{"id":1857,"date":"2019-10-13T12:20:20","date_gmt":"2019-10-13T12:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=1857"},"modified":"2020-02-11T23:59:17","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T23:59:17","slug":"meat-is-associated-with-heart-attacks-and-some-types-of-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=1857","title":{"rendered":"Meat IS Associated with Heart Attacks and Some Types of Cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Don’t believe the recent headlines\nsuggesting that people can continue to eat their usual amounts of meat without\nsuffering any increase in risk for illness or premature death. These news\nstories are based on articles in the Annals of Internal Medicine<\/em> (September\n30, 2019), that have caused many members of the scientific community to respond\nwith horror and disbelief. Eating either meat or sugar increases disease risk\nand shortens lives. The authors summarized studies of meat reduction in\npopulations that ate more sugar and other refined carbohydrates instead, so\nthey showed that you gain nothing by substituting one harmful food, sugar, for\nanother, meat. The authors did not analyze studies in which healthful foods,\nsuch as vegetables, beans, nuts and fruits, were substituted for meat.
\n
\nThirteen prominent researchers on the health risks of eating meat, including\none of the authors of these new papers, wrote to the Annals<\/em>‘\neditor-in-chief, Christine Laine, MD, MPH, requesting a delay in publication of\nthe papers. This group included Harvard’s Walter Willett; David Katz of the\nTrue Health Initiative; Dean Ornish, MD, longtime researcher on the link\nbetween nutrition and heart attacks; Kim Williams, MD, former American College\nof Cardiology president; and former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, MD.\nSevere criticisms of the studies exonerating meat have already been issued by\nThe American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the Harvard T.H.\nChan School of Public Health and many other groups. The Harvard group warned\nthat these recommendations “harm the credibility of nutrition science and\nerode public trust in scientific research.” The Physicians Committee for\nResponsible Medicine filed a petition against the journal with the Federal Trade\nCommission.
\n
\nDr. Frank Sacks, past chair of the American Heart Association’s nutrition\ncommittee, called the research “fatally flawed.” Dr. Frank Hu,\nchairman of Harvard’s Department of Nutrition, called it “irresponsible\nand unethical,” and said that the consistency of the conclusions of many\nstudies over many years gives credibility to the association of red meat with\nheart attacks, cancers and premature death. There was disagreement about the\nsafety of meat even among the authors of these papers, and three of the 14\nauthors concluded that people should<\/em> reduce their intake of meat.
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\nThe lead author of this analysis of meat, Bradley Johnston, did not disclose\nthat he had written a similar report exonerating sugar from increased risk for\ndiabetes, heart attacks and premature death (Ann Intern Med<\/em>, 2017;166(4):257-267).\nThat study was financed by International Life Sciences Institute, an industry\ntrade group largely supported by agribusiness, food and pharmaceutical\ncompanies and whose members have included McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and\nCargill, one of the largest beef processors in North America. The ILSI\n“has long been accused by the World Health Organization and others of\ntrying to undermine public health recommendations to advance the interests of\nits corporate members” (New York Times<\/em>, October 4, 2019).\nJohnston said he was not required to disclose this conflict of interest because\nhe received the money more than three years ago.
\n
\nFlaws in These Papers<\/strong>
\n\u2022 The authors of these articles concluded that warnings linking meat\nconsumption to heart disease and cancer are not backed by strong scientific\nevidence, yet they cited mostly observational studies, which cannot possibly\nshow cause and effect. This type of study is never accepted to determine\nwhether or not a prospective new drug is safe.
\n\u2022 The authors failed to include the countless studies that have shown that meat\nshortens lives and causes various diseases in animals.
\n\u2022 The authors did not include studies that compared vegetarians and meat\neaters, and did not report on what non-meat-eaters ate in place of meat. If you\nreplace meat with sugar and other refined carbohydrates, you are not likely to\nbenefit at all and you may increase risk for heart attacks and cancers because\na high rise in blood sugar appears to increase heart attack and cancer risk\neven more than eating meat. Walter Willet, the former chairman of nutrition at\nHarvard, said that meat should be replaced with healthful, plant-based protein\nsources.
\n\u2022 Bonnie Liebman, Director of Nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public\nInterest, says, “One of the study’s chief flaws is its reliance on the\nWomen’s Health Initiative study, a huge analysis of 48,000 women that had half\nthe participants eating their regular diet and half eating a low-fat diet, which\nled to a half-ounce difference in meat consumption per day in the two groups,\nabout a fifth of a hamburger. There was little difference in outcomes between\nthe two groups, and because of its size, the Women’s study may have skewed the\noverall results of the Annals of Internal Medicine<\/em>\nreport.”
\n\u2022 Dr. Neal Barnard, founding president of the Physicians Committee for\nResponsible Medicine, said that none of the reported studies compared the\nhealth of those who eat meat against those who don’t eat meat. He said that we\ndo not know how much meat is safe to eat, if any; the Seventh Day Adventist\nstudies show that people who eat no meat at all are the healthiest. It is\nirresponsible to tell people that they can eat meat without setting some limit.\n“We don’t tell people to cut down on cigarettes. We tell them to stop\nsmoking.”
\n\u2022 The one review of randomized papers on the safety of meat included many\nstudies that were funded by the meat industry.
\n\u2022 The authors of these studies exonerating meat did not include the Lyon Heart\ntrial or the PREDIMED trial, which both showed that eating meat was harmful.
\n\u2022 Restricting meat has been shown to have as strong a health benefit as eating\nlots of fruits and vegetables, exercising, or not smoking. Frank Hu of Harvard\nstates that, “A moderate reduction in meat could reduce mortality by 7.6\npercent, or about 200,000 deaths per year.”
\n
\nMy Recommendations<\/strong>
\n\u2022 The evidence is so strong that processed meat is associated with increased\ncancer risk that the World Health Organization calls it a carcinogen (Annals of\nOncology<\/em>, Aug 2017;28(8):1788-1802).
\n\u2022 There is almost no debate in the scientific community that cooking meat\nwithout water (frying, broiling and so forth) forms polycyclic aromatic\nhydrocarbons (PAHs) that are proven carcinogens (Cancer Med<\/em>, 2015\nJun; 4(6): 936-952).
\n\u2022 Meta analyses of epidemiological studies indicate that the long-term\nconsumption of red meat and particularly of processed meat is associated with\nan increased risk of death, heart disease, colorectal cancer and type 2\ndiabetes in both men and women. The association persists after correcting for\nconfounding factors, such as age, race, weight, smoking, blood pressure, blood\nfats, exercise, and other dietary factors (Int J Vitam Nutr Res<\/em>, 85(1-2), 2015,\n70-78).
\nSee my recent reports on Red\nMeat, Neu5Gc and Risk for Cancer<\/a>
\nHeart\nAttacks Again Linked to Red Meat<\/a>
\nFried\nand Browned Foods Linked to Shorter Lives<\/a>
\nEven\nOccasional Meat May Be Harmful<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don’t believe the recent headlines suggesting that people can continue to eat their usual amounts of meat without suffering any increase in risk for illness or premature death. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[73,74,72,71,68,70,69],"class_list":["post-1857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nutrition","tag-cancer","tag-diabetes","tag-heart-attacks","tag-mammal-meat","tag-meat","tag-processed-meat","tag-red-meat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}