Lots of red meat increases mortality risk [Forum Archive]

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Lots of red meat increases mortality risk

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Posted by: Robert D.

Lots of red meat increases mortality risk
By CARLA K. JOHNSON, AP Medical Writer

CHICAGO - The largest study of its kind finds that older Americans who eat large amounts of red meat and processed meats face a greater risk of death from heart disease and cancer. The federal study of more than half a million men and women bolsters prior evidence of the health risks of diets laden with red meat like hamburger and processed meats like hot dogs, bacon and cold cuts.

A cow grazes in a field outside of Petaluma, California. People who eat more red or processed meat have a higher risk of death from all causes including cancer, while a higher consumption of white meat reduces such risks, a decade-long US study released Monday found.(AFP/Getty Images/File/David Paul Morris)

Calling the increased risk modest, lead author Rashmi Sinha of the National Cancer Institute said the findings support the advice of several health groups to limit red and processed meat intake to decrease cancer risk.

The findings appear in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.

Over 10 years, eating the equivalent of a quarter-pound hamburger daily gave men in the study a 22 percent higher risk of dying of cancer and a 27 percent higher risk of dying of heart disease. That's compared to those who ate the least red meat, just 5 ounces per week.

Women who ate large amounts of red meat had a 20 percent higher risk of dying of cancer and a 50 percent higher risk of dying of heart disease than women who ate less.

For processed meats, the increased risks for large quantities were slightly lower overall than for red meat. The researchers compared deaths in the people with the highest intakes to deaths in people with the lowest to calculate the increased risk.

People whose diets contained more white meat like chicken and fish had lower risks of death.

The researchers surveyed more than 545,000 people, ages 50 to 71 years old, on their eating habits, then followed them for 10 years. There were more than 70,000 deaths during that time.

Study subjects were recruited from AARP members, a group that's healthier than other similarly aged Americans. That means the findings may not apply to all groups, Sinha said. The study relied on people's memory of what they ate, which can be faulty.

In the analysis, the researchers took into account other risk factors such as smoking, family history of cancer and high body mass index.

In an accompanying editorial, Barry Popkin, director of the Interdisciplinary Obesity Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote that reducing meat intake would have benefits beyond improved health.

Livestock increase greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming, he wrote, and nations should reevaluate farm subsidies that distort prices and encourage meat-based diets.

"We've promoted a diet that has added excessively to global warming," Popkin said in an interview.

Successfully shifting away from red meat can be as easy as increasing fruits and vegetables in the diet, said Elisabetta Politi of the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham, N.C.

"I'm not saying everybody should turn into vegetarians," Politi said. "Meat should be a supporting actor on the plate, not the main character."

The National Pork Board and National Cattlemen's Beef Association questioned the findings.

Dietitian Ceci Snyder said in a statement for the pork board that the study "attempts to indict all red meat consumption by looking at extremes in meat consumption, as opposed to what most Americans eat."

Lean meat as part of a balanced diet can prevent chronic disease, along with exercise and avoiding smoking, said Shalene McNeill, dietitian for the beef group.

Study: Lots of red meat increases mortality risk on Yahoo! Health

Posted by: Merkaba

Great. Glad I don't eat lots of red meat!

Posted by: T_man

Quote:

Originally Posted by Merkaba

Great. Glad I don't eat lots of red meat!

How is this great?

Posted by: chobby192

The biological value of lean beef is only 69. It is not worth risking my health, I guess.

Posted by: Robert D.

I am not a big red meat eater, I would say a burger once a week.

Posted by: JimShortz99

I probably eat red meat twice a week. I will be cutting it down to once a week. Thanks for the article!

Posted by: IainDaniel

Pretty simple everything in moderation. Not Rocket science... this won't deter me from eating a good steak or burger.

Posted by: danzik17

Oh well. I'm not giving up my 6oz of top round steak before bed.

Posted by: PreMier

i eat red meat 7 days a week several times a day. its wild game though, i wonder if that makes a difference

Posted by: IainDaniel

Quote:

Originally Posted by PreMier

i eat red meat 7 days a week several times a day. its wild game though, i wonder if that makes a difference

I would think so.... different fat profiles.

