More beans and less red meat: Nutritionists weigh in on U.S. dietary guidelines

when you search google scholar about red meat and health, studies (up to 130,000 people) are 5:1 that there is no evidence that moderate intake of unprocessed red meat has any negative effect on health.

in addition, cholesterol increases naturally with age and is not a threat. excess salt is the #1 contributing factor to cardiovascular problems.

seed oils (canola, corn, grape seed, soy, etc.) hydrogenated vegetable oils (banned in most countries except the u.s.), high-fructose corn syrup all have negative effects on health.

the old u.s. food pyramid was designed by the food industry. bought and paid for by lobbyists.

sugar frosted shredded wheat is listed as a diet food by the usda. how much can you trust them?

not addressing ultra processed food shows the influence of the big food industry.

ingredients in u.s. foods banned in other countries. even china and india ban it.

potassium bromate

titanium dioxide

bromate vegetable oil

azodicarbonamide

propylparaben

red 40, yellow 6, yellow 5 dyes.

If so, you should be able to find a good reference for this. Here's a large study of ~2 million people that shows evidence otherwise: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(24)00179-7/fulltext.

"The consumption of meat, particularly processed meat and unprocessed red meat, is a risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes across populations. These findings highlight the importance of reducing meat consumption for public health and should inform dietary guidelines."

when you search google scholar about red meat and health, studies (up to 130,000 people) are 5:1 that there is no evidence that moderate intake of unprocessed red meat has any negative effect on health.

in addition, cholesterol increases naturally with age and is not a threat. excess salt is the #1 contributing factor to cardiovascular problems.

i did say moderate intake. obesity and over consumption of sugars is the leading cause or type 2.

Beans beans the magical fruit, the more you eat the more you toot!

"The consumption of meat, particularly processed meat and unprocessed red meat, is a risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes across populations. These findings highlight the importance of reducing meat consumption for public health and should inform dietary guidelines."

Sounds familiar. I'm assuming it's the same paper that was brought up a little while back here on JT. If you go through the paper, you'll realize that there are many important confounders; they found a correlation between meat consumption and smoking, obesity, being sedentary....

If meat was the problem, then certainly those following a carnivore diet would have a very high rate of T2D, much higher than those consuming 2 servings of meat described in the paper. But the opposite is true, in fact countless people have reversed their T2D by following a carnivore diet.

If a hamburger with fries and a coke increases your chances of getting T2D, it's not because of the meat.

fallaffelToday  08:15 am JST

If so, you should be able to find a good reference for this. Here's a large study of ~2 million people that shows evidence otherwise: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(24)00179-7/fulltext.

"The consumption of meat, particularly processed meat and unprocessed red meat, is a risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes across populations. These findings highlight the importance of reducing meat consumption for public health and should inform dietary guidelines."

This is a study that gathered self-reported food consumption as the evidence, and failed to take properly take into account the other food the participants were eating. So if the participants were consuming red meat as part of a burger or pie or pasta, etc, which include carbs and likely seed oils and other confounding ingredients, that would make red meat look bad by implication because of the other ingredients that do increase the risk of type-2 diabetes and obesity. There is no study that has been able to link un- or low-processed red meat by itself with these diseases.

It's simply another shot in the propaganda war against food that's healthy and is difficult for the big food companies to control and scale to a level that they can make even bigger profits from. Not only that, foods that do cause type-2 diabetes and obesity - rich in carbs and seed oils - help the pharma companies to keep people sick over the long term and provide a steady stream of customers for their drugs.

That decision is likely to bump up against the views of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the nominee to lead the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, who has questioned potential conflicts of interest among members of the dietary guidelines panel and vowed to crack down on ultraprocessed foods that contribute to chronic disease.

The considerable conflicts of interest in medical and nutritional research is clear and undeniable. I'm looking forward to seeing him clean it all up. But it will be tough, considering the massive corporate interest in seeing him fail; they will go all out to try and discredit him through media and elsewhere.

 But the opposite is true, in fact countless people have reversed their T2D by following a carnivore diet

Countless? A bit vague. Can you give a more accurate number?

Is your PhD in the area of nutrition? I remember you telling us people following a carnivore diet don’t fart. I found that absolutely fascinating in that I wonder if that’s actually possible ( I’m not qualified in this area ).

It’s just that I often find those promoting the carnivore diet are often garden variety conspiracy theorists watching bro podcasts with no background in the field.

Can I ask about your opinion of my doctor? He said I’m in decent shape and I follow a balanced diet ( I don’t eat a lot of meat ).

Do you think my doctor is bought and paid for by big something or other or is he just ignorant in the area of nutrition? In other words corrupt or incompetent.

Do you think I should change doctor?

Genuine question.

Anecdotal I know, but mentioned this on here before.

