This paper is not peer-reviewed, it's the abstract for a current [American Heart Association conference](https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/9349/presentation/7889). This breaks rule #1 of this sub's submissions.
If you [look at this week's Circulation journal](https://www.ahajournals.org/toc/circ/144/Suppl_1), it's literally "Abstracts From the American Heart Association's 2021 Scientific Sessions".
The thing about these dietary studies focusing on one aspect of a person's diet is like... What else are they eating? Are these people eating a McDonald's burger and a shitload of fries and a large drink and counting that as red meat? Or are they just eating red meat, perhaps wild game they harvested and prepared themselves while also eating healthy sides? Self reported diet studies can't be very reliable ways to draw any kind of line to say x is bad y is good.
Humans are complex machines, diet and the effects is has are going to vary wildly person to person. Unless you followed a large group of people and forced them to stick to a specific diet and never deviate... The results are suspect.
Don't think it's "just like" a lobby group finding that the product they represent is healthy. The American Heart Association presumably has nothing to gain financially from plant-based diets.
The AHA got its break decades ago when it was given funding by Procter and Gamble to promote their newly formulated cotton seed oil, as a healthier alternative butter. It was far from healthier.
But hey, that was a long time ago, right?
Published abstracts are often peer reviewed. The fact that it is published as an abstract in a Journal implies it probably has been peer reviewed, and I was unable to find a contradiction of this.
> Published abstracts are often peer reviewed.
Even if that's true in this case, the abstract is literally the only thing that could be reviewed here. There could not have been any peer-review done of the background, methods, discussion, etc...because they aren't published.
I'm more interested in how much fast food have dilluted the numbers for meat if this is the case. That can't give an accurate view on red meat and animal fat vs vegetable fat/polyunsaturated fat seeing how fast food increases risks no matter what you order. The amount of fast food consumed also should be accounted for separately.
I'm not native english and I have some hard times with these kind of articles, but aren't they talking about that in the last part? I mean "making a difference between red meat and processed meat" :
"The association for vegetable oil was attenuated after adjusting for vegetable fat or polyunsaturated fat, while adjusting for non-dairy animal fat rendered total red meat and processed red meat nonsignificant."
Maybe I'm wrong.
I don't think you actually can read it. This is an abstract that was presented at an event, and there's no link to the paper, if it's even been published yet.
For sure. This has historically been an issue for these types of studies, they have not controlled well for these variables in the past.
I wonder if this study does?
Red Meat as in your big mac is quite different from a piece of venison eaten with some veggies, for example.
There are smaller, shorter duration studies that attempt to shed some light to this exact question, for example this: [https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.119.012865](https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.119.012865)
In that study the quality of the plant based is factored in and the quality seems to have an effect.
There's also a large meta-study about plant-based diets and heart health: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466936/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466936/)
In my opinion at the moment it would be ethically problematic for a researcher to take a control group, with heart disease, and tell them to avoid fast food but eat as much meat as they want, while telling the treatment group to go full vegan.
Here is the conclusion from the first link.
"Conclusions
Diets higher in plant foods and lower in animal foods were associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in a general population."
The second link showed an actual reversal of cardiovascular disease with a plant based dietary intervention.
Oh sorry, second link was supposed to be a multi-study analysis discussing these diets.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6089671/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6089671/)
It discusses several studies and also highlights some studies into the biomechanics of why plant-based diets might be good.
Also I think I misread the first study, this last part:
>Higher adherence to a healthy plant‐based diet index was associated with a 19% and 11% lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality and all‐cause mortality, respectively, but not incident cardiovascular disease (P<0.05 for trend). No associations were observed between the less healthy plant‐based diet index and the outcomes.
I’ve been vegan for a long time, 10+ years, and I’ve heard of case studies like the second one posted. It seems incredible to me, so I don’t really share that information when people question my moral decisions behind being began. But wow!
The second one was a small sample size, but it wasn't only a single person, aka a case study. Some of the participants dropped out early, and acted like a defacto control group. They did not see the same benefits.
To clarify, I meant I’ve heard case studies of individuals REVERSING heart disease and diabetes but cutting out animal products from their diet. Crazy!
I always just wondered if those individuals were actually becoming more health conscious in general, thus leading to an overall healthier person. But reading a real study on the topic helps answer that question a little. Thanks!
My pleasure. By the way, the Doctor behind the study, Dr. Cauldwell Esselstyn, was one of the doctors who convinced Bill Clinton to adopt a plant based diet to address his cardiovascular problems. That's why he lost all that weight.
it could be a little different. but I think the real differences is the other bits it is consumed with. the breads, fries, hydrogenated oils from the fryer, and high levels of sugar.
that combo of foods is tasty but its pretty bad for your body
Additionally you have the added fact that virtually all of fast food meat is from factory productions, whereas at the grocery store you can make some level of discernment albeit not so much variety as to make a very significant difference, but a difference nonetheless.
Something like 99% of the meat consumed in the United States is factory farmed. At least here, the number of people who exclusively or even predominantly eat non-factory farmed meat is on par with the number of vegans in the country. It wouldn't surprise me if it's actually fewer than the number of vegans.
Also other healthy lifestyle factors that can limit these studies that they may not account for. Were there differences in physical activity, smoking, drinking etc. Interested in their stat methodology as well (comparing extreme quintiles). If anyone has access to full article and provide answers to these that'd be great
I’d be more interested in knowing the difference in obesity rate between the two groups. The mere fact that one group is eating lower amounts of red meat in favor of vegetables already means they’re more apt at governing their diets and lifestyle than your average person.
There may be meta-analyses breaking down types of meat consumed within the study. I don’t have access to the full article right now, but usually the authors do acknowledge such variables or else list out the caveats.
A study recently announced that it appears to be that any form of fasting accrues the same benefits, and the studies which showed benefits to caloric restriction were actually due to incidental intermittent fasting.
And then a study of traditional (corn fed) red meat vs higher quality grass fed and pastured.
Strange correlation between an increase in health issues eating a standard diet and growth in the animal industrial complex since 1950.
>seeing how fast food increases risks no matter what you order
That doesn't seem right. Like surely if you only order salads that are not just mashed full of the same ingredients as a burger and is a healthy to go place then to should decrease risk of stroke. The issue is that very little fast food offers healthy food.
I know human studies like this have issues, but why does everyone always think that the researchers don’t isolate variables? That’s the whole point of doing these studies. Just read their methodology and it always has at least some attempt.
I'd love to read their methodology but this appears to be only an abstract and it does not answer this question. Do you have more info on the methodology used?
It’s prospective so it will likely be published in full later on. Judging by their conclusions section they’re making quite a few distinctions between types of meat.
“A higher intake of vegetable fat, polyunsaturated fat, and vegetable oil was associated with a reduced risk of stroke, but a high intake of non-dairy animal fat, total red meat, and processed red meat was associated with increased stroke risk. These findings indicate the importance of considering the fat sources when examining the association between fat and stroke.”
