for acupuncture students, alumni, faculty & friends — sponsored by AIMC Berkeley

Where's the beef?

You might have seen an article in your newspaper or online touting a recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine that “strongly” linked red meat consumption with cancer and an increased risk of death. Heck, how could you miss it? Google shows 547 new articles about the study, and it was mentioned in just about every major newspaper in the U.S.

(That’s not an accident, by the way. It’s an intentional attack by the tyrannical meat-hating scientific majority, the same folks who brought us the “cholesterol causes heart disease” and “saturated fat is bad for you” myths.)

Trouble is - as is so often the case - the study is deeply flawed. In fact, anyone with training in research methodology might find themselves wondering “where’s the beef?” after they read it. In the end it’s just another piece of worthless propaganda parading as medical research. It tells us a lot more about the biases and motives of the researchers, and the incompetence of the media reporting on it, than it does about the effect of red meat consumption on human health.

Visit my blog to see the “top 10″ reasons to ignore this study and continue to eat your grass-fed, organic red meat:

Tags: archives, beef, cancer, death, internal, meat, medicine, mortality, red

Comment

You need to be a member of The Acupuncture Channel to add comments!

Join The Acupuncture Channel

Comment by Chris Kresser on April 7, 2009 at 12:39pm: Also check here for another excellent critique of the study.

In addition to the points I raised in my review, and Amy raised above, it's important to note that the measurement of meat intake was based on self-reported food questionnaires involving 124 food items. Obviously any individual trying to quantify his or her average intake of 124 foods over an entire year is going to have to engage in a lot of guess work. Even 24-hour recalls of what a person ate the day before are subject to a great deal of error.

People tend to lie to themselves (unconsciously) or on their questionnaires (consciously) about what they eat because of social stigmas surrounding consumption of certain foods - like red meat.

A study on a questionnaire similar to the one used in this study to found that its ability to predict actual meat intake was terrible. It was only 19 percent for bacon, 14 percent for skinless chicken, 12 percent for fish and meat, 11 percent for processed meats, 5 percent for chicken with skin, 4 percent for hot dogs, and 1.4 percent for hamburgers.

That means only 1.4 percent of the hamburgers actually consumed were reported on the food questionnaires.

Now, I ask you, would you believe any study about the effects of meat consumption that failed to identify up to 98.6% of the actual meat intake by subjects?

I wouldn't.

Comment by Amy Shouse on April 7, 2009 at 11:29am: hey guys,

here is a link to a wonderful website that rates medical literature, aka medical 'news' based on appropriate language, absolute vs. relative risk (Don't EVER read statistical medical evidence without a clear understanding of absolute vs. relative risk!!). Here is some of the comments made about the topic 'red meat increases cancer risk':

The report has two significant shortcomings.

The language of the story - e.g., "lots of red meat increases mortality risk" - suggests that cause-and-effect has been established when this kind of observational study simply CAN NOT establish causation. It can only point to statistical association. The story never made that clear. So even discussing "risk" is an overstatement.

Then, when choosing to discuss "risk," it used only relative data ["a 22 percent lower risk of death" by cancer for low-red eaters, for example], not the absolute data [1.3 percent compared to .06 percent]. But once the story started using "risk" terminology without explaining that cause-and-effect and risk cannot be firmly established by such a study, it had already missed the mark.

This is from HealthNewsReview.Org.

See for yourself:

http://www.healthnewsreview.org/review/review.php?rid=1927

Please peruse the website to get an idea of who these folks are and what they are up to. I find this a valuable resource when doing research.

thanks Chris.

Comment by Dawn on April 6, 2009 at 9:00pm: I think, perhaps, we are.

Comment by Chris Kresser on April 6, 2009 at 8:38pm: We're a rare breed, huh?

Comment by Dawn on April 6, 2009 at 8:32pm: I just have to say that I'm glad there are some nutrition and health politics junkies at the school ;)

Comment by Chris Kresser on April 6, 2009 at 11:27am: Yeah, classic. That's one of the myths I will cover in my upcoming presentation: that everything that is labeled as "organic" is necessarily good for you. Organic HFCS has to be the quintessential example.

Comment by Chris Kresser on March 27, 2009 at 7:18am: Glad you found it useful, Dawn. There's absolutely no doubt that factory-farmed meat is unhealthy and an ethical and environmental disaster. However, people rarely consider pasture-raised, organic beef in their diatribes against red meat. No specific presentation planned on red meat, but I am gestating one with a title like "Top 5 myths & truths about nutrition", and red meat would probably be one of those. (The others might be soy, saturated fat, "organic" processed food, and dairy.)

Comment by Dawn on March 26, 2009 at 9:21pm: I really appreciate your commentary on this. I think antibiotic free, grass fed meat, (beef included), is a wonderful, healthful addition to many's diet. Too often these poorly done, well publicized studies negatively sway large populations to poor choices. Will "Where's the Beef?" be your next presentation??? I look forward to it if it is!

RSS

Welcome to
The Acupuncture Channel

Sign Up
or Sign In