Cancer and Beef

[LPG]

SHould I be concerned about recent studies (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/health/report-links-some-types-of-cancer-with-processed-or-red-meat.html?_r=0) showing that cancer risk increases with the consumption of beef??

 

From the article:

 

As for red meat — which it characterized as muscle meat such as beef, veal, pork, lamb and mutton, among others — the panel said it was “probably” carcinogenic based on “limited evidence.” It said the association was observed mainly for colorectal cancer, but that diets high in red meat were also linked to pancreatic and prostate cancer.

The risks arise from chemicals produced by processing the meats and from cooking. Cooking at high temperatures or with the meat in direct contact with a flame can produce certain types of carcinogens, but the report said there was not enough data to support conclusions about whether the way meat was cooked affected cancer risks or about whether it was better to eat it raw, which carries its own risks.

 

I never ate much red meat before, but now it's a frequent part of my diet...

 

On day 12 of my Whole30; I'd say I've eaten red meat at least half of those days.

 

Thoughts??

 

Thanks!

[Brewer5]

http://forum.whole30.com/topic/32016-new-who-report-says-that-processed-meats-cause-cancer/

 

There have been a few recent discussions about this.

[Tom Denham]

My editorial comment: The science is crap because the investigators knew what they wanted to find before they started. If you spend much time around the Paleo world, you will find that most of the leaders are bored with refuting the crap that comes out regularly saying red meat is killing us. 

[MeadowLily]

Diabetes/pancreatic cancer is taking more lives by eating refined-highly engineered to be craved foods.  My family's been 'Paleo'  for 100's of years.  Red meat kept them alive.  I wouldn't be here today without it. Those in my family that have swapped out 'Paleo' for the modern SAD  have become plagued with medical problems.

[QuilterInVA]

I've eaten a lot of beef in the last 74 years and I don't have cancer. Next week they'll declare beef prevents strokes and fish cause cancer.

[chezjulie]

The evidence to support this is based on hundreds of studies and apparently really solid. This suggests to me that it is a good idea to opt for more seafood, poultry, and eggs while on a Whole30, and choose fresh meat from time to time while limiting sausage or hot dogs. I am struggling with this myself as it is easier to incorporate a lot of meat and processed meat.

[frogtox]

Parecelsus (the father of toxicology) said Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. Which essentially means if you eat too much of anything it can become toxic (heck, eat too many carrots and your liver's in trouble). This is why it's important to use moderation and to get your sources of protein, fats, etc from a variety of sources. With respect to the risks of eating red meat, you can only control so much, right? All you can do is be as informed as possible and make the choices you feel are right for you.

[SugarcubeOD]

The evidence to support this is based on hundreds of studies and apparently really solid. This suggests to me that it is a good idea to opt for more seafood, poultry, and eggs while on a Whole30, and choose fresh meat from time to time while limiting sausage or hot dogs. I am struggling with this myself as it is easier to incorporate a lot of meat and processed meat.

The thing about the 'food sciences' is that it's not well regulated or peer reviewed.  You can find a study to support pretty much any view point.

One of the things that is important to do is to find out who is paying for studies such as these... many times studies are paid for by a vested interest and the bias does come out in the reports.

The wonderful thing about the Whole30 is that as we learn to listen to our bodies, we understand what they're asking for.  For YOU, maybe you feel better with more seafood, poultry and eggs while someone else may feel better with more red meat and less eggs.

It's ALWAYS a good idea to limit processed meats as it is to limit processed anything.  The closer it is to how it comes out of nature, the better it is for you and I've never seen hot dogs in nature

[chezjulie]

These are epidemiological studies coming from peer reviewed medical and cancer research journals. This is a nice article that includes links to some of them. 

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470204515004441

 

I don't necessarily feel better with poultry than with red meat. I'm concerned about what the science is telling us and trying to take that into account along with many other factors to improve my health. While I can tell that I feel well on the Whole30, we often can't tell that we have developed cancer, let alone that we are doing something to give ourselves cancer.

 

I am pro-science so I like to add my voice into these discussions, which can become an anti-science echo chamber.

[Carlaccini]

Hi ChezJulie,

 

Have you read:  Death by food pyramid?  It's written by Denise Minger.  She is essentially a scientific data researcher.  So she researches the data that is often presented to the public.  Now she does a lot of science and pseudo scientific paper debunking in this book, but she also makes it a point what to look for and what to focus on when reading scientific papers.  It's also well written.

