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The Real Reason Red Meat is Dangerous to your Health?

16 Replies

Not all red meats are created equal. Better phrased – not all red meats affect our health equally. These are the findings published recently in Circulation, the scholarly journal of the American Heart Association.

Turns out that processed meats are far more likely to increase your chances of diabetes and heart disease, when compared to unprocessed. The study, a meta-analysis of previous research efforts, specifically bifurcated meats to 2 categories – unprocessed and processed.

Eating unprocessed beef, pork or lamb appeared not to raise risks of heart attacks and diabetes … suggesting that salt and chemical preservatives may be the real cause of these two health problems associated with eating meat.

… on average, each 1.8 oz (50 grams) daily serving of processed meat a day — one to two slices of deli meats or one hot dog — was associated with a 42 percent higher risk of heart disease and a 19 percent higher risk of developing diabetes.

“To lower risk of heart attacks and diabetes, people should consider which types of meats they are eating,” said Renata Micha of the Harvard School of Public Health. Read more…

So T-bone steak – yes. Hot dog – no. Chuck roast – yes. Bologna – no.

What you need to know:

This is a very interesting finding. Although the two groups of meat were similar in saturated fats, the ingredients that may cause the different health outcomes were the additives. The study found that processed meats contained, on average, four times more sodium and 50% more nitrate preservatives than unprocessed meats.

The American Meat Institute rejected the findings, stating that one study is not sufficient to draw conclusions.

What to do at the supermarket:

Although processed meats are very convenient, they contain many ingredients that are not good for you. Best to buy lean cuts of meat that you can prepare at home. Or consider other healthy alternatives – fish, poultry and legumes.

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  • http://www.myyearinhaiku.blogspot.com grace

    I wonder about the more natural deli meats that do not have added nitrates. They still have a good deal of salt, however. For example: Applegate Farms, Hormel Natural.

    (Just recently found this blog and appreciate all the info found here).

  • Jason

    I stick with lean, grass-fed, unprocessed red meats 90% of the time when eating red meat – especially good are bison, venison and ostrich.

    Nitrates and nitrites should be avoided. I think the nitrate/nitrite-free choices are a good option if you want some deli meats. Just try to find ones that are lowest in sodium. Hard to do much more than that.

  • Allison

    Ever since I read “In defense of food” (and other Pollan books) I had my eyes open. I had no idea that the “healthy” turkey sandwich I was having every day for lunch was so nasty. I have really made an effort to not buy deli meat or hot dogs etc. But short of cooking a turkey breast every week for our sandwiches I feel like it’s quite difficult. Grass fed beef is sooo expensive. I’d rather buy it but can’t afford it. Same with chicken. I’d much rather have the organic range free stuff but it’s 3 times more. I wish there was something we could do about price because that is ALL that I would buy if I could.

    (I also just recently found this blog and I LOVE it! Thank you for all of your information.)

    • http://www.fooducate.com/blog Editorial Staff

      @Grace, @Allison thanks for joining the Fooducate community! Yes, healthy food is more expensive, and we can’t have grass fed beef every day. But cutting out soft drinks and other processed “food” from our shopping cart does free up money for better products. Even small steps can help improve our families nutrition.

    • CLC

      Yes, the ironic thing is that preservatives are what gives us such an abundance of food. America has never known true starvation or famine because our food does not go bad so fast, which increases supply, which drops prices, which makes food readily available and abundant. 

      I wonder if it truly is the additives or if it’s the fact that the process meats are made from such poor cuts of meat or even organs, things which are bad for us. Blood is also a bad thing for us to eat. 

    • Cpt. Panda

      i think we are all pretty conditioned to cheap food.  unfortunately most of it is not good for us. We’ve gotten so used to buying inexpensive food that we see healthy food as expensive, when really it is not.  Just think of it this way, sure you may buy cheap food now and save, but some years down the road when you are battling cancer, or recovering from heart disease etc., it’s going to cost you way more than you saved, through medical bills, prescription costs, and the most important thing, TIME.

  • Zach Bijesse

    On the contrary, I can’t afford any beef that’s not grass fed. @Allison

  • http://www.growingraw.com GrowingRaw

    I’m surprised to read that the study found processed meats had similar levels of saturated fats. I’ve always thought that the poorer quality meat was used for processed products. Also, don’t processed meat products like sausages and hot dogs have a lower percentage of meat?

