Red Meat Shortens Life Span (not)
The same group that basically handicapped obesity research in the United States after World War II is at it again. Fred Stare and his band of brothers and sisters at Harvard have been the spokespersons for anything related to obesity. They wanted to make a name for themselves and simply discarded all of the work regarding the alternative hypothesis to obesity that was going on in Europe during the 1940s and 50s. Gary Taubes, in Good Calories, Bad Calories reported how these individuals had the work of Hugo Rony and others who effectively singled out carbohydrates as the cause of chronic disease. All they had to do was translate these works into English and then shout them from the rooftops. Instead, they came up with the “eat less, move more” nonsense that continues to plague us to this very day.Every time there has been an interview or a big report written about obesity, you will find one of Fred Stare’s cronies. Obesity research was reinvented in the United States after World War II in the 1950s and early 1960s. The National Institutes of Health began to initially provide money for research during this time. These men all came out of the Northeastern academic corridor, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Rockefeller, the University of Pennsylvania, and they all knew each other. If you weren’t in the club, you had little influence. These individuals became the obesity field’s “leading authorities,” according to the newspapers. They hosted the conferences, edited the textbooks, chaired the committees, and determined research priorities.
By the end of the 1970s, they determined what clinicians and researchers in the field would come to believe, at least in the United States. When McGovern’s committee held its post-facto hearings in February 1977 to address Dietary Goals for Americans, only members of this club testified on obesity, and they all embraced the committee’s recommendation of a national diet richer in carbohydrates and poorer in fat. Van Itallie testified that he was unaware of any research to support their opinions: “Thus, what I am saying is an assumption rather than a statement of established fact.”
They are at it again. Harvard researchers used data from two long-running studies of health professionals. The researchers tracked the diets of more than 121,000 middle-aged men and women for up to 28 years. Roughly 20% of the participants died during that period.
On average, each additional serving of red meat the participants ate per day was associated with a 13% higher risk of dying during the study. Processed red meat products — such as hot dogs, bacon, and salami — appeared to be even more dangerous: Each additional daily serving was associated with a 20% higher risk of dying.
Based on these findings, the researchers estimate that substituting one daily serving of red meat with fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, whole grains, or low-fat dairy products would reduce the risk of dying in this stage of life by 7% to 19%. If everyone in the study had slashed their average red-meat intake to less than half a serving per day, the researchers say, 9% of deaths among men and 8% of deaths among women could have been prevented.
It takes big numbers to make claims in a way that could be considered meaningful by the unsuspecting public. If you just read the above without giving it much thought, it would be easy to conclude that red meat must be the problem. Consider that we were dealing with 120,000 people to begin with. Let’s simplify a little bit and bring that down to say, 120 people. We were told that 20% of those people died during the study. We’re not told what those people died of, just that they died. If they were to tell us how they died, then we could really understand why red meat wasn’t the culprit, but for now, let’s suppose that they died in the way we were led to believe. That would be 24 out of 120 people. We’re talking about risk here and not actual death. So out of the 24 people, if 10% of these people ate less red meat, then perhaps they could have lived longer. So we’re talking about 2 people out of 120, or roughly 200 people out of 120,000.
If red meat is so awful, why only 200 people out of this whole group? Surely it should have been more. After all, we’re undergoing an obesity epidemic which means that 1 out of every 5 people is overweight and unhealthy. That correlates very nicely with the 20 percent supposedly found in this study, which is why it merits recognition on CNN. But are we to believe that this is all these folks ate? At best, this study would show that some combination of red meat and everything else these folks ate in life could be responsible for their untimely demise. They don’t claim that red meat was the cause, but they claim that their findings suggest the notion.
They claim that they don’t want everyone to be vegetarians but they don’t discount the idea either. They always leave the impression that vegetarianism must be the healthier way to eat despite any real evidence to support the impression. They further claim that eating meat raises cholesterol (which it does but not necessarily in an unhealthy way) and the preparation of meat causes carcinogens, which also hasn’t been proved to cause cancer. And they use one of my personal favorites, the idea that these meats contain additives which they believe to be harmful. Whenever a scientist starts getting into what they believe, it’s time to run for cover.
Fortunately, there is someone from Sweden trying to provide the voice of reason, although his comments are inserted at the end of the article. He brings up our heavy reliance on sugar and grain and that this is more likely to be the source of our troubles and not so much red meat. Indeed, we offset the balance of Omega 3 and 6 by eating baked goods that raise your Omega 6. In fact, most people don’t eat a lot of meat. If they do, they always eat meat with carbohydrates. Rarely do we discover a person who eats a diet of only red meat. That would be considered unhealthy. Not because it’s based on evidence, but because it’s based on belief by the holy community of Harvard Public Health.
When your belief system has been invoked, it becomes difficult to pay attention to evidence such as the fact that the dead also happened to be heavier, less physically active, and more likely to smoke and drink alcohol than their peers. The researchers claim that they accounted for these factors but let’s think about this for a moment: Do you really believe that someone sitting around on the couch smoking and drinking would be as healthy as active non-smokers simply because they chose not to eat red meat? The researchers argue that 2 people in 120 could have possibly pulled that off. Is that significant enough to indict red meat for an entire population? It must have been a slow day at the CNN newsroom.
And that brings us back to the point I made earlier. The study does not account for why these people died. It only mentions 200 people who died of various causes who also happened to eat more red meat than the other people. All that shows is perhaps the additional red meat combined with everything else they ate meant that they were more likely to die but not necessarily because of red meat. This is nothing more than a scare tactic by the same people who have used these tactics for the past 60 years.
Vegetarians who eat sweets are just as likely, if not more so, to get heart disease and all the other diseases of civilization. The latest statistics suggest that 1 in 3 die of cancer and it’s the biggest killer followed closely by heart disease. I’ve presented studies on this website that suggest that carbohydrates are responsible for both. Yet, this little study is supposed to change your mind and it will if you choose not to think about it. The risk is the same for anyone who consumes more than 70 pounds of sugar per year.
I’ll end this piece with a quote from Taubes from the epilogue of his book:
This is an example of how science works. Scientists identify outstanding questions or they propose hypotheses and then conduct experiments to answer the questions or refute them regardless of how obviously true they might be. If people make assertions without the empirical evidence to defend them, they are vigorously rebuked. In science, progress is made only by first establishing whether one’s predecessors “have erred or have stopped before tracking down the implications of their results or have passed over their work leaving what is there to be seen by the fresh eye of another.” This teaches that each new claim to knowledge has to be picked apart and appraised. The shortcomings have to be established unequivocally before what we know is really so and what we don’t. “This unending exchange of critical judgment, of praise and punishment, is developed in science to a degree that makes the monitoring of children’s behavior by their parents seem little more than child’s play.”
This institutionalized vigilance is nowhere to be found in the study of nutrition, chronic disease and obesity. It has not been there for decades. It is difficult to use the term “scientist” to describe those individuals who work in these disciplines and indeed, Gary Taubes actively avoided doing so in his book. It’s simply debatable whether what these individuals have practiced for fifty years and whether the culture they have created can reasonably be described as science as most working philosophers of science would characterize it. Individuals in these disciplines think of themselves as scientists and they use the terminology of science and they certainly borrow the authority of science to communicate their beliefs to the general public but “the results of their enterprise do not add up to science as we know it.”