 

I think a bit a big part of scientific studies is finding how they're done, and were they peer reviewed, were double blinds taken into account etc.  Do we know what other lifestyle factors are at play as well when people participate? Are these studies being done on people who are eating hot dogs with buns, and hamburgers with loads of fries that have been fried in rancid oil?  Or are these people buying grass fed beef and doing all their shopping at whole foods or trader joe's - do we as the public know this stuff when presented with a paper.

 

Now I'm not saying discount all those scientific papers out there - all I say is approach everything with a healthy hit of skepticism and come to your own educated conclusion.  

[SugarcubeOD]

I am pro-science so I like to add my voice into these discussions, which can become an anti-science echo chamber.

These discussions are not anti-science echo chambers.  The book upon which most of us are basing our eating program is heavily based in science with hundreds of articles and studies and there are scientists among our masses as well.

[Brewer5]

This is not something I get very worked up about...  

 

Julie and I chatted about it a bit when that ^ other thread came up, and as I stated then:  We are all able to survive and thrive on a Whole 30, without processed meats of any kind.  There is also no requirement to eat red meat.  So it really does come down to a matter of personal choice.  What we choose to believe, how we choose to interpret... and ultimately, how we choose to shop and eat.  

 

But I just wanted to share this ~ as it just happened to come up on a new podcast I discovered last night.  I was going to post the link to the podcast (well, I guess I still can -- it's here) ~ but I found this post that was written up by Dr. Adam Nally, and goes into much more detail on the issue.  He talked about some things I hadn't really thought about before, and I found it very interesting.

 

http://docmuscles.com/2015/10/28/red-meat-the-hidden-agenda/

 

Some highlights:

 

"The Millennium Development Goals were first identified in 2000 at the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Conference and reconfirmed this year.  These goals specifically outline a transformational vision of the world.  The World Health Organization has taken these 16 goals as their “call to arms.”  Goals #12 and #13 specifically discuss “ensuring sustainable food consumption patterns throughout the world” by “doubling agricultural growth” and restricting food production that worsens the “carbon footprint.”

 

Over the last ten years, multiple progressive groups and sites have made the claim that the greatest threat to Climate Change is the cattle industry.  They link cattle, livestock and our consumption of red meats to global warming and have been preaching the politics of nutrition.  They claim that the only real way to stop climate change and global warming is to “eat less red meat and dairy products.”

........

 

 "Third, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, bok choy and carrots have two to five times higher nitrate concentrations than bacon and hot dogs."

 

"The problem arises when we ingest foods that are high in nitrates in conjunction with high fructose corn syrup or “sugar,” to be simplistic.  The hepatic (liver) metabolism of fructose in the presence of glucose (that’s what happens when we ingest sugar) inhibits endothelial nitric oxide synthase, increases insulin and suppresses the uric acid cycle allowing for build up of nitrites in the system."

 

 

[chezjulie]

Over and out, y'all. I like you folks and simply disagree with you on this.

[LucieB]

"The thing about the 'food sciences' is that it's not well regulated or peer reviewed. You can find a study to support pretty much any view point."

"These discussions are not anti-science echo chambers. The book upon which most of us are basing our eating program is heavily based in science with hundreds of articles and studies and there are scientists among our masses as well."

Um....aside from disrupting your own argument...as one of those scientists in the masses who does scientific studies, gets and gives peer reviews, and deals with conflicting data day to day-- I will say that you can type anything into google and find what you want. And having hundreds of references is not meaningful.

I've tried to use "the book" to look up more details, and was disappointed by references to huffington post articles, other paleo books, and non peer reviewed articles. "The book" is only a starting place to learn more.

I think it's great to have these discussions, but to use "the book" as an answer in a debate like this is somewhat anti science, which is about asking questions, hearing all opinions, learning on your own, weighing evidence, on and on, and not trying to end the debate by referencing a publication written for profit.

I like you all too this isn't meant to be mean. But as one of those scientists, I had to speak up.

[praxisproject]

Science nerd alert, if you hate the nerdy stuff, move along cos this will bore you senseless 

 

Science isn't bad, but studies can be misleading and confusing, especially when summarized in the news by people who don't know an atom from an apple (most news outlets today), even if they are perfect scientific studies. It's important to note for "news" articles online, they make more money when people are frightened, uncertain or angry as they click and share the article more and the site makes more money as a result, which creates a bias in the way they report information, FUD is a known technique, clickbait is newer and many people don't even recognize it.

