The Red Meat Dilemma

When it comes to red meat…

• Good news: it’s very nutrient-dense insofar as it has high-quality protein, and many vitamins and minerals, especially B12 and iron.
• Bad news: it’s a group 2 carcinogen (group 1 carcinogen if processed), and dramatically increases many other disease risks, especially metabolic syndrome diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and more.

How much risk increase is enough for us to describe it as “dramatically”? The numbers vary a lot from risk to risk and depending what else is taken into account, but a 11–16% risk increase for unprocessed red meat is a range that comes up in a lot of studies, and bear in mind, these risks stack, i.e. it’s not 11–16% increase of getting any of the above, it’s a risk increase for diabetes, plus a risk increase for heart disease, plus a risk increase for stroke, plus a risk increase for cancer, plus plus plus.

Fun mathematical quirk: if you roll a fair 6-sided die, you have an approximately 16% chance of rolling a 1 (because 1/6 = 0.16). But if you roll two such dice (to illustrate the chances for two disease risks in the same range), you have more like a 32% chance of rolling at least one 1. Add in a third die for a third disease risk, and you’re at 48% chance of rolling at least one 1. Throw six such dice to illustrate 6 disease risks, and you’re at 96% chance. You see the problem.

For processed red meat, it’s the same deal mathematically but the numbers are higher, and each risk increase is more like 18–35%, which by the time you add in each of the disease risks is really pretty damning.

As usual, we’re not just making up numbers, this is based on quite large datasets, for example:

❝Forty-three observational studies (N = 4 462 810, 61.7% women) for CVD and 27 observational studies (N = 1 760 774, 64.4% women) for diabetes were included. Red meat consumption was positively associated with CVD [hazard ratio (HR) 1.11, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.05 to 1.16 for unprocessed red meat (per 100 g/day increment); 1.26, 95% CI 1.18 to 1.35 for processed red meat (per 50 g/day increment)], CVD subtypes, T2DM, and GDM. The associations with stroke and T2DM were higher in western settings, with no difference by sex.❞

Source: Red meat consumption, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

If you’d like to not just rely on one source (as well you shouldn’t), here are a bunch more:

• Health Risks Associated with Meat Consumption: A Review of Epidemiological Studies
• Meat Consumption and the Risk of Cancer: A Critical Evaluation of the Constraints of Current Evidence from Epidemiological Studies
• Red Meat Consumption (Heme Iron Intake) and Risk for Diabetes and Comorbidities
• Associations of Processed Meat, Unprocessed Red Meat, Poultry, or Fish Intake With Incident Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality
• Meat consumption: Which are the current global risks? A review of recent (2010-2020) evidences

But I need it because of a nutritional deficiency!

It can be so!

And in fact, for example, if you’re 70 with anemia and sarcopenia and non-critical CVD risk and struggling to eat enough food to cover the iron/protein nutritional shortfall, then actually eating red meat may be playing the odds in your case, because you might consider it better to sacrifice your 10-year cancer risk odds in order to avoid, say, falling down the stairs this week and not seeing next year.

That’s obviously not a decision we can make for you either way, and we’d only counsel that it’s the kind of health decision that (whatever you choose) should ideally be made consciously, with objective knowledge of the various risks at hand, and taking your own personal circumstances into account.

While we’re here, if anemia is a challenge you’re facing, by the way, you might want to also swing by: Avoiding Anemia (More Than Just “Get More Iron”)

…for some very helpful tips!

Is moderation the answer?

When it comes to red meat, for most people most of the time, it is certainly true that less is better than more.

And for most people in most situations, sustainable moderation is better than unsustainable abstinence.

That said, remember that paper we quoted up top? Those risk increases were for 100g/day increments of unprocessed red meat, or 50g/day increments of processed red meat.

For the non-metric preferrers, that’s about 3 oz of unprocessed red meat or about 1½ oz of processed red meat.

That’s the amount that’s needed to increase your health risks for various diseases by 11–35% each.

So, moderation is definitely a lot better than immoderation in this regard, but for example a single beefburger made with two quarter-pound beef patties is already increasing each of those health risks by several multiples of the numbers we gave you, and that’s from the beef alone, let alone anything else in there (not just contaminants, but for example the fat for frying, the kind of bread used, anything else being added like cheese, bacon, etc).

So, by these numbers, the kind of moderation that avoids the increases we described looks less like “well I’m not consuming cartoonishly large amounts of meat” and more like “there are some shavings of prosciutto at the side of my salad”

On which note…

This is again something that the Mediterranean diet does well, as it doesn’t expect or require outright abstention from any food, including red or processed meat (and remember, cured meats are processed, no matter how healthy they look in a salad), and/but simply keep the amounts of meat very small:

Three decades of the Mediterranean diet pyramid: A narrative review of its history, evolution, and advances

Want to make the Mediterranean diet even better?

Here are 4 ways to do it, with 4 different health focuses:

Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet

Enjoy!