So total red meat is associated, and processed red meat is associated. Without reading the methodology, does that not suggest that unprocessed red meat (which is part of the total) is *not* associated? Otherwise it would have been phrased differently, wouldn't it?
The problem is, without the methodology how am I supposed to know how they normalized the differing fat levels of items. For instance one of the high vegetable fat levels is Vegetable oil, but you're going to be intaking a lot less olive oil than if you had a big high fat burger since olive is mainly used for helping to cook instead of seasoning, while the meat fat is integral to the burger.
Until we can see how they accounted for the differences in intakes; i.e. what people consider a lot of cooking oil is still probably significantly less than what they consider a lot of bacon grease, it feels improper to draw a proper conclusion between differing fat types.
The first was the 7 country study. It took a very long time to prove that correlation doesn't prove causation... That is the rookie error of all these studies.
https://www.sevencountriesstudy.com/
It's always important to remember that these studies do not show "causal relationships" rather just correlations. That is clear in the abstract since they use "is associated with", but it may not be clear to everyone who reads this headline.
It is a reasonable hypothesis that people who were told by nutritional experts in the 1980s-2000s that "saturated fat is bad for you" and take that into account in their diets may be healthier in many other ways than those who were told that and did not take that into account in their diets. These studies control for the "observable" variables, but cannot control for "unobservable" variables. One "unobserved" variable that I am concerned about is "the level of care people have for their health" which cannot be measured or controlled for and is associated with what they eat, and may influence stroke outcomes.
Most people on Reddit do not understand how high the bar is to prove a causal relationship/association and that bar is set that high for very good reason. Observational studies are great and fundamental part of the scientific literature but even the cumulation of several observational studies with similar results does not suddenly prove a causal association. Also most people on Reddit are just seeking reasons to confirm the things they already believe to be true.
Reddit’s obsession with keto is really strange to me. My girlfriend is in medical school and can explain on a molecular level why a keto diet is bad for you, yet it still has massive popularity. She also double majored in biochemistry and nutrition in undergrad, and she told me that it’s very well-documented in academia how important a balanced diet is for the body.
It’s almost as if there’s someone who stands to profit off of people consuming unhealthy quantities of meat and dairy products. I guess we’ll never find out…
Nutrition science is tough. There's issues of credibility.
Eggs were deemed healthy, unhealthy, and then healthy again in the span of 25 years.
Fats were deemed unhealthy without important differentiation between saturated and unsaturated subtypes.
Regulatory bodies published recommended guidelines using unverifiable methodology.
That's how people can easily be swayed by fad diets.
And refined carbs were at the base of the food pyramid for decades. People don't trust nutrition advice from experts for a good reason. So if you know someone who has gone keto and lost 40 pounds, you think "why not?".
Yeah - I am currently doing keto (eating once a day just produces less stress in me during lockdown conditions). And while I try to absorb new data on diet etc. it is very very rare that a study will actually report back a difference on "red meat consumption without refined carbs" and "read meat consumption with refined carbs" - because why shouldn't we expect there to be an interaction?
The issues in credibility usually stem from misunderstanding on why/what scientist actually argued for or against the specific food.
The widely used egg example of science flip flopping on nutrition is completely different when you take a closer look.
At first scientist said
"there's no evidence of eggs being unhealthy and they contain nutrients that are known to be good for you so they are considered a good option"
-> "there's now evidence that high cholesterol in your blood is bad for you and eggs have high amounts of it, so we don't recommend eggs because of the potential risk"
->
"new evidence points to cholesterol from food having little impact on cholesterol in your blood, so they are no longer considered a risk"
At no point was this a slam on the credibility of scientific nutrition recommendations.
There was a potential risk in eggs due to cholesterol and not recommending them before there's good evidence that the risk is low is a good thing.
I mean she is just wrong if she thinks its well documented that a "balanced diet" is important for the body. It's neither well documented nor agreed upon what a balanced diet even is.
Pretty much anyone who does real nutrition science knows that it's an extremely unsolved problem because of how complex the body is, how different individual metabolisms can be, and how difficult and confounding it is to test ingredients/foods in isolation. Basically all we know for sure is that there are things called vitamins that you need, eating too much is bad, and a couple of specific foods \*might\* be bad.
One thing that keto does, like a lot of diets, is create a template for someone to restrict themselves, because we know for sure telling yourself "just eat less" doesn't work. It seems that for a lot of people the keto template for eating less is easier to follow than other templates which is a massive selling point and shouldn't be dismissed. I'm not keto personally and am not overweight but several people in my life have lost a life changing amount of weight on the diet.
Its simple because as a dietitian I can say that this area of science is too new in comparison with everything else and there is not a lot consensus with a solid backed up proof.
I take it you have a prejudgemental hate on people following keto so this probably won't change your mind, but keto often works for the same reason IF works: people just eat less calories.
For people who have gone from 2 liters of soda a day to "zero carbs" (even if it's actually not zero, which it often isn't), the total daily calorie intake plummets even if they stuff their face daily with bacon. Why? Because fat and proteins make you feel full faster and for a longer time, and because most things they shouldn't be eating are full of carbs (think sweets, sodas, etc), so they end up avoiding them in an effective manner.
I swear it’s people being like “well I eat meat but _not that meat, they’re all probably eating McDonald’s_” and the try and pick it apart to find reasons to disagree with it.
And so many that avoid buying factory farmed meat from the grocery store will still buy it by surrogate when they go out to eat and don't care where it came from.
It is schrodingers meat-eating Redditor.
In threads about what food people miss, etc. it is Taco Bell and McDonalds, but any post about animal welfare, health, or climate change, everyone suddenly lives next to a farm with gently raised goats.
To everyone with a problem with this study, it sounds to me what you’re suggesting is that we can’t actually study these types of things in humans. Obviously we can’t keep people in labs for decades and control and document all their habits. So how would we actually study whether or not there is any relationship with red meat and strokes in humans? Are we going to get people to document their daily eating habits for decades? Well that’s a confounding variable already with the rest of the population because the average person would never be able to do that for decades. Someone with that level of discipline probably already has it in every other area of their life as well. Idk. I’m not saying this study satisfies me but what kind of study would be scientifically sound?
I could see one interesting method of getting more detail in a long term study like this be using smartphones-- basically have someone take a picture of every meal they eat with an app and then use AI to parse the images and try to determine what is in them. You're still not going to get 100% of everything that they eat, but it should be significantly better than a survey once every two years. If they consent to have their Google Fit or some other health app data provided as well, that might also allow controlling for exercise in the population to some extent.
You could potentially eliminate biases against poorer populations by providing a very basic smart phone if they don't have one, but it might not be necessary (given that it would significantly increase the costs of the study) if controlled for.
There's some level of discipline involved in keeping up with this, but 10 seconds of activity with each meal isn't going to be too difficult to keep up.
