Consider skipping that steak for dinner...

[MichaelB]

Will science look back 50 or 100 years from now and see our views on food in the same way we look back on medicine of 100 years ago? Woody Allen's "Sleeper" comes to mind.

 

[donheff]

I will take that study with a lot of grains of salt. Cholesterol used to be bad for you, fat was horrible, loads of complex carbs were wonderful and many of us who listened slowly grew at about 1 pound per year. I switched around 180 degrees with lots of proteins (red, white, fish, nuts), loads of fat, and a modicum of whole grains and starches and almost instantly dropped back to college weight. All of these cholesterol, fat and red meat studies are epidemiological, meaning they show correlation, not causation. Loosing that 30 pounds has a huge correlation with health compared to any possible gains due to dropping red meat.

Pass me the bacon cheeseburger and leave half the bun in the kitchen. I'm sticking with my unhealthy diet.

 

[REWahoo]

I will take that study with a lot of grains of salt.

Salt is sooo unhealthy...

What is known to be good for you today is bad for you tomorrow - and determined to be wrong the day after tomorrow. 'All things in moderation' works for me, but you don't hear much about it since it is hard to sell diet books or get money to fund medical research using that philosophy.

However, I'm sure there is some scientific fact behind the impact to human health based on what we eat. Take a look at dogs for example: they eat all sorts of unhealthy and unsavory stuff - and only live 1/7th as long as humans....

 

[Nodak]

I have a rack of ribs smoking all day, should be done in about an hour. I put a couple of baking potatoes in there about a half hour ago, and DW just got some corn bread ready to pop into the oven.

In any event, I tune out all these health scares and just live with "all things in moderation." I think the reduced stress about what you are putting into your bodies has to offset some of the "badness" of some of what you are eating.

+2

 

[Sue]

Interesting that the lead scientist on this study has significantly reduced his comsumption of red meat.

 

[Chuckanut]

I will take that study with a lot of grains of salt. Cholesterol used to be bad for you, fat was horrible, loads of complex carbs were wonderful and many of us who listened slowly grew at about 1 pound per year.

+1

I wonder how much damage I did to myself with several decades of eating 'healthy' margarine and solid vegetable shortening loaded with trans-fats instead of butter. Then we gave up natural fats for added sugars and highly processed carbs, only to find that sugar and processed carbs are now thought to be more harmful than the saturated fats we gave up. Apparently carbs fuel production of the more damaging LDL particles while saturated fats increase the more benign LDL particles. At least that is the current thinking.

My three diet rules: Eat a diverse diet, moderation in all things, and JERF (Just Eat Real Food).

 

[Midpack]

+1

I wonder how much damage I did to myself with several decades of eating 'healthy' margarine and solid vegetable shortening loaded with trans-fats instead of butter. Then we gave up natural fats for added sugars and highly processed carbs, only to find that sugar and processed carbs are now thought to be more harmful than the saturated fats we gave up. Apparently carbs fuel production of the more damaging LDL particles while saturated fats increase the more benign LDL particles. At least that is the current thinking.

My three diet rules: Eat a diverse diet, moderation in all things, and JERF (Just Eat Real Food).

We came to the same conclusion. I eat red meat probably once or twice a month, DW never. We use butter sparingly, not chemical substitutes. We use real sugar sparingly, not substitutes. We eat very few prepared or processed foods. If it's a food that was available when I was growing up, it's an option when grocery shopping. If there are ingredients on the label we can't pronounce/don't know what it is - we don't buy it. I could go on and on...

 

[Ready]

We came to the same conclusion. I eat red meat probably once or twice a month, DW never. We use butter sparingly, not chemical substitutes. We use real sugar sparingly, not substitutes. We eat very few prepared or processed foods. If it's a food that was available when I was growing up, it's an option when grocery shopping. If there are ingredients on the label we can't pronounce/don't know what it is - we don't buy it. I could go on and on...

