.

That's why I don't get the obsession with everyone needing to be "elected" (and by that I assume you mean by the general public, because WHO positions in particular are in fact awarded by elections).

[1] https://youtu.be/hnoMsftQPY8?t=277

GongOfFour2• 5 years ago

A proper mediocracy

While I think mediocracy is more accurate, I think you meant "meritocracy".

pfortuny• 5 years ago

Caveat: UK citizens all of them. Not the best country for an healthy diet.

simonsarris• 5 years ago

Almost all studies of this kind are extremely confounded because food survey data is close to universally bad. It is especially bad on this topic in the US and UK, because many people's idea of a serving of meat is actually closer to fried breaded bread, with condiment levels of meat on top. It would be crazy to lump those people in with the "steak and eggs for dinner 3 times a week" crowd, but they always are.

Results are different, often opposite, in countries that have a better relationship to meat, like the big Austrian food survey study from 2014: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917888/

Moreover, our results showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with poorer health (higher incidences of cancer, allergies, and mental health disorders), a higher need for health care, and poorer quality of life.

Other survey data across several countries often replicate the meatless = lower mental health claims, eg: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2020.1...

(This should come as no surprise to people who have read about B12 and mental health, which is a relationship so extraordinary that I'm surprised its not more front-and-center.)

But again, food survey data is generally bad. Some are okay, when they are very focused, like the Swedish studies on dairy product consumption. But most of them are bad, and the more general, the worse they are.

blfr• 5 years ago

Food surveys and food diaries are hilariously bad[1]. I'm surprised any studies based on them are still getting published.

There was literally a reality TV show in England based around how terribly inaccurate food diaries are. It's on YouTube[2].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4527547/figure/...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=secret+eaters

jtdev7• 5 years ago

Studies like this are published for political reasons, not scientific reasons. I wouldn't be surprised if the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is behind this study.

xphilter• 5 years ago

That show is incredible. Thanks for sharing. There’s a corollary with Covid in there somewhere: “we’re taking this so seriously” (but then hanging out with friends etc, like that SNL skit).

User233• 5 years ago

To further concur, when I was engineering my own body composition improvement plan I quickly learned to completely ignore any study that wasn’t performed in a controlled metabolic ward. Which is, essentially, a voluntary prison. Needless to say participant compensation is considerably more costly than the totally unscientific alternatives so such studies are rare.

mywittyname• 5 years ago

Daily meat consumption is probably something people can gauge with a high degree of accuracy. People in developed countries are probably all-or-nothing unless they are actively trying to reduce their meat consumption while not being vegetarian.

anandrm• 5 years ago

Its just not about the diet but also lifestyle matters(exercise ,teetotaler,profession) . I am surprised why these studies do not involve that as an index ?

tgb• 5 years ago

This one does:

In Model 1, we estimated hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) adjusted for race, Townsend deprivation index [20], education, employment, smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical activity, and in women, we additionally adjusted for menopausal status, hormone replacement therapy, oral contraceptive pill use, and parity. In Model 2, we further adjusted for total fruit and vegetable intake, cereal fibre intake score (calculated by multiplying the frequency of consumption of bread and breakfast cereal by the fibre content of these foods [21]), oily fish intake, and non-oily fish intake. For Model 3, we added adjustment for body mass index (BMI).

jtdev7• 5 years ago

Oh hey, look who funds Wellcome: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Gran...

navbaker• 5 years ago

Is there an insight we are supposed to gain from this connection?

adenadel2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but the Wellcome Trust is a large organization with an endowment worth tens of billions of dollars and a variety of funding sources. Your link shows a number of moderately sized grants for mostly infectious disease projects.

thrwyoilarticle2• 5 years ago

In a similar way, if you reduce your meat consumption by 80%, you're 80% of the way to the environmental benefits of a wholly vegan diet. Isn't it easier to convince someone to reduce their meat intake than to eliminate it completely?

thaumasiotes4• 5 years ago

Probably not.

My favorite trivia here is a study which documented that, of people who self-describe as "vegetarian", one third will admit to having eaten meat in the past one (1) week.

oreille2• 5 years ago

80% of "sometimes" or "not every day" is still "sometimes" and "not every day".

People have no clue about how frequently they eat meat. Since vegan and vegetarian diet are gaining traction, everyone is pretending they're being careful and eating less meat than before, yet the global meat consumption is still increasing.

bboylen• 5 years ago

Thanks for the info.

It is apparent to me from living life that meat is a big part of a healthy diet. But it can be frustrating seeing studies such as this one come out and not knowing what to believe.

