Meat might not kill you after all, new study says

PanARMENIAN.Net - Science may be ending its years-long beef with red meat.

A shocking new study has called into question one of the most firmly held nutrition guidelines of the past few decades: that beef and pork consumption should be limited to stave off disease. Now, researchers say the science behind that recommendation is flimsy at best, The New York Post reports.

“The panel suggests adults continue current processed meat consumption,” the study’s authors write.

The findings, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, challenge previous studies and guidelines that have called for reducing red and processed meats to lower risk of disease. Instead, the researchers claim meat may not be the sole culprit of some health problems and therefore suggest cutting back might yield marginal results.

Previous studies have come to the conclusion that consuming less red and processed meats leads to lower rates of heart disease and diabetes and death from certain cancers. However, these new findings claim that many of the previous studies used to inform the guidelines, for example, were riddled with competing conflicts of interests. And, the studies were mostly observational, so they were limited in the conclusions their researchers could really draw, the authors write.

But the study has left much of the nutrition world shook. An essay published on Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health calls for the study to be held for further review.

“This is a prime example where one must look beyond the headlines and abstract conclusions,” the letter says.

“I am outraged and bewildered,” Stanford University nutrition scientist Christopher Gardner tells NPR. “This is perplexing, given the … clear evidence for harm associated with high red meat intake,” adds Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Department of Nutrition chair Frank Hu.

Experts are not alone in outrage. Opinions have been mixed on Twitter, with some claiming they will continue to eat an omnivorous diet and others staunchly against it.

“It’s still better for the planet to NOT eat red meat,” one person wrote.