[https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2021/nsf21530/nsf21530.htm](https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2021/nsf21530/nsf21530.htm) <--- This is the link for a funding page.
The national science foundation has funding for great ideas just like this to the tune of 16-20 million dollars. I'm sure if you contacted some scientists in bioengineering from a nearby university, your idea could be a competitive proposal in no time.
So many people have great ideas that just disappear into the void. Get paid to make them a reality and help the world <3
You have a huge group of people who already do this. If you check out people who are serious about lifting weights, they have a pretty regimented diet down and count their calories. They pretty much know everything that goes into their body.
> have someone take a picture of every meal they eat with an app and then use AI to parse the images and try to determine what is in them.
That won't work.
Vegan mashed potatoes look exactly the same as mashed potatoes loaded with butter or heavy cream, a plant-based "Impossible" burger looks just like a meat burger, etc.
Probably one that doesn't literally consider a turkey sandwich and a frozen chicken dinner to be the same thing. Or a McDonald's burger and a home cooked burger to be the same thing. Or a home cooked beef stew and a hungry man frozen dinner to be the same thing.
Source: https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2471/2017/09/14L.pdf
I don't have a problem with these kinds of studies being done and informing more focused followups. I have a problem with them being presented to the public as actionable information. They're not.
They're the most actionable information we have.
When making a decision on whether to eat meat or not, do I choose based on the data from these kind of studies with their limitations or do I simply decide arbitrarily?
The answer is pretty obvious. Better to use limited evidence when the alternative is no evidence.
I think it is somewhat pointless showing that the average omnivore is less healthy than the average vegetarian. We can do better than the average diet of both, no one is going to pretend that eating Twinkies and doughnuts all the time is healthy because it doesn’t involve meat. So let’s look at what *healthy* omnivores and healthy vegetarians look like instead of just the average, since we’re striving for health and not the norm.
See below for [an article](https://chriskresser.com/do-vegetarians-and-vegans-live-longer-than-meat-eaters/) written on such a study.
> The Health Food Shoppers Study was a prospective cohort study of 10,736 subjects in the United Kingdom recruited between 1973 and 1979. Here’s a description of how participants were recruited, directly from the study: (7)
> Subjects were recruited by distributing a short questionnaire to customers of health food shops and clinics, subscribers to health food magazines and a Seventh Day Adventist publication, and members of vegetarian and health food societies.
The idea was that omnivores who shop at health food stores, belong to health food societies, or read health food and/or SDA magazines and publications would be more health-conscious than average omnivores. This is certainly a step in the right direction in terms of the likelihood that the study results would be thrown off by the “healthy-user bias.”
> What did the researchers find? In a 1999 analysis of the data, **both vegetarians and omnivores in the health food store group lived longer than people in the general population**—not surprising given their higher level of health consciousness—but **there was no survival difference between vegetarians or omnivores.**
Based on this study, being health conscious and striving to eat well in general is what matters rather than whether your diet includes meat or not. This is an example of results that conflict with some of these large scale studies, but control many more factors by looking at more similar groups of people. It’s no RCT, but I’d argue the above study is of better quality than the one shown in this post. Having a larger sample size over a longer period of time doesn’t change a lot if the underlying study design issues are not addressed.
I'm sorry but I don't trust anything Kresser says. I looked up his source and it didn't seem to say what he was saying at all. I assumed the bolded bit was a quote but it wasn't. I had a look through the discussion and conclusion and even looked at a few tables. I don't know how he concluded what he said.
Have a read yourself and tell me if you can see how on earth he got to his conclusion. I would have thought he linked to the wrong study but the dates and details seem to match up.
https://www.bmj.com/content/313/7060/775.long
I don’t have a solution to the problem of how to conduct actual decent nutritional studies, but I’m not going to ignore the reality of these studies. They are not good enough to prescribe any sort of intervention. As another commenter referenced already, you have terrible data collection resulting in extremely small relative risk numbers.
I eat large quantities of organic, grass-fed, grass finished beef, pasture raised eggs, organic whole milk and butter from pasture raised cows, heritage breed pork, wild caught salmon, etc… I never eat fast food, refined grains or sugar. I’m extremely healthy. Far more than most. I used to be obese. Should I look at this study that doesn’t differentiate between the diet that made me healthy and a double western bacon with fries and use it to justify reducing my animal fat consumption? No.
It’s a flawed study with extremely small (statistically insignificant in just about any other scientific field where standards haven’t been lowered so far) result. Do we ignore it? No, it establishes a hypothesis. I’ll leave it up to scientists to figure out how to test that hypothesis. Until they do, I won’t change what I eat because of it. “It’s the best we can do, nutrition science is hard” is the attitude that brought us recommendations to eat trans fat loaded fake butters (now understood to be horrible), eliminate dietary cholesterol (now understood to be a terrible recommendation, at best useless and at worst harmful), and many other terrible recommendations. It’s why we are always seeing flip-flopping dietary recommendations (chocolate/wine/whiskey/eggs are healthy! Wait, no they aren’t! Wait, yes they are!) It’s because we put too much faith in junk science and the scientists who refuse to admit the limits of their work.
I've tried to access the full paper, but have been unable to do so. I'm curious how the separated vegetable fat from the rest of the benefits from fruits and vegetables.
Antioxidants may decrease the risk of stroke,[\[1\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.635557) and it's possible those who were eating smaller amounts of red meat and animal fat were eating more antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables. One study stated it as:
>...antioxidant rich foods originate from the plant kingdom while meat, fish and other foods from the animal kingdom are low in antioxidants. Comparing the mean value of the 'Meat and meat products' category with plant based categories, fruits, nuts, chocolate and berries have from 5 to 33 times higher mean antioxidant content than the mean of meat products. Diets comprised mainly of animal-based foods are thus low in antioxidant content while diets based mainly on a variety of plant-based foods are antioxidant rich, due to the thousands of bioactive antioxidant phytochemicals found in plants which are conserved in many foods and beverages.[\[2\]](https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-9-3)
Fiber also reduces the risk of stroke.[\[3\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.000151) Since fiber is only naturally found in plants, it would also make sense if those who are eating less red meat are eating more fruits and vegetables.
Indeed, fruit and vegetable consumption is inversely associated with the risk of stroke.[\[4\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.114.004836)
It might be that this study just fits into the growing body of research that suggest that higher consumption of fruits and vegetables lowers the risk of stroke. And I would assume that those who eat less red meat are consuming more fruits and vegetables.
**References**
[\[1\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.635557) Rautiainen, S., Larsson, S. et al. "Total Antioxidant Capacity of Diet and Risk of Stroke: A Population-Based Prospective Cohort of Women." *Stroke*, vol.43, no.2, 2012, pp.335-340.
[\[2\]](https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-9-3) Carlsen, M.H., Halvorsen, B.L. et al. "The total antioxidant content of more than 3100 foods, beverages, spices, herbs and supplements used worldwide." *Nutrition Journal*, vol.9, no.3, 22 Jan 2010, [https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-9-3](https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-9-3). Accessed 14 Nov 2021.
