Assuming this is accurate, here's what it means: if you eat red meat, you have an extra 2.75 percent increased chance of getting breast cancer. Not 23%. 2.75%. It's a simple calculation: The normal chance is 12%. The increased chance is 23%. .2 x 12 is 2.76 = 14.76% chance if you eat read meat vs. 12 if you don't. A similar calculation applies to the WHO study on red meat a couple of years ago. The headlines blared, "Eating red meat increases chance of colorectal cancer 18%. The actual increase of your overall chance was less than 2%. And even that was dependent on eating it more than once a week. If you can't do the math, you won't get honest information from the ideological elites who now control most information.
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This isn’t the first study to indicate that red meat isn’t great for you. It is delicious but it’s also expensive, and it’s production is so terrible for the environment. For these reasons my family consumes it as a rare treat. We eat many meatless veggie-focused meals, with chicken and/or fish a few times a week. We are privileged to have access to fresh produce. We also exercise regularly and try to watch our sugar intake. But we can’t afford organic everything. Will we get cancer? Who knows. There are so many factors that contribute to your individual risk. But why not chill a bit on the red meat America?
Incidentally, are there studies that actually show that eating organic actually reduces your cancer risk?
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@AW I am not aware of such a study, but organic farming does not use the chemical pesticides that is our poisoning our environment. These act as endocrine disrupters, contributing to mutations and toxicity up the food chain.
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Association is not causation.Period. People who wear leather shoes get breast cancer, too---does wearing leather shoes cause cancer---or is there, rather, simply an association between the behavior and the diagnosis.
I was able to access the original research, downloaded the article and read it. Also downloaded the Food Patterns Equivalents Database 2011-2012 used to classify sources of protein. The authors of the article did separate kinds of meat into cured and uncured, with values for each, and values for combined. There is, however, a problem encountered frequently, perhaps always, in such studies, with the classification of meats, i.e. grass-fed and/or organic animals vs those raised with standard practices. If one searches for the culprit especially in kinds of fat, there is a definite difference in the sorts contained in grass-fed or feedlot beef, pork, lamb, poultry.
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I find this interesting because even though there isn't an exact cure for breast cancer there are a few ways to prevent it and one of the ways that this article shows is by eating less red meat. Processed red meats have low to no nutritional value and contain carcinogens which are to said to cause cancer.
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Unfortunately I can't see the whole study so can't find out if they differentiated between cured red meat and uncured. That would be informative.
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It would also be nice to know if the red meat mostly came from fast food or balanced home cooked meals.
Because red meat has had such a stigma for the last few decades many “health conscious” people avoid red meat. The result is that higher red meat consumption is also associated with a lot of unhealthy food choices and behaviors. Meanwhile chicken and fish consumption are more associated with healthier food and lifestyle choices. So observational studies continue to find links between red meat and poor health outcomes when it may not be the red meat that’s actually contributing.
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@Jo I buy my meat from a farm two miles down the road from me, raided humanely, and fed an excellent diet. Small hard working family farm.
Observational study based on self-reported food surveys.
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@The Pooch -
Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Properly done and reasonably interpreted, we can learn a lot from observational studies of hard outcomes based on self-reported food surveys.
Of course, these then need backed up by mechanistic measurements and, optimally, randomized controlled studies.
The problem is mostly when they are not properly done or reasonably interpreted. And not backed up by causal, mechanistic data and RCTs...
Also, on this one, listen to: https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/more-bad-nutrition-studies-red-meat-and-cancer/
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Give up everything that tastes good.
You won’t actually live longer, it just seems like it.
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So many studies, and not knowing who funded these studies, are only confusing the public. Who are these “researchers?” Who funded this study? I think diet comes down to common sense....make healthy choices if you are able to afford to, limit red meat to twice a week, eat lots of vegetables, fruit, whole grains and beans. Make water your primary source of fluid intake, limit alcohol consumption or none at all, and limit sugar.