Posted by: Built

We sure do get a lot of warnings about what not to eat.

On Tuesday, March 24, the Vancouver Sun reported out on a recent observational study that linked eating red meat with a higher risk of cancer. This recent study from the National Cancer Institute in the US concludes: "Red and processed meat intakes were associated with modest increases in total mortality, cancer mortality, and cardiovascular disease mortality."
I've included the journal abstract from pubmed below.
As you read this, keep in mind this is an observational study, not a controlled experiment, and an important consideration is the fact that correlation does not indicate causation.
Something else to keep in mind is that the researchers based their results on subjects' self-reported lifetime dietary intake based on a questionnaire.
While both of these are significant defects of this study, the third one is easily the most insidious - particularly health-conscious individuals may have deliberately limited their consumption of red meat out of the belief that this will be healthier. These individuals are more likely to consume fewer processed foods, instead favouring fresh, simple foods such as fruits and especially vegetables. They are also more likely to undertake other healthy-lifestyle pursuits, such as sleeping well, avoiding the overconsumption of alcohol and sugary foods, and remaining active. They are demographically different from people who are less health-conscious - Census figures show us that health indices increase with affluence - people with better educations and better-paying jobs live longer. They take more and longer vacations, are more likely to seek medical and health advice from professionals, and live nearer urban centres - a factor also known to influence overall risk of mortality.
The research team did take steps to control for some such issues - matching age, education, marital status, family history of cancer, race, body mass index, smoking history, physical activity, energy intake, alcohol intake, vitamin supplement use, fruit consumption, vegetable consumption, and menopausal hormone therapy among women.

I'll add as an aside the failure of the body mass index with regard to strength athletes such as powerlifers, bodybuilders and Olympic lifters, whose extra bodyweight does not impact upon health parameters in the same way as obesity. A vastly superior measure here would have been percentage bodyfat, but accurate estimates of this measure are expensive - a full-body DEXA (dual emission x-ray absorptionometry) is the gold standard for this measure, and can cost upwards of a hundred dollars a pop.

Getting back to the study, the problem remains that this is an observational study based on self-reports of lifetime dietary intake - not only does memory fail, but people are known to... aaahhh, shall we say exaggerate? Additionally, you have to question what it was that was different about individuals who deliberately chose to eschew red meat and processed meat products.
After controlling for all these factors, the research only found a "modest" increased risk, which was reported in something referred to in the article as a "hazard ratio". Similar to (and depending on the article, the same as) an odds ratio, this statistic is used when predicting binary outcomes from multiple factors - in this case, the outcome was "lived" or "died" during the 10-year follow up of the subjects. A similar, but much simpler concept is the relative risk:

From wikipedia: the ratio of the probability of the event occurring in the exposed group versus a non-exposed group.

For example, if the probability of developing lung cancer among smokers was 20% and among non-smokers 1%, then the relative risk of cancer associated with smoking would be 20. Smokers would be twenty times as likely as non-smokers to develop lung cancer.

Here, since the risk of dying changes by the minute over a ten year period of time, the model is more complicated, but the interpretation is the same:
Simply put, a hazard ratio of 1.31 implies that there is a 31% greater risk of death between two comparison groups - in this case, this involved comparing death-rates among red-meat-eaters from the highest with the lowest-consumption groups. We don't know the actual death rates for this group, but the overall death rate over the ten year period for the reference population was 14%: 500,000 people aged 50 to 71 filled in a questionnaire. Ten years later, 14% (47,976 men and 23,276 women) of them had died from all causes. If 16% of the high-consumption and 12% of the low-consumption red-meat eaters had died, the relative risk would be 1.33.
A final note is that we don't know what these people ate or how they took care of themselves over those ten years. Beware of observational studies - at best, they provide food for thought.
Cheers
MariAnne

Meat intake and mortality: a prospective study of over half a million people.