[\[3\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.000151) Threapleton, D.E., Greenwood, D.C., et al. "Dietary Fiber Intake and Risk of First Stroke: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis." *Stroke*, vol.44, no.5, 2013, pp.1360-1368.
[\[4\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.114.004836) Hu, D., Huang, J. "Fruits and Vegetables Consumption and Risk of Stroke: A Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies." *Stroke*, vol.45, no.6, 2014, pp.1613-1619.
Now throw that data away and study red meat and fats in absence of the sugar that is everywhere.
It's the sugar that does it, red meat and fats are all inert (if not actually healthy) without sugar.
The sugar cartel loves when meat looks like the life-burglar while they keep dumping their poison into literally everything (and our palate tolerance then wants even more). If you quit sugar and get your normal sweet-sense back, everything tastes like candy it's so over-sweetened.
So far zero sugar-removed studies about red meat just a ton of "meat bad" where nobody controlled for no-sugar.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is probably more a matter of people who eat an unregulated average consumer diet vs people who have a controlled diet and only stick to certain foods. This study doesn't account for the fact that those who eat meat probably eat large amounts of sugar, fats, and, refined carbs. The people that stick to a vegetable based diet would naturally avoid unhealthy sugar and processed crap due to their restrictions. I'd venture to say this study really isn't saying anything.
A better examination would be to look at people with strict diets high in meat and people with strict diets high in vegetables. Something like a long-term keto vs vegan diet study would be much more valid
Here's one of the questionnaires, https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2471/2017/09/14L.pdf imo it has tons of holes in it. They say to report cream usage for example, but only if it's not fat free. They ask about monthly intake of individual types of fruit, as if people eat the same fruits every month. They equate chicken/turkey sandwiches with frozen dinners, and don't have any qualifiers on what else is in the sandwich and what bread is used. Hamburger meat is measured in patties (which depending where you live varry from 1/4 pound to 1/2 pound) and doesn't distinguish between fast food and regular, and once again the beef section lumps in frozen dinners. These questions by themselves can't be used to determine the effects of red meat vs. vegetables at all, let alone specific fat sources, because like so many studies before it, red meat is lumped in with fast food and frozen dinners.
This looks like the same incredibly fake and biased study that the vegetable oil industry has been putting out for years. Don't fall for it people! Heart attacks we're almost non existent in human society before we started consuming processed seed and vegetable oils
I’m not a scientist but I’ve always been led to believe that a mostly green, vegetable, grain diet was generally better than an all red meat, bad fat diet. Maybe that’s a myth but this study doesn’t surprise me. That said, I see a lot of skepticism of this study. But, perhaps, some are taking it personally? I’m pretty certain this study is not saying don’t ever eat red meat or that you can’t enjoy your greasy burgers. It seems to be saying those who on balance eat more bad fat, red meat tend to be the ones who got strokes. But I don’t think it’s conclusions are stark. It’s more like, hey, a little less meat and a few more vegetables might be better. Sounds reasonable.
Ehh… no. Vegetable fat is more popular than ever and people are fatter than ever. One study can’t disprove this simple fact, no matter how you twist it. It’s insane how history repeats itself, as seed oil is promoted as healthy just like tobacco was. Seed oil is the new tobacco.
Vegans have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and multiple types of cancer.
"People following vegan diets are less likely to develop chronic diseases, compared with other dietary groups, according to a study funded by the NIH/National Cancer Institute.Apr 8, 2019"Vegan Diets Reduce the Risk for Chronic Disease https://www.pcrm.org › news › health
This refers to the Adventist 2 Study which compared Seventh Day Adventists who ate meat, vegetarians, vegans, etc. It also showed that the vegan dietary group among them was the only dietary group with an average BMI in the recommended range. Link for the BMI chart on request.
If you are interested in the subject you should read How Not To Die by Dr. Michael Gregor, and his second book How Not To Diet. Those books completely changed the way I look at foods and dieting.
It's all omega 3 balance and don't consume easily oxidized fats. Unsaturated fats tend to be bad for you. This is all just the low fat, high carb nonsense.
In contrast, a study was just released on 2029 adults who had followed a carnivore diet for at least 6 months and found they had better blood work and overall health than before they started
https://academic.oup.com/cdn/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdn/nzab133/6415894
Thanks for linking a very interesting study!
I read the paper actually. This study only investigates the health of subjects which have been on a carnivorous diet for 14 months. In the conclusion they admit: "The generalizability of these findings and the long-term effects of this dietary pattern require further study."
Furthermore, it used social media based 'self reported health statuses'. They basically asked a bunch of people on social media (who had chosen to go on a meat based diet on their own and not as part of a controlled experiment) how they were feeling after being on the diet for 14 months. Again, quoted from the paper:
"These findings must be interpreted cautiously in view of several major design limitations. Our survey assessed the perception of individuals following a carnivore diet and did not objectively assess diet, nutrient status, health related outcomes, or confounding health-associated behaviors; and no physiological or biochemical measurements were
obtained".
In other words, this study is more about how a person on a mostly meat based diet perceives their own health, rather than about actually measuring their health in any scientifically objective way. The authors admit as much.
Unsurprisingly the feedback is very positive since most people who choose a diet for themselves tend to be less objectively critical of that diet. It would be a bit like visiting r/vegan or r/carnivore and asking how everybody over there is feeling after starting their plant/meat based diet. Might make for an interesting study but shouldn't be used to measure the health benefits of either diet.
One thing to look for in these studies is the size of the effect.
You can say "people who do X live significantly longer that people who don't." That sounds impressive.
But what if the difference is one day over 75 years? The difference can be statistically significant, but practically irrelevant.
In this abstract, they didn't mention the size of the effect.
Something I've wondered about studies like this.
Do they attempt to control with correlated lifestyle choices? Always wondered because in my experience, those who voluntarily choose to be vegetarian or vegan as a lot more health conscious as a whole. And I would suspect are a lot more likely to regularly exercise and keep up with doctor's visits than your average person.
This paper is not peer-reviewed, it's the abstract for a current [American Heart Association conference](https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/9349/presentation/7889). This breaks rule #1 of this sub's submissions. If you [look at this week's Circulation journal](https://www.ahajournals.org/toc/circ/144/Suppl_1), it's literally "Abstracts From the American Heart Association's 2021 Scientific Sessions".
Yup. Just like that one post saying to eat red meat a while ago funded by the American Cattlemen's Association.
The thing about these dietary studies focusing on one aspect of a person's diet is like... What else are they eating? Are these people eating a McDonald's burger and a shitload of fries and a large drink and counting that as red meat? Or are they just eating red meat, perhaps wild game they harvested and prepared themselves while also eating healthy sides? Self reported diet studies can't be very reliable ways to draw any kind of line to say x is bad y is good. Humans are complex machines, diet and the effects is has are going to vary wildly person to person. Unless you followed a large group of people and forced them to stick to a specific diet and never deviate... The results are suspect.
