As stated last month, eating reasonable amounts of healthy foods seems to be effective way to not decrease your life span by 1/2 a dozen years. Specifically, high meat diets are not really that good for avoiding cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, stomach ulcers and an array of other conditions. But the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine only included 1/2 a million people over 10 years, so how accurate can it be?
For my friends who have adopted an enthusiastic carnivore concentrated diet, you'll be happy to know the industrial lobbying group "The American Meat Institute" disagrees with many specifics of the study. The last 11 to 16% of a person's life are perhaps not as much fun as the the previous years leading up to them, especially when devouring juicy, free range, organically raised, high quality meats. They Are delicious. I'm going to continue to eat them in moderation.
9 years ago
Here's an interesting take.
ReplyDeleteAnd from the actual study (yes, I realize they attempted to correct for confounding factors, but still...):
ReplyDeleteIn general, those in the highest quintile of red meat intake tended to consume a slightly lower amount of white meat but a higher amount of processed meat compared with those in the lowest quintile. Subjects who consumed more red meat tended to be married, more likely of non-Hispanic white ethnicity, more likely a current smoker, have a higher body mass index, and have a higher daily intake of energy, total fat, and saturated fat, and they tended to have lower education and physical activity levels and lower fruit, vegetable, fiber, and vitamin supplement intakes
I think the key words there are "not too much"...a phrase that isn't quite in the American vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteThis study, psuedo-impressive "half a million people!" nonsense aside, is even worse than I thought
ReplyDelete