Sinha R, Cross AJ, Graubard BI, Leitzmann MF, Schatzkin A.
Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute-Nutritional Epidemiology Branch, Rockville, MD 20852, USA. sinhar@nih.gov

BACKGROUND: High intakes of red or processed meat may increase the risk of mortality. Our objective was to determine the relations of red, white, and processed meat intakes to risk for total and cause-specific mortality.
METHODS: The study population included the National Institutes of Health-AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons) Diet and Health Study cohort of half a million people aged 50 to 71 years at baseline. Meat intake was estimated from a food frequency questionnaire administered at baseline. Cox proportional hazards regression models estimated hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) within quintiles of meat intake. The covariates included in the models were age, education, marital status, family history of cancer (yes/no) (cancer mortality only), race, body mass index, 31-level smoking history, physical activity, energy intake, alcohol intake, vitamin supplement use, fruit consumption, vegetable consumption, and menopausal hormone therapy among women. Main outcome measures included total mortality and deaths due to cancer, cardiovascular disease, injuries and sudden deaths, and all other causes.
RESULTS: There were 47 976 male deaths and 23 276 female deaths during 10 years of follow-up. Men and women in the highest vs lowest quintile of red (HR, 1.31 [95% CI, 1.27-1.35], and HR, 1.36 [95% CI, 1.30-1.43], respectively) and processed meat (HR, 1.16 [95% CI, 1.12-1.20], and HR, 1.25 [95% CI, 1.20-1.31], respectively) intakes had elevated risks for overall mortality. Regarding cause-specific mortality, men and women had elevated risks for cancer mortality for red (HR, 1.22 [95% CI, 1.16-1.29], and HR, 1.20 [95% CI, 1.12-1.30], respectively) and processed meat (HR, 1.12 [95% CI, 1.06-1.19], and HR, 1.11 [95% CI 1.04-1.19], respectively) intakes. Furthermore, cardiovascular disease risk was elevated for men and women in the highest quintile of red (HR, 1.27 [95% CI, 1.20-1.35], and HR, 1.50 [95% CI, 1.37-1.65], respectively) and processed meat (HR, 1.09 [95% CI, 1.03-1.15], and HR, 1.38 [95% CI, 1.26-1.51], respectively) intakes. 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.
CONCLUSION: Red and processed meat intakes were associated with modest increases in total mortality, cancer mortality, and cardiovascular disease mortality.

Posted by: OuiSwim

Have you seen the list of things that MAY cause cancer? It's pretty bleak.
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Acetaldehyde, acrylamide, acrylonitril, abortion, agent orange, alar, alcohol, air pollution, aldrin, alfatoxin, arsenic, arsine, asbestos, asphalt fumes, atrazine, AZT, baby food, barbequed meat, benzene, benzidine, benzopyrene, beryllium, beta-carotene, betel nuts, birth control pills, bottled water, bracken, bread, breasts, bus stations, calcium channel blockers, cadmium, captan, carbon black, carbon tetrachloride, careers for women, casual sex, car fumes, celery, charred foods, cooked foods, chewing gum, Chinese food, Chinese herbal supplements, chips, chloramphenicol, chlordane, chlorinated camphene, chlorinated water, chlorodiphenyl, chloroform, cholesterol, low cholesterol, chromium, coal tar, coffee, coke ovens, crackers, creosote, cyclamates, dairy products, deodorants, depleted uranium, depression, dichloryacetylene, DDT, dieldrin, diesel exhaust, diet soda, dimethyl sulphate, dinitrotouluene, dioxin, dioxane, epichlorhydrin, ethyle acrilate, ethylene, ethilene dibromide, ethnic beliefs,ethylene dichloride, Ex-Lax, fat, fluoridation, flying, formaldehyde, free radicals, french fries, fruit, gasoline, genes, gingerbread, global warming, gluteraldehyde, granite, grilled meat, Gulf war, hair dyes, hamburgers, heliobacter pylori, hepatitis B virus, hexachlorbutadiene, hexachlorethane, high bone mass, HPMA, HRT, hydrazine, hydrogen peroxide, incense, infertility, jewellery, Kepone, kissing, lack of exercise, laxatives, lead, left handedness, Lindane, Listerine, low fibre diet, magnetic fields, malonaldehyde, mammograms, manganese, marijuana, methyl bromide, methylene chloride, menopause, microwave ovens, milk hormones, mixed spices, mobile phones, MTBE, nickel, night lighting, night shifts, nitrates, not breast feeding, not having a twin, nuclear power plants, Nutrasweet, obesity, oestrogen, olestra, olive oil, orange juice, oxygenated gasoline, oyster sauce, ozone, ozone depletion, passive smoking, PCBs, peanuts, pesticides, pet birds, plastic IV bags, polio vaccine, potato crisps (chips), power lines, proteins, Prozac, PVC, radio masts, radon, railway sleepers, red meat, Roundup, saccharin, salt, sausage, selenium, semiconductor plants, shellfish, sick buildings, soy sauce, stress, strontium, styrene, sulphuric acid, sun beds, sunlight, sunscreen, talc, tetrachloroethylene, testosterone, tight bras, toast, toasters, tobacco, tooth fillings, toothpaste (with fluoride or bleach), train stations, trichloroethylene, under-arm shaving, unvented stoves, uranium, UV radiation, vegetables, vinyl bromide, vinyl chloride, vinyl fluoride, vinyl toys, vitamins, vitreous fibres, wallpaper, weedkiller (2-4 D), welding fumes, well water, weight gain, winter, wood dust, work, x-rays.

