Death By Beef?

I know that after a weekend of St. Patty’s Day, March Madness and Girl Scout cookies, I am probably the last person you want to hear from this early on Monday morning. You think that I am going to rant about the evils of beer, corned beef, green food coloring, and generally just rain on your fun. You would be correct about this most days – but not today.

I am here to deliver some good news for all of you omnivores out there -- red meat is actually really good for you.

In fact, calorie for calorie, beef is one of the most nutrient rich foods you can eat. Red meat is particularly high in iron and iron in this form is easily absorbed by the body. Red meat is also high in vitamins B12, which helps to make DNA and also keeps nerves and blood cells healthy, and zinc, which keeps the immune system working properly.

Unfortunately for us, a recent Harvard study claimed that eating as little as one serving of red meat a day could increase your chance of dying prematurely.  This gave a gloss of Ivy League credibility to the tired canard that red meat is bad for you. Of course, the mainstream media and health professionals jumped on the bandwagon and are now perpetuating the “dangers of red meat” all over newspapers, TV and the internet.

The mainstream press is right about one thing. You are going to die eventually.  Perhaps you might even die even prematurely.  But it won’t be because you ate a daily serving of red meat. Even Harvard gets its wrong sometimes.

The Harvard study was an analysis of data gathered by the much-ballyhooed Nurses’ Health Study. I wrote about this study and its faulty science once before when headlines in the fall perpetuated the myth that drinking as few as three alcoholic beverages a week could boost a woman’s risk for breast cancer. The red meat = death headlines are born out of this same long-term study which relied on participants to recall what they ate over a 28 year period.

There are many problems with this type of observational study.  The biggest one I can see is that the people who participated were only asked to estimate their food consumption and habits on a questionnaire every FOUR YEARS! That means these participants were only given seven opportunities to recall their food history over a 28 year time frame!

Try this little exercise: when you eat lunch tomorrow, write down exactly what you ate on a piece of paper – the exact amounts, including spices, condiments, amount of salt, etc..  Put the paper in a desk drawer.  Wait a week and write down what you remember eating at that same meal.  Then compare the two lists.  My guess is that you will have forgotten quite a bit about what you ate just a week before.  Then think about how accurate your estimates would be if you gave them every four years.

Let’s be honest… Most people are inclined to fib at least a tiny bit about their dietary habits in general.  Do you really trust a study that is based on a participant recalling the average number of salt “shakes” used at the table over the past year? Do you even remember how much salt you used last night?

Another major problem with this study is that the findings don’t account for the participants’ overall diets and lifestyle habits. In other words, it doesn’t differentiate between a participant who is a fast food addict and one who is a health food nut. Could it be that unhealthy people, who are overweight, smoke and don’t exercise, might be much more likely to eat a Big Mac than a perfectly delicious and nutritious grass fed filet? Absolutely, and they just might be more inclined to die prematurely too! But that doesn’t mean that all red meat is bad.

If you want more proof that red meat is not going to kill you prematurely, check out some of the experts like Mark Sisson and Robb Wolf. They manage to dispel the lies with real science (sometimes wonky but always humorous). If you want proof beyond those who preach “meat eating” for a living, look no further than Adam Bornstein. He runs the LIVESTRONG website and is much more mainstream. He even promotes eating whole grains as a part of a healthy and balanced diet!

In light of all the red meat = death headlines, I am headed to Whole Foods. I’m pretty sure there is going to be a massive sale on beef and I’m going to stock up!