My dear friend aged 84, a now retired gastrointestinal surgeon, says he has witnessed the huge increase in colon cancer over the decades to follow the increased consumption of meat. He has his own theories on why involving the digestive processes.

Of course processed foods in general including artificial ingredients, chemicals, sugar etc have seen a huge increase in consumption. They surely present serious health problems.

But the surge in colorectal cancer cases since the 80's making it now the number 1 cancer in Japan, can be partly attributed to the massive increase in meat consumption - he says.

A short extract from a report by the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center & National Health Institute USA states -

The risk of red and processed meat

The analysis included data from 27 studies of colorectal cancer risk in people of European origin. Gauderman and Ulrike Peters, PhD, MPH, a professor and the associate director of the public health sciences division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, compiled data from the Genetics and Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer Consortium, the Colorectal Cancer Transdisciplinary Study and the Colon Cancer Family Registry.

First, the research team harmonized data from the various studies to create standard measures for the consumption of red meat (beef, pork and lamb) and processed meat (bacon, sausages, luncheon/deli meats and hot dogs). For each category, they calculated servings per day, adjusted for body mass index, and divided participants into four groups based on levels of red or processed meat intake.

People with the highest level of red meat intake had a 30% increased risk for colorectal cancer; those with the highest level of processed meat intake had a 40% increased risk. These findings do not account for genetic variability that may put some people in the population at higher risk than others.

Their focus was on genetic predispositions to red meat intake and colon cancers, and it seems some individuals are much more prone than others and also cultural and ethnic accounts need to be considered.

Many similar studies have been or currently running world wide.

The specific science about exactly why the intake of meat correlates with cancer increases has not been clearly defined, but no doubt supporting evidence will be published in the near future explaining the bio-mechanisms behind it.

>

a significant number of colon and colorectal cancers are genetically inherited predispositions.

more study is needed to pinpoint the most recent spike.

anecdotal evidence doesn’t count.

But the opposite is true, in fact countless people have reversed their T2D by following a carnivore diet

Countless? A bit vague. Can you give a more accurate number?

Funny how you remember certain small details from my previous posts, from a very long time ago, yet you seem to have forgotten or missed the following Harvard study I brought up a while back:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34934897/

A total of 2029 respondents (median age: 44 y, 67% male) reported consuming a carnivore diet for 14 mo ... Participants reported high levels of satisfaction and improvements in overall health (95%), well-being (66%-91%), various medical conditions (48%-98%)... Participants with diabetes reported benefits including reductions in median [IQR] BMI (4.3 [1.4-7.2]), glycated hemoglobin (0.4% [0%-1.7%]), and diabetes medication use (84%-100%).

There are also countless online testimonials...

Eat a balanced diet and avoid ready made meals, sweets, biscuits and cakes etc. Meat is alright if it’s not processed and part of a healthy diet. Get some fruit and veg down you, can get well cheap at some of them little greengrocers. Keep your body moving and exercise daily, you need to do weights if you’re a bloke, maintain your muscle and help keep the weight down.

Sedentary lifestyle and eating junk food is the biggest menace in developed nations, something that needs to change to end the obesity epidemic.

Browny1

Consumption of meat per person has actually fallen over time (in the West, but in Japan it's risen). But consumption of processed food - including heavily processed meat - has skyrocketed across the world. Perhaps your gastrointestinal surgeon friend could look into this as a cause of the problem.

Perhaps if he was able to compare this result with simple unprocessed or minimally processed meat he might get a more accurate picture. It crucial to include this for comparison, otherwise it would be easy to miss important data. Humans evolved to eat meat-heavy diets, whether it's red meat, chicken, fish or whatever. Our stomachs are highly acidic like other carnivores to break down the proteins and kill bacteria, and the small intestine absorbs them while the large intestine collects the water. What's more, muman intestines have a tiny caecum and appendix compared with herbivorous apes like gorillas that are hind-gut digesters. The caucus and appendix are much larger and contain bacteria that break down the plant matter they eat into digestible amino acids and the like that the apes can absorb and use. We only have that capability to a small extent if at all. That also means we have a limited ability to extract the other nutrients in plants, and the stuff we can digest passes through into the large intestine and can cause irritation if it doesn't pass through smoothly. I suspect the long residence time of partially digested plant material and highly processed food is what's causing the rise in colorectal cancer, not meat consumption. Sure, I'm not an expert, but it's not logically inconceivable because that's what human food has become in industrialised countries.