I recently started dating a vegetarian and am really realizing how much harder it is to eat a healthy vegetarian diet. Since no one actually wants to eat nothing but greens / veggies all day, many of her meals are carb heavy to fill up, with little protein. I'm not saying you can't be a healthy vegetarian - but it's harder. There are no good meal analogues for something like grilled chicken with a sweet potato/veggies on the side.

thaumasiotes4• 5 years ago

Vegetarianism has been a (mandatory!) prestige marker in India for at least several hundred years; a traditional diet of that type will be adequately healthy[1]. What's hard is cutting meat out of a meat-based diet. You can't expect to just intuit how to fill the holes it leaves.

[1] As with all traditional practices, partial adoption may result in loss of any amount of the benefit, including amounts greater than 100%.

paulirwin• 5 years ago

There are plenty of good substitutes for chicken that are rich in protein, some even complete proteins. Flavor them however you like. Tofu, tempeh, seitan, chickpeas, portabella mushroom, quinoa, lentils, just to name a few. And then there's the actual chicken analogues like Morningstar and Beyond Chicken, which are pretty good and realistic. I am completely satisfied with any of these and some veggies on the side, even without added carbs, although I do love me some carbs too. (Background: have been vegetarian for 15 years.)

cbozeman3• 5 years ago

Just look to biology for the answers, its there if you pay attention.

The leader of a wolf pack gets first pickins at a kill, and it always eats the liver first.

Large carnivores elsewhere eat organs first as well.

There's a growing body of research for something that's being called the "carnivore" diet, and there's a sub-movement called "eating nose-to-tail" that seems to be, as best as I can tell, led by a physician named Dr. Paul Saladino, M.D., although the usual suspects are always on his podcast, or he's on theirs and/or associated with him: Dr. Dominic D'Agostino, Dr. Shawn Baker, M.D., etc.

Its basically exactly what you would expect... eating a lot of heart, liver, kidneys, along with skeletal muscle, etc.. I tried to do it, but I love things like french fries, roasted potatoes, roasted Brussel sprouts, etc. way too much. The biomarkers on this diet look amazing, but its always the same "problem". The people who are evangelical about eating this way are also huge into fitness, oftentimes spending an hour or more a day exercising.

I'd like to see 100 total lazy fatasses on a nose-to-tail carnivore diet and 100 total lazy fatasses on a vegetarian diet for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years, and do weekly workups on them... blood pressure, fasting glucose, post-prandial glucose, and so on.

bena4• 5 years ago

The bit about a vegetarian diet being associated with a higher incidence of cancer is kind of jarring to me. As I've always heard that leaning more towards whole/raw foods and more vegetables were better for avoiding cancer.

Now that may be because of your top point, most of the meat consumed in the US is processed in some way. I think the biggest culprit of meat-related cancer (?) is preserved meats.

I don't know. I just wanted to admit to being a little shocked at the whole vegetarian/cancer link. You often hear the opposite of that.

onebot7• 5 years ago

The reality is that there is a difference between vegan/vegetarian and whole food plant based diets. I am sure if you eat beyond burgers (processed meatless patties) everyday, you aren't doing your health any favors.

I mean potato chips are vegan. French fries are vegan, etc.

The key is whole foods. Unprocessed foods.

nvilcins• 5 years ago

Most of the vegetarians/vegans I know have a pretty shitty diet - lots of highly processed grains (bread, pasta, and other fillers), sweets, desserts, sugary drinks (and other "regular" products with added sugars), and otherwise not too diverse of a diet.

Don't know if that's a representative sample of vegetarian/vegan population, but it's not unlikely the case. Hence, the link between the veg* diet and cancer is not hard to imagine.

The main issue with (a lot of) these research papers, other than having bad data to begin with, is the lack of control for other parameters: what exactly do those surveyed meat-eaters and vegetarians eat, and what their lifestyle choices are (e.g., vegetarians are generally more health-conscious, so they often exercise, don't smoke/drink as much, etc.).

ddorian436• 5 years ago

Try reading a book about carnivore diet. It's the complete opposite of the bone-breaking with no muscle-mass vegan diet, maybe it has some type of truth in it ;).

wrongdonf3• 5 years ago

It’s really not surprising. You’re almost sure to be eating pesticides or weird chemicals even if you go fully organic. You can’t get it off by rinsing or washing. Plus, as has just become clear recently, carbohydrates are highly inflammatory, and inflammation plays a key role in cancer, heart disease, psychiatric disease and almost every other modern malady. It turns out that when you go from eating few carbs to zero carbs, tons of health problems, all centered around inflammation, go away. Carnivore is a miracle for allergies and skin problems. It’s really one of the biggest medical/diet revolutions that’s currently in the pipes. Certainly so when it comes to bang for buck.

mleonhard3• 5 years ago

I expect the correlation of cancer and vegetarian diets is the "sick quitters" bias [0]. People try to improve their diet once they experience a health problem.