  • http://www.newtaste.com Dave Schy

    The only meat that I get from the deli is a few slices of well trimmed Prosciutto.
    Sure it is high in sodium but the only ingredients are pork and salt. A couple of slices go a long way and it does satisfy the craving for breakfast meats such as bacon or ham.
    Here is a recipe that you may like to try:

    http://www.newtaste.com/linguinitom.html

  • http://www.livingitupcornfree.com kc

    Since my kids and I are allergic to corn, custom processed grassfed meat is the only option available to us. I buy half a cow at once, so it isn’t any more expensive than buying the cornfed crap in the stores. Now that we have eaten this meat, there is no way we would ever be able to go back to the mass produced corn derivative-laden stuff we used to eat. It is no surprise to me that the food additives are causing the problem and not the actual meat. We saw a huge improvement in our health all around just by removing food additives from our lives. You may think that buying fresh roasts and steaks and ground beef will save you from the food additives, but you would be wrong. Citric acid and lactic acid (two particularly nasty GMO corn derivatives) are heavily used in the processing of “fresh” beef and chicken in this country. You may be shocked to know that these substances are even approved for use on organic meats. Since we are allergic to corn, we must have our meat custom processed to exclude these acids. If you don’t custom process, there is a very good chance that even pastured meat will contain these toxic substances. In fact, there is a very large pastured meat retailer online that admitted adding lactic acid to his pastured meat at the USDA-certified processing plant. Because of our allergy, we haven’t had chicken or pork (impossible to find corn-free) for over a year so I am very jealous of the prosciutto mentioned above.

  • pablo

    “Best to buy lean cuts of meat” — but why? didn’t this article just get through telling us that natural fat is NOT the killer it’s been portrayed as, so much as all the processing crap? we need fat to survive, and have consumed it for millions of years. meat PRODUCTS with nitrates, hfcs, tons of sodium, etc — not so much! go paleo or go extinct. :)

  • Cactus Wren

    Yeah, pablo, that’s why the human species DID go extinct as soon as we stopped eating a “paleo” diet, right?

    (BTW, red meat is not bad for you, red meat is good for you. It’s the fuzzy, blue-green meat that’s bad for you.)

    KC, what’s the difference between citric acid (3-carboxy-3-hydroxypentanedioic acid) from corn and citric acid (3-carboxy-3-hydroxypentanedioic acid) from citrus fruits?

  • jurgen

    very misleading heading when the article actually states that its the presevatives thats the bad thing in red meat which has been processed. perhaps the writers of this article should rethink their heading before making such claims

  • Vegan101

    Cactus, you are wrong. Red meat (and all other meat as well) is harmful to your health. There are a plethora of studies that have established this fact definitively. Meat is high in fat and cholestoral (and there is essentially no difference between red meat and non-red meat when it comes to cholestoral), and cholestoral has been proven to harden and clog your arteries, reducing your flow of blood and therefore the oxygen throughout your body, which, in turn, weakens your immune system. This is why prior to the wide-spread eating of meat (prior to 1900 meat as food was rare and/or too expensive for 95% of the population to eat on a daily basis), heart disease, hormonal cancers (breast and prostate), diabetes, and many other diseases were extremely rare, and also places like China (where the vast majority of people live on mostly vegetarian diets) have, until very recently, had heart disease death rates that are 1/20 of those in the US. Likewise, red (and other meat) are extremely bad for us when you consider that they are one of the largest (if not the largest) controllable contributor to global warming and world-wide starvation.

    • CLC

      Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Vegetarians? The Chinese? Really? I’m half Chinese and lived in China. I didn’t know that cats, dogs, monkey brains, snakes, cow tongues, cow lungs, squid, shellfish, snails, etc. were all veggies. Do they love veggies? Yes. Are they vegetarians? Heck, no. They laugh at the idea and think us ridiculous Americans.

    • j lj

      the article was not saying that meat is healthy, it was saying that processed meat is unhealthier than unprocessed meats. I enjoy meat, I would gut and stick a pig in a fire pit in a second lol when given the opportunity. It is about moderation. Global warming and Al Gore are a scam. Get real, wake up and seek the kingdom of heaven, you know you are in the wrong. you will receive all things if you do.