Red meat alert
April 27th, 2012 Posted in Foods and Dishes | No Comments »
Eating Meat May Increase Risk of Early Death, Study Finds,” ran the headline in The New York Times. “Dying for some red meat? You may be,” quipped the Los Angeles Times.
The big news came from a study that tracked more than half a million people for 10 years. Those who reported eating the most red meat were roughly 30 percent more likely to die — mostly of cancer or heart disease — than those who reported eating the least.
Indeed, cancer, heart disease, diabetes . . . all have been linked to red meat (mostly beef and pork) and processed meats (bacon, ham, hot dogs, sausage, and deli meats), or both. The evidence is stronger for some diseases than others. “But even if only a couple were true, when you put them all together, that would be reason enough to keep red and processed meat consumption pretty low,” says Harvard’s Walter Willett.
Here’s what we know about the risks of eating red and processed meats, and how to minimize them.
Meat and Mortality
A major 2009 study conducted by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) examined how meat consumption affects mortality. The NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study evaluated 545,663 people, ages 50 to 71, with 59-percent men and 41-percent women. In addition to determining meat intake, researchers collected information about each volunteer’s age, education, marital status, family history, exercise habits, alcohol use, vitamin use, and fruit and vegetable intake.
The scientists evaluated three categories of meat. Red meat included all cuts of beef and pork. White meat included poultry and also fish. Processed meat included bacon, sausage, luncheon meats, cold cuts, ham, and hot dogs.
During 10 years of observation, 47,976 men and 23,276 women died. The men who ate the most red meat had a 31-percent higher death rate than the men who ate the least. A high consumption of processed meat was associated with a 16-percent higher death rate. Deaths due to cancer and cardiovascular disease followed the same pattern as total mortality, and women were affected in much the same way as men. In both sexes, a high intake of white meat was linked to a reduced mortality rate.
The NIH-AARP results held up even after scientists took other health habits and risk factors into account. And the link between the red and processed meat and mortality is even more noteworthy because relatively moderate portions were involved. High-risk volunteers consumed an average of four ounces of red meat and one and one-half ounces of processed meat a day. All in all, the scientists estimated that 11 percent of premature deaths in men could be forestalled by reducing red meat intake.
While the NIH-AARP study linked both red and processed meats with deaths from heart disease and cancer, a 2010 meta-analysis reported that a high consumption of processed, but not unprocessed, meat is associated with an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease. But a 2010 Harvard study found that both processed and unprocessed red meat increase cardiac risk, while fish and poultry appear protective.
Rethinking Our Diet
The blizzard of scary studies doesn’t mean you have to swear off red meat altogether, however, and one recent meta-analysis offers a contrarian view: The pooling of prior studies totaling about 1.2 million people concluded that eating red meat was not associated with an increased risk of heart disease or diabetes. But eating just50 grams(1.8 ounces, about one hot dog or two slices of salami) of processed meat daily was still associated with a 42-percent greater risk of heart disease and 19-percent increased risk of diabetes.
Adam M. Bernstein, MD, of the Harvard School of Public Health, and colleagues, reported that replacing one serving of red meat with one serving of fish, poultry, nuts or low-fat dairy could lower your risk of heart disease by 13 to 30 percent. Dr. Bernstein and colleagues suggested that the saturated fat and a type of iron called “heme” iron (as in hemoglobin) in meat may be to blame. Other contributing culprits could be the heterocycline amines and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) produced in cooking meat, especially at high temperature or with charring. And processed meat is high in nitrite and salt.
Alice Lichtenstein, DSc, director ofTuftsUniversity’s Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory inBoston, advises that if you do want to eat red meat, make it more the exception than the rule. “Choose lean cuts, limit portion size, use fresh rather than processed types, and prepare without charring. The balance of the meal should include a salad, colorful vegetables, and a whole grain side dish.” Select smaller meat portions — three ounces, about the size of a deck of cards — rather than eight- or 12-ounce slabs.
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspxarticleId=799951&publicationSubCategoryId=80
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