As far as pets are concerned, there's been an enormous rise in cancers - in line with the introduction of highly processed carb- and seed-oil-rich kibble that is very popular as pet food. Anecdotal, but we lost one dog at 8 years old to cancer and had fed him a lot of that kibble. That was just the norm. The other one ate a lot more fresh meat in comparison and lived to 14, but we weren't really thinking about the carb balance. It's just what we fed him. While the bigger breeds do tend to live shorter lives than the little ones, their life expectancies have fallen over the last few decades while the amount of highly processed foods fed to them have risen. Dogs are primarily carnivores and that's how their digestive systems are set up. So it's natural to ask why we're feeding them food they're not designed for. Think about zoos: they do their best to feed the animals food they're used to in the wild and warn people not to feed the animals because they WILL get sick if they eat food we eat. Yet we feed dogs and cats highly processed food containing all sorts of stuff they haven't evolved to process.

Can I ask about your opinion of my doctor?

As most medical doctors, he most likely has very little training in nutrition, and just parrots the corporate-influenced guidelines

I see. So he’s incompetent and potentially corrupt.

I know you are a highly credentialed working scientist. Is your doctorate in the area of nutrition? What training did you receive?

Could you recommend sources that I could recommend to my doctor to get him up to speed?

Also, I float the odd air biscuit. Do you think I should bring this up? I don’t do it a lot. I thought it was a natural thing and occasionally amusing.

Should I be concerned and switch to a carnivore diet to cut out potential embarrassment or mirth?

ffs

how about those steak pies in a tin you like so much?

BadHaircut - Thanks for your reply.

Yes as I indicated - it's his observation over decades and he has not done research into it. But he has talked about esp avoiding processed meats - they contain other nasties.

And meat dietary habits differ hugely around the world.

The Netsilik Inuit consume almost entirely red meat balanced with some fish and have done so for centuries.

No doubt their intestinal tracts harbor vastly different micro-organisms than say many Indian persons brought up on predominantly plant-based diets.

Generally Japanese people rarely ate meat until Meiji and it wasn't until the last 4 decades or so meat became common and cheap.

So 1,000s of years of relatively no or little meat consumption will certainly have impacted their gut biome and probably DNA.

As I indicated in the first post - the research link I showed was focused on genetic pre-dispositions/dna differences amongst people and their susceptibilities to colorectal cancers while consuming meats.

They used control groups of 10,000s where 1 group consumed meat and the other to lesser or no meat and took into account other daily life aspects.

There seemed to be a strong link - correlating indicator - of the role of meat in cancer.

I'm borderline T2D. I have a diabetic doctor and a dietician. I avoid certain foods and reduce my sugar intake. No alcohol. Whole-grain flour is used for bread, rice, and pasta.

Wallace

Everything in moderation and when it comes to them pies it’s definitely in moderation, only have one a year.

All the research points to plant-based diets for longevity if you're interested in hanging around. Beans absolutely a must, Blue Zone staple, great source of fiber and many nutrients.

Recommend buying dried beans then soaking and cooking yourself. Best to buy a variety package to get more nutrition, black, kidney and navy/white beans, along with lentils all excellent but don't forget edamame!

Furthermore, beans go with everything and are not expensive compared with meats. Your welcome

Good 'ol Standard American Diet, shorten as SAD

The amount of salt in processed food is astounding.

Ultraprocessed foods include the snacks, sugary cereals and frozen meals that make up about 60% of the American diet

60% and you're not gathering evidence to find out definitively?

But the 20-member panel didn't weigh in on the growing role of ultraprocessed foods that have been linked to health problems, saying there's not enough evidence to tell people to avoid them.

But the 20-member panel didn't weigh in on the growing role of ultraprocessed foods that have been linked to health problems, saying there's not enough evidence to tell people to avoid them.

Well, after that, you can pretty much discard anything that stated by this panel. No conflict of interest among these people?

But somehow I suspect that soon we will assured that they represent the "world-wide experts respected institutions" of nutrition.

Raw Beer

If a hamburger with fries and a coke increases your chances of getting T2D, it's not because of the meat.

Bull eye. Even though this totally unbiased 20-member panel of experts will disagree...

But the 20-member panel didn't weigh in on the growing role of ultraprocessed foods that have been linked to health problems, saying there's not enough evidence to tell people to avoid them.

Well, after that, you can pretty much discard anything that stated by this panel. No conflict of interest among these people?

Someone who look at these 20 members found that 19 of them had important conflicts of interest.

But somehow I suspect that soon we will assured that they represent the "world-wide experts respected institutions" of nutrition.

Yep, any minute now...

wallace

I'm borderline T2D. I have a diabetic doctor and a dietician. I avoid certain foods and reduce my sugar intake. No alcohol. Whole-grain flour is used for bread, rice, and pasta.

Have you considered reducing bread, rice, and pasta and taking your sugar intake to zero? I doubt the the label "whole grain" means much these days, unless you grow and mill the grain yourself.

when you search google scholar about red meat and health, studies (up to 130,000 people) are 5:1 that there is no evidence that moderate intake of unprocessed red meat has any negative effect on health.