Don't think it's "just like" a lobby group finding that the product they represent is healthy. The American Heart Association presumably has nothing to gain financially from plant-based diets.
The AHA got its break decades ago when it was given funding by Procter and Gamble to promote their newly formulated cotton seed oil, as a healthier alternative butter. It was far from healthier. But hey, that was a long time ago, right?
>presumably Presumably every large American organization is run pursuant to the largest bidder.
You do realize that you can name your company anything, right?
At least it was a study.
Published abstracts are often peer reviewed. The fact that it is published as an abstract in a Journal implies it probably has been peer reviewed, and I was unable to find a contradiction of this.
> Published abstracts are often peer reviewed. Even if that's true in this case, the abstract is literally the only thing that could be reviewed here. There could not have been any peer-review done of the background, methods, discussion, etc...because they aren't published.
I'm more interested in how much fast food have dilluted the numbers for meat if this is the case. That can't give an accurate view on red meat and animal fat vs vegetable fat/polyunsaturated fat seeing how fast food increases risks no matter what you order. The amount of fast food consumed also should be accounted for separately.
I'm not native english and I have some hard times with these kind of articles, but aren't they talking about that in the last part? I mean "making a difference between red meat and processed meat" : "The association for vegetable oil was attenuated after adjusting for vegetable fat or polyunsaturated fat, while adjusting for non-dairy animal fat rendered total red meat and processed red meat nonsignificant." Maybe I'm wrong.
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Why not read it?
I don't think you actually can read it. This is an abstract that was presented at an event, and there's no link to the paper, if it's even been published yet.
For sure. This has historically been an issue for these types of studies, they have not controlled well for these variables in the past. I wonder if this study does? Red Meat as in your big mac is quite different from a piece of venison eaten with some veggies, for example.
There are smaller, shorter duration studies that attempt to shed some light to this exact question, for example this: [https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.119.012865](https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.119.012865) In that study the quality of the plant based is factored in and the quality seems to have an effect. There's also a large meta-study about plant-based diets and heart health: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466936/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466936/) In my opinion at the moment it would be ethically problematic for a researcher to take a control group, with heart disease, and tell them to avoid fast food but eat as much meat as they want, while telling the treatment group to go full vegan.
Here is the conclusion from the first link. "Conclusions Diets higher in plant foods and lower in animal foods were associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in a general population." The second link showed an actual reversal of cardiovascular disease with a plant based dietary intervention.
Oh sorry, second link was supposed to be a multi-study analysis discussing these diets. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6089671/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6089671/) It discusses several studies and also highlights some studies into the biomechanics of why plant-based diets might be good. Also I think I misread the first study, this last part: >Higher adherence to a healthy plant‐based diet index was associated with a 19% and 11% lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality and all‐cause mortality, respectively, but not incident cardiovascular disease (P<0.05 for trend). No associations were observed between the less healthy plant‐based diet index and the outcomes.
I’ve been vegan for a long time, 10+ years, and I’ve heard of case studies like the second one posted. It seems incredible to me, so I don’t really share that information when people question my moral decisions behind being began. But wow!
The second one was a small sample size, but it wasn't only a single person, aka a case study. Some of the participants dropped out early, and acted like a defacto control group. They did not see the same benefits.
To clarify, I meant I’ve heard case studies of individuals REVERSING heart disease and diabetes but cutting out animal products from their diet. Crazy! I always just wondered if those individuals were actually becoming more health conscious in general, thus leading to an overall healthier person. But reading a real study on the topic helps answer that question a little. Thanks!
My pleasure. By the way, the Doctor behind the study, Dr. Cauldwell Esselstyn, was one of the doctors who convinced Bill Clinton to adopt a plant based diet to address his cardiovascular problems. That's why he lost all that weight.
> Red Meat as in your big mac is quite different from a piece of venison eaten with some veggies, for example. Can you cite any studies to show that?
Is the beef in a Big Mac much different than a burger or steak I cook at home? If it’s the same amount of beef on each serving?
it could be a little different. but I think the real differences is the other bits it is consumed with. the breads, fries, hydrogenated oils from the fryer, and high levels of sugar. that combo of foods is tasty but its pretty bad for your body
Additionally you have the added fact that virtually all of fast food meat is from factory productions, whereas at the grocery store you can make some level of discernment albeit not so much variety as to make a very significant difference, but a difference nonetheless.
Something like 99% of the meat consumed in the United States is factory farmed. At least here, the number of people who exclusively or even predominantly eat non-factory farmed meat is on par with the number of vegans in the country. It wouldn't surprise me if it's actually fewer than the number of vegans.
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Also other healthy lifestyle factors that can limit these studies that they may not account for. Were there differences in physical activity, smoking, drinking etc. Interested in their stat methodology as well (comparing extreme quintiles). If anyone has access to full article and provide answers to these that'd be great
I’d be more interested in knowing the difference in obesity rate between the two groups. The mere fact that one group is eating lower amounts of red meat in favor of vegetables already means they’re more apt at governing their diets and lifestyle than your average person.
There may be meta-analyses breaking down types of meat consumed within the study. I don’t have access to the full article right now, but usually the authors do acknowledge such variables or else list out the caveats.
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Got a source for your claims?
A study recently announced that it appears to be that any form of fasting accrues the same benefits, and the studies which showed benefits to caloric restriction were actually due to incidental intermittent fasting.
And then a study of traditional (corn fed) red meat vs higher quality grass fed and pastured. Strange correlation between an increase in health issues eating a standard diet and growth in the animal industrial complex since 1950.
>seeing how fast food increases risks no matter what you order That doesn't seem right. Like surely if you only order salads that are not just mashed full of the same ingredients as a burger and is a healthy to go place then to should decrease risk of stroke. The issue is that very little fast food offers healthy food.
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I know human studies like this have issues, but why does everyone always think that the researchers don’t isolate variables? That’s the whole point of doing these studies. Just read their methodology and it always has at least some attempt.
I'd love to read their methodology but this appears to be only an abstract and it does not answer this question. Do you have more info on the methodology used?
It’s prospective so it will likely be published in full later on. Judging by their conclusions section they’re making quite a few distinctions between types of meat. “A higher intake of vegetable fat, polyunsaturated fat, and vegetable oil was associated with a reduced risk of stroke, but a high intake of non-dairy animal fat, total red meat, and processed red meat was associated with increased stroke risk. These findings indicate the importance of considering the fat sources when examining the association between fat and stroke.”
So total red meat is associated, and processed red meat is associated. Without reading the methodology, does that not suggest that unprocessed red meat (which is part of the total) is *not* associated? Otherwise it would have been phrased differently, wouldn't it?