 

A lot of food science studies contain a lot of skewed baselines, beware the phrase "by processed or red meat":

• when the definition of the study has "red meat" including things like gluten and other stuff that is about as far from "meat" as you can get (mixing gluten with meat in a study to measure effects on health is just plain bad science).
• equating "processed meat" and "smoked meat" - a cow is not naturally smoked or processed and I'm pretty sure scientists know how to separate the two, yet we see many studies with vague "statements" from poor study structure
• smoking and smoke has been a known carcinogen for many years, this is actually not even news (wood smoke and tobacco smoke are also known to be toxic, this isn't really surprising, ask firefighters how much smoke they like to breathe - meat is usually smoked with wood smoke), lumping smoked meat into a larger group and than talking about the larger group is pretty crappy science. Much of the research into cancer is how much cancer is increased when body parts are in contact with smoke. Where's the breakdown on salting vs smoked meat? cured with sugar vs cured with salt? Studies with poor frameworks are just wastes of money and time. Seriously, this makes my brain explode 
• equating one aspect of a diet with a cause - correlation is not causation! people who eat more meat often also eat more processed food, in places where meat is plentiful, processed food often is too. Diesel also causes cancer but you don't see that making many headlines or countries giving up their diesel vehicles.
• meta-analysis - it's great to study other studies in bulk, but if your data reviewing is poor, you're creating your own bias by the data you work with (like reviewing a bunch of cancer studies and their food intakes, when every participant already has cancer!), this is a very common form of study now, as it's cheap, just reviewing old studies (little funding required), but it means you have very little control of the parameters of a study and you inherit every bias
• confirmation bias - most food studies are looking to either point the finger at or away from particular foods/industries (often assisted by funding from someone involved), those outside the USA are often surprised US Agriculture has anything to do with the FDA, conflicts of interest do matter in science, bias can be unintentional but still present and there are very few studies in the modern world that do not contain some bias (plenty of bias in the old world too, you won't find BPA in old studies as they didn't know it existed).
• making broad statements from specific studies - eating huge amounts of beef might be very bad for you while also consuming kilos and kilos of sugar (I have actually read this in the "how this study was conducted" info of a study and the outcome was the meat must be bad for you, not kidding, stupid off the charts) and this isn't unique to meat either, I've seen vegetarian studies equaling quality vegetables with processed meat-free things, they're both meat free but they're not the same.
• very few food studies are ever free of grains or dairy, food studies are expensive to provide food for, so mostly they just let people eat what they want and then study them, think about the kind of foods they're likely to study as a result and what they're not going to be studying
• few studies on red meat use grassfed meat
• these days, food studies which don't include measuring the gut itself are questionable in their completeness (FODMAPs alone would skew many results, let alone inflammation)
• we know very little about digestion and the gut, compared to other bodily functions
• some studies aren't even observed, they're just surveys, trusting the participant to get the facts right
• gender bias - many studies are only on men, crazy but true
• most studies are done on healthy people, healthy is a biased baseline
• additives are often not tracked at all in studies and this is pretty weird as some of these are banned in some countries and allowed in others
• the longer you live the more likely you are to get cancer, depending on the study this can create age and time biases
• it's silly to avoid one item and guzzle six or seven other risk factors (locally we have people who jog up and down one of the most heavily polluted paths in my city as it sits along a traffic jammed heavy road, it's pretty but it's complete madness for health - none of them smoke but they'll breathe in that toxic air at high speed while running for over an hour)
• not everything in the news has been peer reviewed
• just because it doesn't cause cancer doesn't make it healthy
• this list isn't to be mean to scientists, they often don't control all the aspects in a study either and some of these things really annoy them too, science is always a journey and there's always things we don't know enough about and there's never enough funding (or scientists) to research everything. I hope crowd funded science makes a little more headway over the next decade and we get to see some really cool expensive studies.

I try to eat very little smoked meat (I have a little bacon sometimes, it's hard to get clean bacon here so I don't eat it much) and I don't eat fake stuck-together meat at all (most of it contains gluten or grains where I live and these make me sick so I never eat it, it's just not worth the risk to me) and I get grassfed and organic where I can. I struggle to get enough of some nutrients due to my defective genes, I get quite unwell if I don't eat some red meat as I process it quite well and it shows in my blood work (compared to manufactured supplements) and non-red meat either doesn't have enough of some things in it or I don't absorb it as well.

 

I try to think about whether it makes me healthier and if it doesn't, ask myself why I am eating it (bacon I really love so I will have it sometimes, but other smoked stuff I can take or leave it, so I leave it).