+1

My thoughts exactly. Processed food has done so much damage to our country. It's the main reason, IMO, that Americans have such a high rate of obesity. The fast food industry knows it but cares only about profits, and is happy to produce large amounts of cheap, high fat/sugar/salt foods that appeal to the average consumer. Lack of education, lack of time, and probably a whole host of other reasons has kept Americans on this treadmill with little desire to change. Until we decide as a country to do something about, I suspect it will never change. As much as people make fun of Bloomberg for trying to limit drink sizes or publishing calorie counts on menus, I applaud him for trying to do something to solve the problem.

 

[Chuckanut]

I thought of a third way these food studies have potentially harmed me. I greatly reduced my coffee consumption years ago after reading about its harmful effects.

Now, I find that coffee significantly reduces the rate of prostate cancer in men, lessens the chances of getting diabetes and reduces the rate of dementia. Thanks to Starbucks, I did not avoid coffee for nearly as long as I ate trans-fat laden margarine.

 

[HFWR]

+1

My thoughts exactly. Processed food has done so much damage to our country. It's the main reason, IMO, that Americans have such a high rate of obesity. The fast food industry knows it but cares only about profits, and is happy to produce large amounts of cheap, high fat/sugar/salt foods that appeal to the average consumer. Lack of education, lack of time, and probably a whole host of other reasons has kept Americans on this treadmill with little desire to change. Until we decide as a country to do something about, I suspect it will never change. As much as people make fun of Bloomberg for trying to limit drink sizes or publishing calorie counts on menus, I applaud him for trying to do something to solve the problem.

Arguments about the accuracy and efficacy of the "food pyramid" aside, food labeling and PSAs et al are there for anyone to find.

I do agree with little desire to change...

 

[Midpack]

Processed food has done so much damage to our country. It's the main reason, IMO, that Americans have such a high rate of obesity. The fast food industry knows it but cares only about profits, and is happy to produce large amounts of cheap, high fat/sugar/salt foods that appeal to the average consumer. Lack of education, lack of time, and probably a whole host of other reasons has kept Americans on this treadmill with little desire to change. Until we decide as a country to do something about, I suspect it will never change.

The information is out there, and I suspect most people have seen/heard it more than once. If Americans decided to eat healthy and simply refused to eat processed and fast food, I guarantee those products would quickly disappear. You'd have "the industry" falling all over themselves to offer a product that consumers would buy. Most fast food places have offered healthy alternatives like salads for decades, it's not their fault that most people order double cheese Whoppers with fries and a shake.

Though without turning this into a political topic, subsidies for sugar, corn, etc. have evidently compounded the problem by making some processed/fast foods appear cheaper than they might otherwise be.

I am not defending fast food, but consumers are at least equally responsible IMO. There is nothing stopping consumers right now, not knowing better is an unacceptable excuse IMO.

 

[freebird5825]

I like steak, hamburger (as taco meat), pork and bacon. However, I prefer chicken and seafood. And of course the veggies I grow myself. I consume a lot of mushrooms, tomatoes and peppers on a weekly basis. I use real butter.

Therefore, beef and pork are a smaller part of my diet.

Pizza and chicken wings (baked) still tops my list of favorite foods.

 

[timo2]

Q: What do you call a bald guy eating a steak?

A: A dead man.

(According to our media, that is.)

don't forget the ear crease!

 

[Buckeye]

Interesting that the lead scientist on this study has significantly reduced his consumption of red meat.

+1

He's now eating half the portion he used to eat half as often. Significant reduction.

 

[sengsational]

You can buy L-Carnitine as a suppliment. I've seen it in the vitamin section. Not sure what it's supposed to help, though.

Where do I sign up to eat steaks for the sake of science?

Me too!

Pass me the bacon cheeseburger and leave half the bun in the kitchen. I'm sticking with my unhealthy diet.

Well there's one thing we can agree on! Except I'd take it without a bun at all!

I wonder how much damage I did to myself with several decades of eating 'healthy' margarine and solid vegetable shortening loaded with trans-fats instead of butter. Then we gave up natural fats for added sugars and highly processed carbs, only to find that sugar and processed carbs are now thought to be more harmful than the saturated fats we gave up. Apparently carbs fuel production of the more damaging LDL particles while saturated fats increase the more benign LDL particles. At least that is the current thinking.

