Do you feel guilty eating red meat due to all the warnings about cancer, cardiovascular problems and even premature death? Well, there’s good news. New guidelines say eating red meat may not be as bad as once thought.
Why was there a reevaluation?
An independent research group, the NutriRECS (Nutritional Recommendations Consortium), issued the new guidelines after reviewing the existing evidence about red meat and negative health outcomes. The group’s reasons included:
- The existing recommendations were mostly based on observational studies, which don’t typically establish cause and effect.
- The existing recommendations don’t report the “absolute magnitude” of any possible effects.
- The organizations that created the existing guidelines didn’t conduct or access “rigorous systematic reviews of the evidence.”
- The organizations that created the existing guidelines were limited in in addressing conflicts of interest.
- The organizations that created the existing guidelines didn’t “explicitly address population values and preferences.”
Reevaluating red meat’s risks
The NutriRECS team conducted five systematic reviews by looking at dozens of randomized trials and observational studies and evaluated the effects of red meat consumption based on the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations) method.
They concluded that, although there’s a link between eating red meat and a risk poor health outcomes, they couldn’t prove that it was significant.
Likewise, they couldn’t prove that there was a significantly reduced risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease or early death for people who cut back on their consumption of processed and unprocessed red meat.
To be clear, the review was only looking for evidence regarding human health. The NutriRECS team wasn’t addressing issues about sustainability or animal welfare, which are also concerns regarding a person’s decision to eat or not eat red meat.
“We are, however, sympathetic to animal welfare and environmental concerns,” says author Dr. Bradley Johnston from Dalhousie University. “A number of guideline panel members [have] eliminated or reduced their personal red and processed meat intake for these reasons.”