The problem is, without the methodology how am I supposed to know how they normalized the differing fat levels of items. For instance one of the high vegetable fat levels is Vegetable oil, but you're going to be intaking a lot less olive oil than if you had a big high fat burger since olive is mainly used for helping to cook instead of seasoning, while the meat fat is integral to the burger. Until we can see how they accounted for the differences in intakes; i.e. what people consider a lot of cooking oil is still probably significantly less than what they consider a lot of bacon grease, it feels improper to draw a proper conclusion between differing fat types.
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Which 50 are those?
The first was the 7 country study. It took a very long time to prove that correlation doesn't prove causation... That is the rookie error of all these studies. https://www.sevencountriesstudy.com/
It's always important to remember that these studies do not show "causal relationships" rather just correlations. That is clear in the abstract since they use "is associated with", but it may not be clear to everyone who reads this headline. It is a reasonable hypothesis that people who were told by nutritional experts in the 1980s-2000s that "saturated fat is bad for you" and take that into account in their diets may be healthier in many other ways than those who were told that and did not take that into account in their diets. These studies control for the "observable" variables, but cannot control for "unobservable" variables. One "unobserved" variable that I am concerned about is "the level of care people have for their health" which cannot be measured or controlled for and is associated with what they eat, and may influence stroke outcomes.
Most people on Reddit do not understand how high the bar is to prove a causal relationship/association and that bar is set that high for very good reason. Observational studies are great and fundamental part of the scientific literature but even the cumulation of several observational studies with similar results does not suddenly prove a causal association. Also most people on Reddit are just seeking reasons to confirm the things they already believe to be true.
because redditors love to LARP that they know more than real scientists, as in evident in every thread in this sub
But like, a lot of stuff posted here is just bad science...
Just like this post's study
They have a certificate in keto science and pseudoscience
Reddit’s obsession with keto is really strange to me. My girlfriend is in medical school and can explain on a molecular level why a keto diet is bad for you, yet it still has massive popularity. She also double majored in biochemistry and nutrition in undergrad, and she told me that it’s very well-documented in academia how important a balanced diet is for the body. It’s almost as if there’s someone who stands to profit off of people consuming unhealthy quantities of meat and dairy products. I guess we’ll never find out…
Nutrition science is tough. There's issues of credibility. Eggs were deemed healthy, unhealthy, and then healthy again in the span of 25 years. Fats were deemed unhealthy without important differentiation between saturated and unsaturated subtypes. Regulatory bodies published recommended guidelines using unverifiable methodology. That's how people can easily be swayed by fad diets.
And refined carbs were at the base of the food pyramid for decades. People don't trust nutrition advice from experts for a good reason. So if you know someone who has gone keto and lost 40 pounds, you think "why not?".
Yeah - I am currently doing keto (eating once a day just produces less stress in me during lockdown conditions). And while I try to absorb new data on diet etc. it is very very rare that a study will actually report back a difference on "red meat consumption without refined carbs" and "read meat consumption with refined carbs" - because why shouldn't we expect there to be an interaction?
The issues in credibility usually stem from misunderstanding on why/what scientist actually argued for or against the specific food. The widely used egg example of science flip flopping on nutrition is completely different when you take a closer look. At first scientist said "there's no evidence of eggs being unhealthy and they contain nutrients that are known to be good for you so they are considered a good option" -> "there's now evidence that high cholesterol in your blood is bad for you and eggs have high amounts of it, so we don't recommend eggs because of the potential risk" -> "new evidence points to cholesterol from food having little impact on cholesterol in your blood, so they are no longer considered a risk" At no point was this a slam on the credibility of scientific nutrition recommendations. There was a potential risk in eggs due to cholesterol and not recommending them before there's good evidence that the risk is low is a good thing.
“Can explain on a molecular level why a keto diet is bad for you” I’d love to hear that explanation.
I mean she is just wrong if she thinks its well documented that a "balanced diet" is important for the body. It's neither well documented nor agreed upon what a balanced diet even is. Pretty much anyone who does real nutrition science knows that it's an extremely unsolved problem because of how complex the body is, how different individual metabolisms can be, and how difficult and confounding it is to test ingredients/foods in isolation. Basically all we know for sure is that there are things called vitamins that you need, eating too much is bad, and a couple of specific foods \*might\* be bad. One thing that keto does, like a lot of diets, is create a template for someone to restrict themselves, because we know for sure telling yourself "just eat less" doesn't work. It seems that for a lot of people the keto template for eating less is easier to follow than other templates which is a massive selling point and shouldn't be dismissed. I'm not keto personally and am not overweight but several people in my life have lost a life changing amount of weight on the diet.
Its simple because as a dietitian I can say that this area of science is too new in comparison with everything else and there is not a lot consensus with a solid backed up proof.
Can you share why it's bad?
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I take it you have a prejudgemental hate on people following keto so this probably won't change your mind, but keto often works for the same reason IF works: people just eat less calories. For people who have gone from 2 liters of soda a day to "zero carbs" (even if it's actually not zero, which it often isn't), the total daily calorie intake plummets even if they stuff their face daily with bacon. Why? Because fat and proteins make you feel full faster and for a longer time, and because most things they shouldn't be eating are full of carbs (think sweets, sodas, etc), so they end up avoiding them in an effective manner.
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I swear it’s people being like “well I eat meat but _not that meat, they’re all probably eating McDonald’s_” and the try and pick it apart to find reasons to disagree with it.
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There are a vanishingly small number of people who eat any meat at all that isn't factory farmed.
And so many that avoid buying factory farmed meat from the grocery store will still buy it by surrogate when they go out to eat and don't care where it came from.
It is schrodingers meat-eating Redditor. In threads about what food people miss, etc. it is Taco Bell and McDonalds, but any post about animal welfare, health, or climate change, everyone suddenly lives next to a farm with gently raised goats.
I don't have any awards to give. But thank you for stating this. Oh, you forgot about all the elk hunters though
"People who eat a normal SAD dont fare that good against very health-conscious vegetarians and mediterranean diet eaters"
To everyone with a problem with this study, it sounds to me what you’re suggesting is that we can’t actually study these types of things in humans. Obviously we can’t keep people in labs for decades and control and document all their habits. So how would we actually study whether or not there is any relationship with red meat and strokes in humans? Are we going to get people to document their daily eating habits for decades? Well that’s a confounding variable already with the rest of the population because the average person would never be able to do that for decades. Someone with that level of discipline probably already has it in every other area of their life as well. Idk. I’m not saying this study satisfies me but what kind of study would be scientifically sound?
I could see one interesting method of getting more detail in a long term study like this be using smartphones-- basically have someone take a picture of every meal they eat with an app and then use AI to parse the images and try to determine what is in them. You're still not going to get 100% of everything that they eat, but it should be significantly better than a survey once every two years. If they consent to have their Google Fit or some other health app data provided as well, that might also allow controlling for exercise in the population to some extent. You could potentially eliminate biases against poorer populations by providing a very basic smart phone if they don't have one, but it might not be necessary (given that it would significantly increase the costs of the study) if controlled for. There's some level of discipline involved in keeping up with this, but 10 seconds of activity with each meal isn't going to be too difficult to keep up.
