What is Reat Meat??? - Red meat in traditional culinary terminology is meat which is red when raw and not white when cooked. In the nutritional sciences, red meat includes some mammal meat. Red meat includes the meat of most adult mammals and some fowl (e.g. ducks).
Health risks:
Eating a portion of processed red meat daily can boost a person's risk of dying young by up to 20 percent, said a long-running US study of more than 120,000 people released on Monday.
While the research by Harvard University experts offers more evidence that eating red meat increases the risk of heart disease and cancer, it also counsels that substituting fish and poultry may lower early death risk."This study provides clear evidence that regular consumption of red meat, especially processed meat, contributes substantially to premature death," said Frank Hu, senior author of the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Researchers gleaned their data from a study of 37,698 men who were followed for 22 years and 83,644 women who were tracked for 28 years.
Subjects answered surveys about their eating habits every four years.
Those who ate a card-deck-sized serving of unprocessed red meat each day on average saw a 13 percent higher risk of dying than those who did not eat red meat as frequently.
And if the red meat was processed, like in a hot dog or two slices of bacon, that risk jumped to 20 percent.
However, substituting nuts for red meat lowered total mortality risk by 19 percent, while poultry or whole grains lowered the risk 14 percent and fish did so by seven percent.
The authors said between seven and nine percent of all deaths in the study "could be prevented if all the participants consumed fewer than 0.5 servings per day of total red meat."
Processed red meat has been shown to contain ingredients such as saturated fat, sodium, nitrites and some carcinogens that are linked to many chronic ailments including heart disease and cancer.
"More than 75 percent of the $2.6 trillion in annual US health care costs are from chronic disease," said an accompanying commentary by Dean Ornish, a physician and dietary expert at the University of California, San Francisco.
"Eating less red meat is likely to reduce morbidity from these illnesses, thereby reducing health care costs."
A separate study, also led by Hu but published in Circulation, an American Heart Association journal, found that men who drank sugar-sweetened beverages daily faced a 20 percent higher risk of heart disease than men who did not.
The study tracked more than 42,000 men, most of them Caucasian, over 22 years and found higher heart risks, as higher levels of inflammation and harmful lipids known as triglycerides in daily sweet-drinkers.
The effects were not seen in men who drank as many as two sugar-sweetened beverages per week.
According to Hu, the research "provides strong justification for reducing sugary beverage consumption among patients, and more importantly, in the general population."
Heart disease is the biggest killer in the United States and top risk factors include obesity, smoking, lack of exercise, diabetes and poor eating habits.
Colorectal Cancer
Due to the many studies that have found a link between red meat intake and colorectal cancer, the American Institute for Cancer Research and World Cancer Research Fund stated that there is "convincing" evidence that red meat intake increases the risk for colorectal cancer.
Professor Sheila Bingham of the Dunn Human Nutrition Unit attributes this to the haemoglobin and myoglobin molecules which are found in red meat. She suggests these molecules, when ingested trigger a process called nitrosation in the gut which leads to the formation of carcinogens.
Others have suggested that it is due to the presence of carcinogenic compounds called heterocyclic amines, which are created in the cooking process. However, this may not be limited to red meat, since a study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that people who ate skinless chicken five times or more per week had a 52% higher risk of developing bladder cancer although not people who ate chicken with skin.
A 2011 study of 17,000 individuals found that people consuming the most grilled and well-done meat had a 56 and 59% higher rate of cancer.
Other Cancers
There is "suggestive" evidence that red meat intake increases the risk of oesophageal, lung, pancreatic and endometrial cancer. As a result, they recommend limiting intake of red meat to less than 300g (11 oz) cooked weight per week, "very little, if any of which to be processed."
Some studies have linked consumption of large amounts of red meat with breast cancer, stomach cancer, lymphoma, bladder cancer, lung cancer and prostate cancer (although other studies have found no relationship between red meat and prostate cancer).
A 2011 study of almost 500,000 participants found that those in the highest quintile of red meat consumption had a 19% increased risk of kidney cancer.
Cardiovascular diseases
Some studies have associated red meat consumption with cardiovascular diseases, possibly because of its high content of saturated fat. Specifically, increased beef intake is associated with ischemic heart disease.
Some mechanisms that have been suggested for why red meat consumption is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease include: its impact on serum cholesterol, that red meat contains arachidonic acid, heme iron, and homocysteine. A later study has indicated that it is not associated with cardiovascular diseases.
A 1999 study funded by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, an advocacy group for beef producers, involved 191 persons with high cholesterol on diets where at least 80% of the meat intake came from either lean red meat in one group, or lean white meat in another. The results of this study showed nearly identical cholesterol, and triglyceride levels in both groups. This study suggests that lean red meat may play a role in a low-fat diet for persons with high cholesterol.
Red meat consumption is also associated with acute coronary syndrome, as well as stroke. It has also been associated with greater intima-media thickness, an indicator of atherosclerosis.
A 2008 article published in Nature found that red meat consumption was "strongly associated" with increased odds of acute coronary syndrome, with those eating more than 8 servings of red meat per month being 4.9 times more likely to have cardiac events than those eating less than four servings per month.
A 21 year follow up of about thirty thousand Seventh Day Adventists (adventists are known for presenting a "health message" that recommends vegetarianism) found that people who ate red meat daily were 60% more likely to die of heart disease than those who ate red meat less than once per week.
The Seven Countries Study found a significant correlation between red meat consumption and risk of CHD. A significant relationship between red meat and CHD has been found specifically for women,[50] most strongly with regards to processed red meat.
A 2009 study by the National Cancer Institute revealed a correlation between the consumption of red meat and increased mortality from cardiovascular diseases, as well as increased mortality from all causes. This study has been criticized for using an improperly validated food frequency questionnaire, which has been shown to have low levels of accuracy.
Diabetes
Red meat intake has been associated with an increased risk of type II diabetes. Interventions in which red meat is removed from the diet can lower albuminuria levels. Replacing red meat with a low protein or chicken diet can improve glomerular filtration rate.
Other findings have suggested that the association may be to saturated fat, trans fat and dietary cholesterol, rather than red meat per se. An additional confound is that diets high in processed meat could increase the risk for developing Type 2 diabetes.
One study estimated that “substitutions of one serving of nuts, low-fat dairy, and whole grains per day for one serving of red meat per day were associated with a 16–35% lower risk of type two diabetes”.
Obesity
The Diogenes project used data from ninety thousand men and women over about seven years and found that "higher intake of total protein, and protein from animal sources was associated with subsequent weight gain for both genders, strongest among women, and the association was mainly attributable to protein from red and processed meat and poultry rather than from fish and dairy sources.
There was no overall association between intake of plant protein and subsequent changes in weight."They also found an association between red meat consumption and increased waist circumference.
A 1998 survey of about five thousand vegetarian and non-vegetarian people found that vegetarians had about 30% lower BMIs. A 2006 survey of fifty thousand women found that those with higher "western diet pattern" scores gained about two more kilograms over the course of four years than those who lowered their scores.
A ten-year follow up of 80,000 men and women found that "ten-year changes in body mass index was associated positively with meat consumption" as well as with weight gain at the waist. In a
Mediterranean population of 8,000 men and women, meat consumption was significantly associated with weight gain. Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey showed "consistent positive associations between meat consumption and BMI, waist circumference, obesity and central obesity."
A survey of twins found that processed meat intake was associated with weight gain. Western diets, which include higher consumption of red meats, are often associated with obesity.
Other health issues
Regular consumption of red meat has also been linked to hypertension, and arthritis.
