Red meat eaters beware

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Red meat eaters beware

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New study says eating a lot of red meat poses a serious health risk.

15 March,2012 03:45 pm

A diet high in red meats can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer that can lead to an early death, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health.The study, which was done over a more than 20-year period and involved tens of thousands of subjects, also shows that a red meat diet can also increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.The report looked at thousands of health professional men and thousands of women from the nurses health study and saw that over a period of time the more red meat they ate the higher it was associated with early death, said Maudene Nelson, who has studied the report and regularly deals with issues of public nutrition at Columbia Universitys Institute of Human Nutrition.Nelson said whats different with this study from others in the past that pointed to the dangers of red meat consumption is simply the size and scope of its investigations.What makes this report different to me as a nutrition professional is the scale of the number of people, men and women, mature professional people who, questionnaires were looked at, whose health information was summarized and there was a very definite connection between the number of servings of red meat in relatively small servings at that, and these outcomes.The Harvard researchers, led by senior author Frank Hu, observed a pool of 37,698 male health professionals over a period of 22 years, and a pool of 83,644 female nurses for a period of up to 28 years. All the participants were free from cardiovascular disease or cancer at the start.From studying the two groups a combined 23,926 deaths were reported, 5,910 from cardiovascular disease and 9,464 from cancer. They found that those who consumed a moderate sized serving of unprocessed red meat daily had a 13 percent higher rate of mortality. Those that ate a daily serving of processed red meat, such as hotdogs or bacon, died at a 20 percent higher rate.For meat eaters there is some good news. If you switch to a fish and poultry diet, which is lower in saturated fat, you can reduce your risk considerably.The study found that replacing one serving of red meat with fish reduced the risk of death by 7 percent, and with poultry by 14 percent. The best source of protein from a mortality point of view is nuts and whole grains.