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The complete list of things that give you cancer

Now tell me that's not a load of shit. Maybe the best question to ask is "What doesn't cause cancer?" the list is probably shorter on that one.

Posted by: Risiko

The thing about carcinogens is that they are everywhere, but the risks of most of those chemicals listed have a less than one in a million lifetime incidence of cancer, except at certain extreme levels. Others have more like a one in a thousand associated lifetime risk of cancer.

The key here is to avoid intake or exposures extremes to any of those chemicals. The idea that moderation is important is key.

Posted by: Built

The key here is that we're looking at an observational study that concludes exactly NOTHING about cause - only association.

Posted by: Mags

Everything can kill us, apparently: don't eat red meat as it'll give you bowel cancer, don't eat egg yolks because they'll give you a heart attack, don't eat tinned tuna as the mercury content will poison you, don't eat vegetables that aren't organic as the pesticides will rot your body. The way things are going, they'll be nothing left to eat. While it's sensible to eat healthily (and I know we all try), life's a lottery. no one knows how long we have. After all, how do you explain someone who's a fit, eats well, gets regular, all-clear check ups and then keels over of, say, a heart attack at 40, compared to someone who's overweight, never exercised and who has been a fan of drinking and smoking their entire life before 'going' in their sleep aged 80. We've all seen/read/heard stories like that. Think IainDaniel said it right: everything in moderation. I say eat and live as healthy as possible and be happy. Don't worry about what's going to kill you. That'd probably only induce more stress and a heart attack, anyway.

Posted by: T_man

i've been quite concerned at what I eat now

I usually eat a large portion of red meat for dinner(my mum has african traditions) and also have lots of cheese and dairy. Many of the things I eat, although considered healthy, are bad for you :S

I eat much healthier than my friends, only occasionally eating fast food when my mum is too lazy to cook but even then I try not to eat it but my mum cuts my balls off for being too anal about my diet

i think i have an anxiety disorder

Posted by: powerrack

Lean beef is a bodybuilder's best friend, it is also a healthy choice. High in protein, b-vitamins, zinc, CLA, B12! It's "good to go"!

Posted by: Built

I eat a lot of beef. My body just feels so much better when I do, stronger and healthier.

I'd eat beef three times a day given the choice. I LOVE to visit Edmonton for business trips!

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerrack

Lean beef is a bodybuilder's best friend, it is also a healthy choice. High in protein, b-vitamins, zinc, CLA, B12! It's "good to go"!

Don't forget creatine - that's in there, too - and iron!

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