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Wednesday 27 May 2015

Red meat consumption and ischemic heart disease. A systematic literature review

Highlights

• Diet may strongly influence ischemic heart disease (IHD).

• We performed a literature review evaluating the association between red meat intake and IHD.

• Eleven studies (8 prospective and 3 case–control) were finally selected.

• There is no clear relationship between large intake of red meat and increased IHD.

Abstract

Several lines of evidence attest that diet may strongly influence the cardiovascular risk. We performed an electronic search in Medline (with PubMed interface), Scopus and ISI Web of Science, to identify epidemiological studies on the association between red meat intake and the overall risk of ischemic heart disease (IHD). Eleven studies (8 prospective and 3 case–control) were finally selected for this systematic literature review.

Although a larger intake of red meat was found to be a significant risk factor for IHD in four studies (2 prospective and 2 case–control), no significant association was found in five other trials (4 prospective and 1 case–control).

We suggest that future diet recommendations for prevention of cardiovascular disease should take into account that the current literature data does not support the existence of a clear relationship between large intake of red meat and increased risk of myocardial ischemia.

Graham

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

'a larger intake of red meat was found to be a significant risk factor for IHD in four studies'

Until it's down to zero studies, four cases where there is a 'significant risk' is more than enough for me.

Galina L. said...

Ron Kraus(Senior Scientist and Director of Atherosclerosis Research at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Medicine at UCSF and in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at UC Berkeley, and Guest Senior Scientist in the Department of Genome Sciences of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) said –" Saturated Fat? Red Meat? It Depends . . ."
"what we found is that in our study groups, the reduction of carbohydrate alone improved metabolic profile in the majority of individuals, independently of saturated fat intake."

http://www.meandmydiabetes.com/2012/04/17/ron-krauss-saturated-fat-red-meat-it-depends/

Z@KickingKilos said...

I have always heard that red meat is bad. But, I believe in smaller quantity its not that bad.

JanKnitz said...

Not having read the study, no conclusions may be drawn from it. What exactly is the significance? I don't know because this snippet doesn't give enough information.

"Red meat" can mean a lot of things. It can mean good quality grass fed muscle meat, or it can mean pesticide laden, gmo grain fed, antibiotic filled meat and/or highly processed meats. I suspect the latter is more likely.

So am I going to cut my consumption of grass fed, organic beef and lamb because of this study? No.

Keep in mind our ancestors (you have only to look as far back as your grandparents or great grandparents depending on how old you are) ate red meat regularly and didn't have the modern diseases you fear (at least not until later in life when they were eating grain fed, processed meats).

Anonymous said...

Humans got here over the millenia by eating red meat and plenty of it.
As recently as 200 years ago, Americans ate much more red meat than we do today, and heart disease was unheard of. I'm inclined to agree with Galina, that it's the CARBS the red meat has recently become wrapped in or washed down with that confound the so-called "results" of those 4 studies.
Good post, thanks for going through these studies.
Cheers.

Anonymous said...

An interesting comment, considering about 200 years ago, the cowboy was herding the cattle across America, so it probably would be fair to say heart disease was unheard of. Scalping, or being shot, but probably not particularly death by a serious cardiac event would have been recorded by the local undertaker.

Lowcarb team member said...

JanKnitz said..
"Red meat" can mean a lot of things. It can mean good quality grass fed muscle meat, or it can mean pesticide laden, gmo grain fed, antibiotic filled meat and/or highly processed meats. I suspect the latter is more likely.

I totally agree much of the mass produced red meat consumed today is tainted, more so in the USA by the use of antibiotics and other agents. I always try to stick to organically produced beef.

Graham

Lowcarb team member said...

@Galina thanks here's a live link to
Ron Krauss

Cheers
Graham