I just got done reading The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable: Stephen D. Phinney, Jeff S. Volek: 9780983490708: Amazon.com: Books. It's packed with study after study on how the science has changed, but has been meeting with serious resistance. This book is really written for doctors (or maybe that's just his way to sell more books, hehe). But the idea is that some people have a "carbohydrate intolerance" that leads to metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes.

The information is out there, and I suspect most people have seen/heard it more than once.

The problem is that there are mixed messages, and people don't know what to think any more. Contrast what Phinney et al say in the above book vs the food pyramid and it's 12 servings of starch and grains (or whatever it is).

 

[ls99]

Just facts maam.

I did not read the entire paper, though would be interest in knowing just how much more bad stuff is produced by omnivore humans as compared to vegan humans.

Here is the abstract:

Nature Medicine | Article

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Intestinal microbiota metabolism of l-carnitine, a nutrient in red meat, promotes atherosclerosis

• Robert A Koeth,
• Zeneng Wang,
• Bruce S Levison,
• Jennifer A Buffa,
• Elin Org,
• Brendan T Sheehy,
• Earl B Britt,
• Xiaoming Fu,
• Yuping Wu,
• Lin Li,
• Jonathan D Smith,
• Joseph A DiDonato,
• Jun Chen,
• Hongzhe Li,
• Gary D Wu,
• James D Lewis,
• Manya Warrier,
• J Mark Brown,
• Ronald M Krauss,
• W H Wilson Tang,
• Frederic D Bushman,
• Aldons J Lusis
• & Stanley L Hazen

• Affiliations
• Contributions
• Corresponding author

Nature Medicine(2013)doi:10.1038/nm.3145 Received 07 December 2012 Accepted 27 February 2013 Published online 07 April 2013 Article tools

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Abstract

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Intestinal microbiota metabolism of choline and phosphatidylcholine produces trimethylamine (TMA), which is further metabolized to a proatherogenic species, trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO). We demonstrate here that metabolism by intestinal microbiota of dietary l-carnitine, a trimethylamine abundant in red meat, also produces TMAO and accelerates atherosclerosis in mice. Omnivorous human subjects produced more TMAO than did vegans or vegetarians following ingestion of l-carnitine through a microbiota-dependent mechanism. The presence of specific bacterial taxa in human feces was associated with both plasma TMAO concentration and dietary status. Plasma l-carnitine levels in subjects undergoing cardiac evaluation (n = 2,595) predicted increased risks for both prevalent cardiovascular disease (CVD) and incident major adverse cardiac events (myocardial infarction, stroke or death), but only among subjects with concurrently high TMAO levels. Chronic dietary l-carnitine supplementation in mice altered cecal microbial composition, markedly enhanced synthesis of TMA and TMAO, and increased atherosclerosis, but this did not occur if intestinal microbiota was concurrently suppressed. In mice with an intact intestinal microbiota, dietary supplementation with TMAO or either carnitine or choline reduced in vivo reverse cholesterol transport. Intestinal microbiota may thus contribute to the well-established link between high levels of red meat consumption and CVD risk.


Edit add:

And following the money:
Competing financial interests

Z.W. and B.S.L. are named as co-inventors on pending patents held by the Cleveland Clinic relating to cardiovascular diagnostics and have the right to receive royalty payments for inventions or discoveries related to cardiovascular diagnostics from Liposciences. W.H.W.T. received research grant support from Abbott Laboratories and served as a consultant for Medtronic and St. Jude Medical. S.L.H. and J.D.S. are named as co-inventors on pending and issued patents held by the Cleveland Clinic relating to cardiovascular diagnostics and therapeutics patents. S.L.H. has been paid as a consultant or speaker by the following companies: Cleveland Heart Lab., Esperion, Liposciences, Merck & Co. and Pfizer. He has received research funds from Abbott, Cleveland Heart Lab., Esperion and Liposciences and has the right to receive royalty payments for inventions or discoveries related to cardiovascular diagnostics from Abbott Laboratories, Cleveland Heart Lab., Frantz Biomarkers, Liposciences and Siemens.

 

[UkGP51]

I read once that healthy eating at less calories that you needed would extend your life but a 100 years is a long time to be hungry. Sorry I can't remember who said that. I recently looked after a lady who lived to well over a 100 and she thought god had forgotten her. A little unhealthy living may save us from that?