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I’ve been a vegetarian for almost 50 years (though I did eat dairy and eggs), and I was diagnosed with breast cancer — at an early stage. However, with my extensive family history of breast cancer, my chances of getting it were at least 1 in 2. And I was the oldest member of my family at diagnosis (at age 63).
At the time, I wondered if my diet could have staved off the cancer development. Now, I think that it might have, and I’ve changed my eating yet again, to drop dairy and eggs.
I eat Plant Based Whole Foods (no animal products, minimal to no processed foods, and minimal to no added sugar, oil, and salt), and I LOVE my food! Veggies and fruit, legumes (beans, lentils, chickpeas) and whole grains, and nuts and seeds in moderation. An electric pressure cooker (I have an Instant Pot) bumped my life up to the next level. So much easier to cook beans, perfect quinoa, even polenta (not burned! not lumpy!), soups, stews, veggies...
Well, I wish this research had addressed the risks of breast cancer on a Whole Foods Plant Based diet. But perhaps the numbers are still too low. But evidence for all it’s benefits is piling up.
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@Dr. J
Any "plant-based" diet that claims to prevent or reverse any disease always involved the removal of _sugar_, refined carbs, and other highly processed foods. Yet somehow all the benefits are attributed to the veganism, while ignoring the sugary elephant in the middle of the room.
Animal foods are nutritious and nutrient dense foods that humans have eaten for literally millions of years.
If your genetic chances of getting cancer were that high (1 in 2), then dietary modifications were likely a tiny magnitude of risk change.
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Please watch you CBC and iron levels. I have followed a plant based diet most of my adult life, and am presently suffering from severe iron deficiency anemia. Been ill for years but my primary brushed off my low levels these past six years saying it was nothing, and did not provide further testing. I am not in the midst of iron infusions.
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If this kind of research and reporting keeps up we will all end up just eating various kinds of People Chow optimized to avoid whatever disease scares us most.
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I am a breast cancer survivor. My oncologist encouraged me to not eat red meat but to eat chicken & fish, of course fresh vegetables & fruit. Here we are blessed with good things in the curb market that we washed well.
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@Barbara, what is a curb market? and the washing bit?
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Eating all the pesticide soaked fruits, and vegetables in the US today no doubt contributes just as much to cancer as eating meat saturated with hormones and antibiotics. America's food supply is toxic.
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@Jacquie
Would you rather have food laced with bacteria and parasites, as in a 3rd world country, because they don't have access to high-tech preservatives and pesticides?
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@Ron A
NYT reported various harmful drug resistant microbes associated with fruit trees as a result of years of pesticide use. Pick your poison.
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@Ron A Organic is def better n my opinion...whether plant or animal based.
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And not eating either kind of meat reduces the risk of breast cancer even further.
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@JEM, Aren't they saying eating white meat chicken decreases the rate of breast cancer?
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@joan: compared to red meat eaters... the article makes it sound as if the researchers compared female red meat eaters to female white meat eaters and ignores vegan and vegetarian populations.
@JEM -
According to the data analysis from this study, you are simply incorrect.
@joan -
Yes, they are saying that eating lots of white meat chicken decreases the rate of breast cancer relative to eating little or no white chicken meat.
@Steph
No, they did not ignore vegan or vegetarian populations.
From the study's public abstract summary:
"[I]ncreasing consumption of poultry was associated with decreased invasive breast cancer risk (HR highest vs. lowest quartile: 0.85; 95% CI: 0.72–1.00; ptrend = 0.03)."
This means that in one model they lined up all 42,000 women according to their reported poultry meat consumption, with the vegans and vegetarians at one end and the women with the heaviest consumption at the other. Then they compared the resulting breast cancers over the next 7.6 years of the 25% who ate the least poultry with the 25% who ate the most poultry, controlling for things like age and some other potential confounders.
They found that the vegan/vegetarian/lowest-poultry-consuming 25% had 15% MORE breast cancers then the 25% of women who ate the most white poultry meat.
So I guess that this flesh-eating is protective?
At least that is what this data says.
(If that changes your mind as to this study's validity, then maybe you should ask yourself about your own objectivity and cognitive dissonance...).
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