[0] https://www.cancercouncil.com.au/blog/the-sick-quitter-effec...

fabian2k• 5 years ago

I think this overstates what this single study can say about the effects of a vegetarian diet. The NHS did create a page about that study due to the media attention it got, and they conclude:

Despite the media headlines, the results from this Austrian cross sectional survey provide no proof that vegetarians are in poorer health than meat eaters.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200427104728/https://www.nhs.u...

onebot7• 5 years ago

As with most studies there is some criticism about this and how it "changed" overtime:

https://jacknorrisrd.com/austrian-vegetarian-study-making-wa...

ketamine__• 5 years ago

From the Austrian food survey study:

Our results revealed that a vegetarian diet is related to a lower BMI and less frequent alcohol consumption

Wouldn't you say lower BMI is healthier?

thisisnico• 5 years ago

I would say that the vegetarian diet says more about the person than the diet itself.

wincy3• 5 years ago

The study was in Austria, not Australia.

norswap• 5 years ago

To be honest, the abstract says:

and most of the positive associations observed for meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjustment for body mass index (BMI)
higher BMI accounted for a substantial proportion of these increased risks suggesting that residual confounding or mediation by adiposity might account for some of these remaining associations

The numbers in the abstract should control for BMI (but not adiposity, i.e. bodyfat percentage). They're probably also too high.

To clarify: I'm 100% in agreement with you. I think meat gets a bad rap for bad reasons (one of them being bad science). I just wanted to point out this study did some effort (even if they could have done more) and that does deserve to be said.

gnramires• 5 years ago

One problem some studies suffer is over-control of confounding variables, which excludes secondary causal relationships. For example, if you control for health of arteries, you will find that (insert bad food here) known culprits for heart disease stop causing heart disease -- which would seem absurd. That's because artery health and heart disease are correlated (in this case causally related), so when you control condition one on the other, any causes vanish (completely or partially).

In this case in particular they control for BMI. If eating less meat is helpful in lowering BMI, this effect isn't captured by this result. So you have to watch out for this when taking conclusions from a study or making decisions (if you already have a low BMI then you can trust the conclusions better).

52-6F-623• 5 years ago

B12-deficient crowd here—not just mental health. The potential impact a lack of B12 can have on you physically is catastrophic.

I have to be mindful that I make myself eat a steak once in a while. On a regular day my skin lacks a lot of colour these days. If I forget to eat the right things I start to fog up, emotions waver, mood falters, and can even get clumsy. (Couple this with some latent pancreatic problems and it's worse)

The unfortunate thing about it, is it tends to progress even if you're making an effort unless you're making enough of an effort and it can be so creeping and insidious as to leave you unaware until you've done irreparable harm to yourself, either by diet or a physical defect.

Horrible stuff, this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559316/ (read: your body will more or less start falling apart)

__saykou• 5 years ago

If you eat meat from industry chances are that your b12 vitamin comes from supplements. B12 supplement is very very cheap and everyone should supplement.

Accacin• 5 years ago

I'll start by saying that I am vegan, but not ignorant. Thank you for the links to studies. I've never before read about B12 and mental health. I do make sure I supplement but I'm going to read these nonetheless.

wrongdonf3• 5 years ago

A huge number of diehard carnivores are decades long vegans. Because vegans are the most health conscious people on the planet. This includes Paul saladino, The Godfather of carnivore.

rcpt• 5 years ago

I don't know what it is about diet research but it seems to really bring out strong opinions on hackernews. Given that we're the target market for Soylent I guess it makes sense.

ddorian436• 5 years ago

In some forums, when you want to post something about body-building,training or what to eat, you also have to post your body picture. Keep that in mind whenever you hear opinions about food.

foxhop2• 5 years ago

That's a great point. Let's do a real study with real people and real diets, collect their blood type, an auto immune disorders, any allergies or food intolerance. Bundle that with a relevant body photo.

tpush• 5 years ago

Any thread about nutrition devolves to an absolute shit show.

amanaplanacanal2• 5 years ago

Most nutrition research is bad. Everybody gets a chance to espouse their favorite theories in the comments. How could it be otherwise? Doing good research in this space is expensive.

bookmarkable3• 5 years ago

They'll keep coming after meat eating with every angle - health, ecology, economics, emotional appeals - but humans can live a long, healthy life with meat in their diet. That doesn't mean industrial burgers daily or portions that look like a carnival hot dog eating contest, but 4 to 6 oz of quality meat from animals is healthy.

