A study that reviewed data over 28 years on
over 100,000 men and women has concluded – as the loud headlines have screamed
- that eating red meat every day is not good for you in that in this study,
those men and women who ate a good portion of red meat every day had a
significantly increased risk of dying compared to men and women who didn’t
consume red meat every day.
This risk was especially elevated – no
surprise here – for those who ate processed red meat daily, a group of people
who had roughly a 20 % higher risk of dying in this study than their non-ho dog
and non-bologna and non-salami eating peers.
Now, clearly people who eat red meat every
day, especially beef-loving Americans, I think,
might have other risk factors that would elevate their risk of dying
prematurely, factors that researchers try to account for but which can be
missed nonetheless in such a complex interplay of risks.
However, it still stands to reason and
plain common sense that at the very least, eating red meat every day couldn’t
be the smartest way to eat, so it’s good to point out that the parts of the
study that didn’t get nearly as much attention as the part that focussed on red
meat concluded that eating other healthy foods – fish, poultry, legumes,
veggies, et all – instead of red meat led to a decreased risk of dying in this
study.
You may not entirely be what you eat, but
you come pretty close to it.
