Ask JB: Red Meat & Health
Great Monday Moan! (Note from JB: If you want to know what Val is talking about, subscribe here!) And I love a moan on a Monday!
Val
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Firstly, I love red meat too and had this 500g ribeye when Mrs JB took me out for my birthday last week, ’twas epic. Definitely recommend visiting Goodman or Hawksmoor if you get the chance!
Secondly, thanks for your question!
When looking at issues in nutrition (and any other science based topic for that matter) we need to initially take a completely unbiased, unemotional view at the evidence that’s available to us.
This is sometimes very difficult to do as food often evokes a strong emotional response in us (it’s a very important part of our lives), especially when we have a heartfelt belief in a certain aspect of it, and this can lead for us to come to poor, irrational and often detrimental conclusions.
I don’t mean for this to be condescending or offending anyone by thinking that we aren’t capable of making sensible decisions, it’s purely based on the likely fact that in everyone, our own biases cloud our judgement.
This is why I try not to have an attachment to one approach (such as paleo, clean eating or 5:2 diet to name a few examples) as doing this makes things very black or white in terms of good or bad, when it actual fact so much of nutrition is a grey area, and we need to be open to changing our views in light of new evidence.
Let’s apply this logic to red meat and health.
Firstly, studies have shown an association with red meat and health issues, such as cancers, cardiovascular issues and metabolic issues such as diabetes. As I’m sure you know, these studies make great newspaper headline fodder.
Note how I put association in bold above. I did this because an association or correlation does not equal causation. I.e. just because something is associated with something, it does not mean that it is the direct cause. This is perfectly illustrated by the graph below.
Autism vs Organic Food Sales, strong correlation but not a causative relationship! Image credit: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/correlation-vs-causation/
These correlational studies do however give a good basis for further research in their respective topic.
However, decently controlled and structured studies have not been done yet, therefore we don’t actually have any evidence!!
So the sensible answer, according to one of my most trusted sources, examine.com [1] is:
We don’t yet know if red meat is bad for our health, or if it cuts years off our lives!
I’m not just going to leave you with that statement though, because that would make for a terrible and very unhelpful answer.
Despite what I’ve just said, we aren’t totally clueless about what might be good practice to prevent any potential negative health effects from consuming red meat.
Firstly we can cook our meat at lower temperatures [2].
This cuts down on carcinogen (potentially cancer causing compounds) production whilst cooking at high temperatures.
Slow cooking is a great option here.
Or just stick to steak tartare!
Off the back of this point, it might be wise to avoid charring the hell out of your meat. If you really do have a deep love for your barbecue or griddle pan like myself, then at least avoid cooking your meat until it’s well done to minimise the formation of carcinogens.
Another potential option is to marinate our meat for a couple of hours prior to cooking in anti-oxidant rich foods such as wine, herbs, citrus fruit and olive oil [3, 4].
It would also be good practice to make sure you eat a ton of fruit and veggies in your diet.
This may give a protective effect towards the different types of cancers that we may be more susceptible to as red meat eaters [5, 6].
My final recommendation is to eat red meat in moderation. If there is a potential risk of eating red meat then it may be wise to not eat it every day in huge amounts.
As there are no decent guidelines on what moderation actually is, I myself go eating red meat 3-4 times per week, and I regularly employ the strategies above to minimise health risks whilst still eating my beloved steak!
References
[1] http://examine.com/faq/does-red-meat-cause-cancer.html
[2] http://examine.com/faq/how-can-i-make-red-meat-healthier.html
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18950185
[4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17988088
[5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19640185
[6] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22412075