I think the US especially would be far better served to appeal to people to reduce portion sizes rather than insist on industrialized plant based food. Minimally processed foods in smaller portions is far more sustainable and healthier than vegan radicalism and scientifically formulated plant-based edible substances.

aquaticsunset• 5 years ago

If you can figure out how to successfully market and sell "Eat less, eat quality" to American consumers while maintaining food supplier revenue growth, you'll solve a lot of problems.

My personal opinion is that we're so growth and value oriented - and that's fundamentally incompatible with a healthy diet.

Look at CostCo! They have an amazing amount of fresh, healthy meats and vegetables. But you're still walking out of that store with a twelve-pack of fish and the barrel of cheese puffs you saw on the way out. The majority of Americans simply lack the self control. The food production companies know this and take full advantage of it.

bookmarkable3• 5 years ago

I think it has been figured out, it is just heavily lobbied against. In general, you have to flip normal. Every time I get my Butcherbox pasture raised beef out of the freezer, I'm aggravated they have to print "pasture raised"... that should be the standard, not the luxury brand. A few ideas off the cuff...

- Make food companies label non-organic food and say why they aren't organic, vs. making organic declare themselves, certify and therefore cost more. - Raise minimum grades on beef and poultry. Low grade meat is the only way to make large portions work economically. - Require food with meat ingredients to list what grade of meat is being used, hormone use, etc. - Disallow mixing of multiple animals in ground meat products... or at least cap it. Right now, fast food works because you can grind up hundreds of cattle at once.

albertgoeswoof• 5 years ago

Who's "they"?

jgowdy• 5 years ago

You're absolutely right. There's a whole subset of people who have declared war on meat. They want to replace meat with a diet desperately low in B12 so you have to supplement to be healthy. They want to replace meat with ingredients most similar to the ingredients they use to make dog food. They want to replace meat with extremely processed vegetables made to taste like meat, just like they did with margarine replacing butter, and hydrogenated vegetable oils replacing lard (both of which have killed millions prematurely). They want to replace meat with something very high in phytoestrogens and then demand that you believe that the massive endocrine disruption we're seeing all across humanity isn't related to this push towards foods high in xenoestrogens. They won't even allow for the possibility because it doesn't fit their agenda.

There are issues with our industrial food production particularly around meat. They should be addressed. I would be perfectly happy with lab grown meat if it was proven to be safe over time. I would prefer real meat without massive pollution or cruelty. But I'm not going to shift my diet to something proven to require pills to be healthy.

Just watch, the next phase will be trying to shame people for eating meat. It's only a matter of time.

giantg24• 5 years ago

I ate an 8oz bag of potato chips and an 8oz can of onion dip for dinner last night.

Just wanted to throw out there how healthy my vegetarian dinner was.

foxhop2• 5 years ago

I feel strongly that people should eat based on their blood type. For example O type appear to do best with a meat based diet. Blood type A should eat more plant based diet. Human bodies are N+1, each body is different, there is not one diet to rule them all. Please be mindful of what you are eating and how it makes you feel. Get in touch with your unconscious and body.

JoeAltmaier• 5 years ago

So, eat red meat for the iron, but not so much it makes you fat (and sick).

phkahler• 5 years ago

I am sceptical due to this:

and most of the positive associations observed for meat consumption and health risks were substantially attenuated after adjustment for body mass index (BMI).

I didnt read all the details, but that seems like a sneaky way to invalidate the benefits of eating meat. If sounds like the benefits correlate with low BMI, so they want to dismiss them. But what if eating meat helps one to maintain a low BMI? Suddenly the picture is cloudy.

As for heart disease, there is always the iodine rabbit experiment from the 1930s.

DC1350• 5 years ago

I’m interested in seeing what kind of research gets released once we find out how cheap it is to make bug patties from harvesting locust swarms.

boatsie• 5 years ago

So, fat is bad. Carbs are bad. Meat is bad. Assuming you eat calories (ie leafy vegetables are not a large source of calories), what are you left with? Plant based low fat, low carb lean protein? Peanuts are high in fat. Beans are high in carbs. There’s like nothing you really should eat.

Karawebnetwork4• 5 years ago

You should eat a diversified diet and with moderation. All of those are not necessarily bad. Take peanuts for example, they are a great tool to reach certain goals. But eating only peanuts every day would make you ill quickly.

vlod8• 5 years ago

I think I read what would our poor great-great-grandparents think of the food we eat today?

What did they eat, meat rarely (they couldn't afford it all the time), mostly vegetables (mostly home grown), salad-stuff, beans, maybe fruit and the odd nut.

Maybe going back to this direction, is the way we should be leaning.

wly_cdgr• 5 years ago

Now that there is money at scale to be made from vegetarianism, this will all be over quickly

Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

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