Red meat unhealthy? Maybe not, researchers say

This reminds me of Woody Allen's film Sleeper. The doctors are discussing Allen's character, who has just been awoken from a 200 year sleep..

Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk." 

Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties. 

Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge? 

Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

I trust in science, but I think a lot of dietary advice is based on oversimplified models of the human body that try to isolate single factors with varying success. Japanese people have pretty much the longest healthy lifespan in the world, but their diet is crazy high in sodium. Lots of the men also smoke.

I don't know if meat is healthy or not, but that WHO advice about bacon giving you cancer focusing on nitrites and suggesting a ban struck me as OTT alarmist. Nitrites have been used for hundreds of years to preserve meat.

Depending on who you talk to, red meat, coffee, eggs, etc. are bad for you, and not so bad for you.

A good rule of thumb - don't ingest copious amounts of any of that stuff.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That's all there is to it.

Forget about the vegan fad, the Japanese eat some of the fattest cuts of meat in the world and yet have some of the healthiest long lives of anyone. Western diets are full of the lowest fat content cuts of meat and yet cardiovascular problems are extremely high.

My mom is 92. Loves meat. Healthy. I see more sick people who are vegetarians or fish eaters.

Now for a good steak.

andrew:

Forget about the vegan fad, the Japanese eat some of the fattest cuts of meat in the world and yet have some of the healthiest long lives of anyone. Western diets are full of the lowest fat content cuts of meat and yet cardiovascular problems are extremely high.

https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/stomach-cancer-statistics.

Stomach cancer. Number three: Japan.

A big gap between number 3 and number 4, China.

I think people from countries 1 and 2 eat a pretty large amount of meat too.

The Continuous Update Project Panel judged there is strong evidence that greater body fatness and consumption of alcoholic drinks and foods preserved by salting are causes of stomach cancer. There is some evidence that consumption of processed meat and grilled or barbecued meat and fish, and low consumption of fruit, might increase the risk of stomach cancer. There is some evidence that consumption of citrus fruit might decrease the risk of stomach cancer.

tala:

My mom is 92. Loves meat. Healthy. I see more sick people who are vegetarians or fish eaters.

How about giving statistics based on 10,000 vegetarians and 10,000 meat eaters? What next, your mom smokes too?

Before making decisions for yourself based on statistics and studies, consider your own DNA. Look at your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents if possible. What were they apparently doing right? What were they apparently doing wrong? After that you look at stats and research on OTHER people.

Forget about the vegan fad, the Japanese eat some of the fattest cuts of meat in the world and yet have some of the healthiest long lives of anyone.

And how much of your DNA is Japanese? And how much of your lifestyle is? Those make a MASSIVE difference. Copying just one aspect of Japanese lifestyle and ignoring the rest is a really bad idea if that particular thing has been branded a generally bad thing umpteen times. For example, NFL football players can get away with eating what would usually be considered WAAY to much food because they are running around all day.

That said, never underestimate the multitude of positive effects exercise have. The system of the human body was not designed for sitting around.

That's why long-term vegans look so sickly and pale.

No. Loads of long term vegans look healthy and great. The ones who don't I believe are generally either 1) the lazy vegan who is not doing much cooking or having enough researched variety (you cannot metabolize the niacin from corn for example so you need other foods) or 2) the unfortunate ones who cannot convert certain plant beta-carotene to vitamin A very well and have not figured that out yet. In meat there is straight vitamin A so you just absorb it. Disclaimer -- there is still lots of diet related stuff nobody knows yet. No one should be too confident of any information they get.

All these studies changes all the time. I will just eat what I feel like - meat and such. Although I do eat a lot of fibers just to make sure I can empty out my innards daily as I fell more comfortable that way and when my stomach is close to empty when I go to sleep.

I'll eat like my grandpa who just turned 100. Lots of garlic.

Lots of onions have approx the same effect.

Pukey2Oct. 2 07:54 pm JST

https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/stomach-cancer-statistics

The Continuous Update Project Panel judged there is strong evidence that greater body fatness and consumption of alcoholic drinks and foods preserved by salting are causes of stomach cancer. There is some evidence that consumption of processed meat and grilled or barbecued meat and fish, and low consumption of fruit, might increase the risk of stomach cancer.

Grilled or BBQ meat - Koreans love their BBQ its cooking with all that charcoal is the cause of their problems.