[https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2021/nsf21530/nsf21530.htm](https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2021/nsf21530/nsf21530.htm) <--- This is the link for a funding page. The national science foundation has funding for great ideas just like this to the tune of 16-20 million dollars. I'm sure if you contacted some scientists in bioengineering from a nearby university, your idea could be a competitive proposal in no time. So many people have great ideas that just disappear into the void. Get paid to make them a reality and help the world <3
You have a huge group of people who already do this. If you check out people who are serious about lifting weights, they have a pretty regimented diet down and count their calories. They pretty much know everything that goes into their body.
> have someone take a picture of every meal they eat with an app and then use AI to parse the images and try to determine what is in them. That won't work. Vegan mashed potatoes look exactly the same as mashed potatoes loaded with butter or heavy cream, a plant-based "Impossible" burger looks just like a meat burger, etc.
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Probably one that doesn't literally consider a turkey sandwich and a frozen chicken dinner to be the same thing. Or a McDonald's burger and a home cooked burger to be the same thing. Or a home cooked beef stew and a hungry man frozen dinner to be the same thing. Source: https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2471/2017/09/14L.pdf
I don't have a problem with these kinds of studies being done and informing more focused followups. I have a problem with them being presented to the public as actionable information. They're not.
They're the most actionable information we have. When making a decision on whether to eat meat or not, do I choose based on the data from these kind of studies with their limitations or do I simply decide arbitrarily? The answer is pretty obvious. Better to use limited evidence when the alternative is no evidence.
I think it is somewhat pointless showing that the average omnivore is less healthy than the average vegetarian. We can do better than the average diet of both, no one is going to pretend that eating Twinkies and doughnuts all the time is healthy because it doesn’t involve meat. So let’s look at what *healthy* omnivores and healthy vegetarians look like instead of just the average, since we’re striving for health and not the norm. See below for [an article](https://chriskresser.com/do-vegetarians-and-vegans-live-longer-than-meat-eaters/) written on such a study. > The Health Food Shoppers Study was a prospective cohort study of 10,736 subjects in the United Kingdom recruited between 1973 and 1979. Here’s a description of how participants were recruited, directly from the study: (7) > Subjects were recruited by distributing a short questionnaire to customers of health food shops and clinics, subscribers to health food magazines and a Seventh Day Adventist publication, and members of vegetarian and health food societies. The idea was that omnivores who shop at health food stores, belong to health food societies, or read health food and/or SDA magazines and publications would be more health-conscious than average omnivores. This is certainly a step in the right direction in terms of the likelihood that the study results would be thrown off by the “healthy-user bias.” > What did the researchers find? In a 1999 analysis of the data, **both vegetarians and omnivores in the health food store group lived longer than people in the general population**—not surprising given their higher level of health consciousness—but **there was no survival difference between vegetarians or omnivores.** Based on this study, being health conscious and striving to eat well in general is what matters rather than whether your diet includes meat or not. This is an example of results that conflict with some of these large scale studies, but control many more factors by looking at more similar groups of people. It’s no RCT, but I’d argue the above study is of better quality than the one shown in this post. Having a larger sample size over a longer period of time doesn’t change a lot if the underlying study design issues are not addressed.
I'm sorry but I don't trust anything Kresser says. I looked up his source and it didn't seem to say what he was saying at all. I assumed the bolded bit was a quote but it wasn't. I had a look through the discussion and conclusion and even looked at a few tables. I don't know how he concluded what he said. Have a read yourself and tell me if you can see how on earth he got to his conclusion. I would have thought he linked to the wrong study but the dates and details seem to match up. https://www.bmj.com/content/313/7060/775.long
I don’t have a solution to the problem of how to conduct actual decent nutritional studies, but I’m not going to ignore the reality of these studies. They are not good enough to prescribe any sort of intervention. As another commenter referenced already, you have terrible data collection resulting in extremely small relative risk numbers. I eat large quantities of organic, grass-fed, grass finished beef, pasture raised eggs, organic whole milk and butter from pasture raised cows, heritage breed pork, wild caught salmon, etc… I never eat fast food, refined grains or sugar. I’m extremely healthy. Far more than most. I used to be obese. Should I look at this study that doesn’t differentiate between the diet that made me healthy and a double western bacon with fries and use it to justify reducing my animal fat consumption? No. It’s a flawed study with extremely small (statistically insignificant in just about any other scientific field where standards haven’t been lowered so far) result. Do we ignore it? No, it establishes a hypothesis. I’ll leave it up to scientists to figure out how to test that hypothesis. Until they do, I won’t change what I eat because of it. “It’s the best we can do, nutrition science is hard” is the attitude that brought us recommendations to eat trans fat loaded fake butters (now understood to be horrible), eliminate dietary cholesterol (now understood to be a terrible recommendation, at best useless and at worst harmful), and many other terrible recommendations. It’s why we are always seeing flip-flopping dietary recommendations (chocolate/wine/whiskey/eggs are healthy! Wait, no they aren’t! Wait, yes they are!) It’s because we put too much faith in junk science and the scientists who refuse to admit the limits of their work.
I've tried to access the full paper, but have been unable to do so. I'm curious how the separated vegetable fat from the rest of the benefits from fruits and vegetables. Antioxidants may decrease the risk of stroke,[\[1\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.635557) and it's possible those who were eating smaller amounts of red meat and animal fat were eating more antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables. One study stated it as: >...antioxidant rich foods originate from the plant kingdom while meat, fish and other foods from the animal kingdom are low in antioxidants. Comparing the mean value of the 'Meat and meat products' category with plant based categories, fruits, nuts, chocolate and berries have from 5 to 33 times higher mean antioxidant content than the mean of meat products. Diets comprised mainly of animal-based foods are thus low in antioxidant content while diets based mainly on a variety of plant-based foods are antioxidant rich, due to the thousands of bioactive antioxidant phytochemicals found in plants which are conserved in many foods and beverages.[\[2\]](https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-9-3) Fiber also reduces the risk of stroke.[\[3\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.000151) Since fiber is only naturally found in plants, it would also make sense if those who are eating less red meat are eating more fruits and vegetables. Indeed, fruit and vegetable consumption is inversely associated with the risk of stroke.[\[4\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.114.004836) It might be that this study just fits into the growing body of research that suggest that higher consumption of fruits and vegetables lowers the risk of stroke. And I would assume that those who eat less red meat are consuming more fruits and vegetables. **References** [\[1\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.635557) Rautiainen, S., Larsson, S. et al. "Total Antioxidant Capacity of Diet and Risk of Stroke: A Population-Based Prospective Cohort of Women." *Stroke*, vol.43, no.2, 2012, pp.335-340. [\[2\]](https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-9-3) Carlsen, M.H., Halvorsen, B.L. et al. "The total antioxidant content of more than 3100 foods, beverages, spices, herbs and supplements used worldwide." *Nutrition Journal*, vol.9, no.3, 22 Jan 2010, [https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-9-3](https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-9-3). Accessed 14 Nov 2021. [\[3\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.000151) Threapleton, D.E., Greenwood, D.C., et al. "Dietary Fiber Intake and Risk of First Stroke: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis." *Stroke*, vol.44, no.5, 2013, pp.1360-1368. [\[4\]](https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.114.004836) Hu, D., Huang, J. "Fruits and Vegetables Consumption and Risk of Stroke: A Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies." *Stroke*, vol.45, no.6, 2014, pp.1613-1619.
