The Big Red Meat Study

If you keep up with the news, you’ve probably read or heard about the recent study which suggests that older Americans who eat large amounts of red meat have an increased risk of death from heart disease and cancer.

According to the report, researchers gave a food questionnaire to approximately half a million people (ages 50-71) who took part in the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study. Participants responded to 124 questions regarding specific food and drink intake as well as portion size in the previous twelve months. Then researchers followed this group for ten years and recorded their findings.

At the end of ten years, 47,976 men and 23,276 women died. Researchers checked causes of death and overall mortality against reported meat consumption and concluded that “Red and processed meat intakes were associated with modest increases in total mortality, cancer mortality, and cardiovascular disease mortality.”

My first response to this study: correlation does not equal causation.

Dr Michael Eades points out that the media decides which studies get press and which studies do not. He highlights a couple of other recent studies which had opposite results and did not get reported by the press.

I’d like to see a study conducted on Americans who eat only grass-fed, organic, free-range meats, which are more like the meats our Paleolithic ancestors ate. Wouldn’t that be much healthier than eating all the antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, and chemicals in meats that come from the feedlot?