Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Red Meat Causes and Is Caused by Death!

I've said it before, I said it again (and again), but now I never need to say it again: "Daily Red Meat Raises Chance of Dying Early."

And not only that, but the meat is worse if you:

Cook it
or
Process it.

AND: It destroys the environment.

End of discussion. Good day, gentlemen!

1 comment:

Harwood said...

It is just one study, large though it may be, so I wouldn't say it is the end of discussion. But I don't think most people would argue that eating lots of red and processed meats is healthier than not even before this study. Plus, did you ever actually say, "Daily Red Meat Raises Chance of Dying Early"... seems a weird way to phrase it in conversation.

Getting back to the study however, I think the most interesting conclusion of the study isn't that daily red meat increases the risk of death (again, really not that shocking), but that eating white meat (fish and poultry) actually decreased the risk of death: "When comparing the highest with the lowest quintile of
white meat intake, there was an inverse association for
total mortality and cancer mortality, as well as all other
deaths for both men and women." This is, I'd guess more attributable to fish intake than poultry but the study doesn't differentiate the two so it is impossible to tell. Still interesting...

You can download the study here: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/

Plus, I think more people would die if they ate 4.5 ounces of red meat a day without cooking it.

Of course, meat (and red meat especially) is extremely destructive to the environment and as such we should reduce our intake for that reason... even if living longer by itself isn't a good enough motivator (but seeing how many people still smoke, early death doesn't seem to as big a deterrent as I would think).

Continuing the discussion. Good day, gentlewoman!