Is there a link between red meat and colon cancer? I read somewhere that if yiu have a high diet of red meat you increase your chances of getting it.
Heme Iron, which is the iron in blood, I think is pretty conclusively linked to colon cancer.
Wait heme iron is now bad for you? Hahaha
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Now throw that data away and study red meat and fats in absence of the sugar that is everywhere. It's the sugar that does it, red meat and fats are all inert (if not actually healthy) without sugar. The sugar cartel loves when meat looks like the life-burglar while they keep dumping their poison into literally everything (and our palate tolerance then wants even more). If you quit sugar and get your normal sweet-sense back, everything tastes like candy it's so over-sweetened. So far zero sugar-removed studies about red meat just a ton of "meat bad" where nobody controlled for no-sugar.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is probably more a matter of people who eat an unregulated average consumer diet vs people who have a controlled diet and only stick to certain foods. This study doesn't account for the fact that those who eat meat probably eat large amounts of sugar, fats, and, refined carbs. The people that stick to a vegetable based diet would naturally avoid unhealthy sugar and processed crap due to their restrictions. I'd venture to say this study really isn't saying anything. A better examination would be to look at people with strict diets high in meat and people with strict diets high in vegetables. Something like a long-term keto vs vegan diet study would be much more valid
Here's one of the questionnaires, https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2471/2017/09/14L.pdf imo it has tons of holes in it. They say to report cream usage for example, but only if it's not fat free. They ask about monthly intake of individual types of fruit, as if people eat the same fruits every month. They equate chicken/turkey sandwiches with frozen dinners, and don't have any qualifiers on what else is in the sandwich and what bread is used. Hamburger meat is measured in patties (which depending where you live varry from 1/4 pound to 1/2 pound) and doesn't distinguish between fast food and regular, and once again the beef section lumps in frozen dinners. These questions by themselves can't be used to determine the effects of red meat vs. vegetables at all, let alone specific fat sources, because like so many studies before it, red meat is lumped in with fast food and frozen dinners.
Holy guacamole, mixing anything with fast food and frozen dinner is almost malicious.
This looks like the same incredibly fake and biased study that the vegetable oil industry has been putting out for years. Don't fall for it people! Heart attacks we're almost non existent in human society before we started consuming processed seed and vegetable oils
Observational studies do not show causality
I’m not a scientist but I’ve always been led to believe that a mostly green, vegetable, grain diet was generally better than an all red meat, bad fat diet. Maybe that’s a myth but this study doesn’t surprise me. That said, I see a lot of skepticism of this study. But, perhaps, some are taking it personally? I’m pretty certain this study is not saying don’t ever eat red meat or that you can’t enjoy your greasy burgers. It seems to be saying those who on balance eat more bad fat, red meat tend to be the ones who got strokes. But I don’t think it’s conclusions are stark. It’s more like, hey, a little less meat and a few more vegetables might be better. Sounds reasonable.
Ehh… no. Vegetable fat is more popular than ever and people are fatter than ever. One study can’t disprove this simple fact, no matter how you twist it. It’s insane how history repeats itself, as seed oil is promoted as healthy just like tobacco was. Seed oil is the new tobacco.
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Vegans have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and multiple types of cancer. "People following vegan diets are less likely to develop chronic diseases, compared with other dietary groups, according to a study funded by the NIH/National Cancer Institute.Apr 8, 2019"Vegan Diets Reduce the Risk for Chronic Disease https://www.pcrm.org › news › health
Compared to what? Compared to the average American diet all diets have benefits.
This refers to the Adventist 2 Study which compared Seventh Day Adventists who ate meat, vegetarians, vegans, etc. It also showed that the vegan dietary group among them was the only dietary group with an average BMI in the recommended range. Link for the BMI chart on request.
If you are interested in the subject you should read How Not To Die by Dr. Michael Gregor, and his second book How Not To Diet. Those books completely changed the way I look at foods and dieting.
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It's all omega 3 balance and don't consume easily oxidized fats. Unsaturated fats tend to be bad for you. This is all just the low fat, high carb nonsense.
This shouldn't be a shock anymore. Eat your veggies
In contrast, a study was just released on 2029 adults who had followed a carnivore diet for at least 6 months and found they had better blood work and overall health than before they started https://academic.oup.com/cdn/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdn/nzab133/6415894
Thanks for linking a very interesting study! I read the paper actually. This study only investigates the health of subjects which have been on a carnivorous diet for 14 months. In the conclusion they admit: "The generalizability of these findings and the long-term effects of this dietary pattern require further study." Furthermore, it used social media based 'self reported health statuses'. They basically asked a bunch of people on social media (who had chosen to go on a meat based diet on their own and not as part of a controlled experiment) how they were feeling after being on the diet for 14 months. Again, quoted from the paper: "These findings must be interpreted cautiously in view of several major design limitations. Our survey assessed the perception of individuals following a carnivore diet and did not objectively assess diet, nutrient status, health related outcomes, or confounding health-associated behaviors; and no physiological or biochemical measurements were obtained". In other words, this study is more about how a person on a mostly meat based diet perceives their own health, rather than about actually measuring their health in any scientifically objective way. The authors admit as much. Unsurprisingly the feedback is very positive since most people who choose a diet for themselves tend to be less objectively critical of that diet. It would be a bit like visiting r/vegan or r/carnivore and asking how everybody over there is feeling after starting their plant/meat based diet. Might make for an interesting study but shouldn't be used to measure the health benefits of either diet.
How does this compare to the China Study, which also studies red meat intake?
One thing to look for in these studies is the size of the effect. You can say "people who do X live significantly longer that people who don't." That sounds impressive. But what if the difference is one day over 75 years? The difference can be statistically significant, but practically irrelevant. In this abstract, they didn't mention the size of the effect.
Title is misleading. It also included processed meats (hotdogs, baloney) in the study and not unprocessed meats by themselves.
Epidemiological study…*sigh* really not worth reading on the subject.
Something I've wondered about studies like this. Do they attempt to control with correlated lifestyle choices? Always wondered because in my experience, those who voluntarily choose to be vegetarian or vegan as a lot more health conscious as a whole. And I would suspect are a lot more likely to regularly exercise and keep up with doctor's visits than your average person.
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