Actually there is evidence that meat itself seem to increase risks for the health, this includes even experimental data that do not include any processed meat.

in addition, cholesterol increases naturally with age and is not a threat. excess salt is the #1 contributing factor to cardiovascular problems.

On the contrary, cholesterol is a well known cause of cardiac problems and this has been clearly proved by the benefits obtained by controlling it, that something increases naturally has absolutely nothing to do with it being innocuous, glycemia and blood pressure being two very clear examples.

ingredients in u.s. foods banned in other countries. even china and india ban it.

What is the purpose of repeating well known falsehoods? for example Red 40 is not banned in Europe, it is just called differently (E129), if anything the US has a more extensive list of banned things compared with other developed countries.

i did say moderate intake.

Which is exactly what "less red meat" means on the headline.

If you go through the paper, you'll realize that there are many important confounders; they found a correlation between meat consumption and smoking, obesity, being sedentary....

And they are considered controlled to the point of considering meat a determinant of risk. Unless you can argue with scientific arguments this not being the case then it is clear the authors understdan better about the value of meat on risk in their study than you.

If meat was the problem, then certainly those following a carnivore diet would have a very high rate of T2D, much higher than those consuming 2 servings of meat described in the paper. 

Following a carnivore diet is considered an unhealthy lifestyle, it increases importantly several risks for the health and it is not recommended by the medical community of the world, in fact they recommend people not to follow it.

This is a study that gathered self-reported food consumption as the evidence, and failed to take properly take into account the other food the participants were eating.

The methods section of the study detail how care was taken to increase the reliability of their results, what actual arguments do you have to say this is not proper?

The considerable conflicts of interest in medical and nutritional research is clear and undeniable.

From hundreds and hundreds of different sources in every country around the world all reaching the same conclusions? that is not an argument, is an excuse because you could not find any actual argument. Specially when you regularly bring examples that have been already considered and cleared by ethical committees.

From hundreds and hundreds of different sources in every country around the world all reaching the same conclusions?

These nebulous "different sources" are the "world-wide experts and respected institutions of science" that we have learned are always right, yes?

Beans beans the musical fruit

The more you eat the more you toot

The more you fart the bigger your heart

The bigger your heart the better you feel

Eat beans at every meal

These nebulous "different sources" are the "world-wide experts and respected institutions of science" that we have learned are always right, yes?

They are right much more than nameless people on the internet that present no argument, no evidence and that expect everybody to listen to them because "trust me, bro".

I mean, the minimum necessary thing for the experts to be demonstrated as wrong is for their evidence to be discussed, when criticism is based on avoiding addressing the evidence no matter what it becomes clear this criticism has no value and can be safely ignored.

But the 20-member panel didn't weigh in on the growing role of ultraprocessed foods that have been linked to health problems, saying there's not enough evidence to tell people to avoid them.

Well, after that, you can pretty much discard anything that stated by this panel. No conflict of interest among these people?

Someone who look at these 20 members found that 19 of them had important conflicts of interest.

Yes, and those 19 members had not declared those conflicts of interests. Very unethical! Someone had to do some investigating to uncover this. We really need RFKjr to bring back some integrity to the various institutions.

Yes, and those 19 members had not declared those conflicts of interests.

Any reference? because being approved by a committee that is made specifically to examine COIs would make this very difficult to believe. Is your source the previous reference that has been rebuked completely because it misrepresented the supposed COIs and hid the fact that a review is done previously to including people on the panel? because insisting in something that is already debunked without making any argument to defend it would mean you are trying to mislead others on purpose with something that has been proved mistaken previously. That is the opposite of what anybody trying to bring integrity would do.

virusrexToday  07:37 am JST

These nebulous "different sources" are the "world-wide experts and respected institutions of science" that we have learned are always right, yes?

They are right much more than nameless people on the internet that present no argument,

Your "different sources" and "world-wide experts and respected institutions of science" are just as nameless as any "nameless people on the internet" that you imagine. The appeal to authority rethoric is wearing thin.

Your "different sources" and "world-wide experts and respected institutions of science" are just as nameless as any "nameless people on the internet" that you imagine. 

Which again would make it trivially easy for you to go and find many examples that contradict the consensus, yet you keep commenting without being able to bring any, as in zero institutions that contradict the consensus that you say is not real.

If you (the one claiming the consensus does not exist) are completely unable to disprove it, that means that it actually is clear that the recommendations of nutritionists around the world are congruent with each other since you proved there is none to find that say something different.

The appeal to authority is valid and correct when the authorities are on the field of the topic and they do present the evidence that support their conclusions, just because you believe all the experts of the planet are wrong does not make them so, this "argument" is the same excuse other antiscientific groups (flat earthers, creationists, etc.) use when confronted with the reality of the whole scientific field saying they are wrong.