 

[sengsational]

I did not read the entire paper, though would be interest in knowing just how much more bad stuff is produced by omnivore humans as compared to vegan humans.

To read the whole paper I guess you'd have to pay some cash for it, hehe.

The title of the paper sounds like it was written for the general media to pick up; anybody in the profession would know what l-carintine is and what foods contain it.

I'd be interested to know how much more "bad stuff" would be produced on a keto adapted population. The population they reported on were already in trouble (going in to have their hearts checked). I wonder how many of them were diabetec or metabolic syndrome. The result might be more about the study's population than anything.

 

[teejayevans]

Pizza and chicken wings (baked) still tops my list of favorite foods.

Ditto, except add ice cream
TJ

 

[braumeister]

All kidding aside, this study is flawed in several respects.

First, much of it is based on mouse-based research, which may not apply to humans.

Second, it is laying the blame on gut bacteria, not red meat. From the abstract:

Intestinal microbiota may thus contribute to the well-established link between high levels of red meat consumption and CVD risk.

Third, that sentence I pulled from the abstract is not even true. There is no such "well-established link".

 

[RonBoyd]

Again?

Fat Head » Here We Go Again: Another Meat Kills! Study

As I explained in my Big Fat Fiasco speech, this technique is referred to as teleoanalysis. In a nutshell, it works like this: we can’t prove that A causes C, but if we can find evidence that A is linked to B and B is linked to C, we’ll go ahead and declare that A causes C.

 

[eridanus]

All kidding aside, this study is flawed in several respects.

First, much of it is based on mouse-based research, which may not apply to humans.

Except for the blood drawn from the 2,500 people, naturally, and the other 10,000 people he studied over the years, and of course the group that he gave the antibiotics to.

But I see your point. The study didn't show us what happens when humans get concentrated doses of TMAO. I assume they didn't get too many volunteers for that experiment ("Hey, we'll feed you steak this entire week. All you do is get a shot that may or may not give you accelerated heart disease.")

 

[RonBoyd]

Who was kidding? (Oh! Yeah...)

TMAO? LMAO. « Eathropology

We know that red meat maybe almost probably for sure contributes to heart disease, because that wild bunch at Harvard just keeps cranking out studies like this one, Eat Red Meat and You Will Die Soon.

This study and others just like it definitely prove that if you are a white, well-educated, middle/upper-middle class health professional born between 1920 and 1946 and you smoke and drink, but you don’t exercise, watch your weight, or take a multivitamin, then eating red meat will maybe almost probably for sure increase your risk of heart disease. With evidence like that, who needs evidence?

Perhaps their suspicions were alerted by studies such as this one, that found that, in randomized, controlled trials, with over 65 thousand participants, people who reduced or changed their dietary fat intake didn’t actually live any longer than the people who just kept eating and enjoying the same artery-clogging, saturated fat- and cholesterol-laden foods that they always had. (However, this research was able to determine that a steady diet of broiled chicken breasts does in fact make the years crawl by more slowly.)

 

[RAE]

The study is flawed - don't give up your red meat just yet. Check out these rebuttals:

Red Meat and TMAO: Cause for Concern, or Another Red Herring?

Does Carnitine From Red Meat Contribute to Heart Disease Through Intestinal Bacterial Metabolism to TMAO? | Mother Nature Obeyed - Weston A Price Foundation

The second rebuttal (from Chris Masterjohn) above is very thorough but very long, so for those who want the bottom line, here it is:

The Bottom Line

The bottom line here is that the popular interpretation of this study as an indictment of red meat makes no sense. Even if physiological levels of TMAO contribute to heart disease in humans (which is a big “if” at this point) and even if red meat were to raise TMAO substantially more than most other foods (which appears to be false), it wouldn’t in any way whatsoever follow that eating red meat causes heart disease. The biological effects of a food cannot possibly be reduced to oneof the biological effects of one of the food’s components. Believing such a thing would require believing not only that the particular component has no other relevant biological effects, but that there are no relevant biological effects of any of the other tens of thousands of components of that food.​

 

[grasshopper]

Whistling past the graveyard.