Cancer controversy: Red Meat
This is such a big issue and the one I deliberated over and researched more than others! The short conclusion of our decision is that meat is an incredibly nutritious and critical food in a proper human (species specific) diet. There is no real evidence to support a causative effect to cancer from eating red meat (with the link effectively being bogus, despite it having been repeated often enough to have become a ‘fact’) and moreover, lots of evidence is showing the healthful effects of eating quality meat and fat, and harmful potential of plants.
I think it unfortunate that a range of naturopathic and integrative practitioners in the field of oncology provide advise against eating meat, either because they follow the dietary guidelines and believe red meat causes cancer (especially colon cancer) and advise a ‘rainbow’ plant based diet on the believe that a plant based diet is the most healthy. Neither of these are actually true. Odly enough, the evidence that plants are healthy is weak (eg 6.60)
I read most of the studies on red-meat, or those accusing red meat of causing cancer, and paid special attention to the meta-analysis and systemic reviews, trying to summarise all the available published and peer reviewed studies. When doing this, a few things become clear and paint a different picture from the simple public headlines, which state 100gr of red meat a day causes circa 12% increased risk of colon-cancer and another 200grams adds another 8%… (eg 6.60, 6.65)
As you read through the studies in detail, the odd thing is that they almost all acknowledge low levels of evidence, risk of bias and missing confounding factors (alternate possible causative elements) and get their confidence from the fact they all come to similar conclusion without solid evidence. Such conclusion is more accurately called an opinion, and not evidence. It also becomes a circular argument, of each quoting the others opinion as helping the case. Bizarre.
Consensus does not make anything true. All these studies focus on a correlation between groups of people eating meat and occurrence of cancer (or other chronic disease). We all know that correlation is not evidence of causation. The two biggest issues that struck me were the lack of nuance in categorisation of various test groups and the range of outcomes.
With regard to the lack of nuance for example they compare ‘smokers’, ‘healthy eaters’ with ‘meat eaters’ without actually asking what this means. Any ‘blind Freddy’ and his newborn can understand that eating tinned hot-dogs and organic sirloin steak are not the same thing. Furthermore, a high carbohydrate eater who eats lots of burger buns with deep fries with their beef will obviously have a different outcomes than someone eating organic pasture raised beef meals devoid of carbs and processed foods cooked in seed oils? Yet none of the studies look at that nuance at all, it assumes grains, vegetables and vegetable (actually seed) oils are ‘healthy’ and meat is bad..stacking their outcomes before even starting their analysis.
Funny enough, when delving into the range of studies being reviewed as part of these meta-analysis and systematic reviews, it stands out that there are also very positive outcomes for red-meat eaters! It is just their projected average that is bad. So, is it the red meat, which is an incredible nutrient dense food, highly bio-available and ideally proportioned to provide all essential human nutrition since the dawn of time, or is it the burger bun, potatoe fries, side salads, soft-drinks, fruit juices and deserts?
To round it off, the final criticism is that these are all observational studies, almost all relying on limited survey data based on subjects remembering what they ate, or generalising a single survey as being representative for a twenty year follow up period. So, important is this topic for us specifically, we have to cut through the BS and go against the grain on this one!
To put a cherry on the top, Dr Zsofia Clemens and her team at Paleomedicina in Hungary are having extraordinary results with an effective Carnivore diet, called Paleo-Ketolithic Diet (PKD), Including the longest surviving patient with Glioblastoma!
As a side note, it has taken me almost 28 years of continuously trying to learn what the best diet is as a normal lay-person and parent, which took our family into a vegan diet for a period and years into vegetarianism, which – luckily – shifted to include meat after prodding of a good friend homeopath and leading me to read the Vegetarian Myth by Keirre Leith. Most recently, I am actually settling on a red meat centric diet. (again no surprise the position I find most helpful is the exact opposite of established medical advise.)
A plant based (vegetarian and vegan) approach are fundamentally low fat and carbohydrate rich. Peter Bruckner OAM, Phinney and Volek, Shaun Baker, Ken Berry, Prof Tim Noakes, Eric Berg, all highlight importance of low carbohydrate and back it up with science, while people like Zoe Harcombe and Sally Norton highlight the problems with plants and Nina Teicholz outlines the importance of meat, fat, butter and eggs in a healthy diet and unpacks the corrupting influence of biased interests and religion in the government guidelines. If you are interested, their books are well worth reading.
Once you see the bias, otherwise very helpful, accurate and knowledgable gurus, including Australians preaching overseas, providing advise on youtube can many times be directly linked to the Seven Day Adventist church, and so draw their ultimate conclusions from a religious bias perspective. It sure beats me how one can rationalise for a high fat, low carb diet – and even acknowledging some of the issues with anti-nutrients in plants, recommending a vegetarian diet? I find that quite a bizarre conclusion to get to. Try squeezing a high fat, gluten free, low oxalate, low carb into a program without animal fat and meat, while still getting all your essential nutrients – that, while not impossible, will be extremely difficult.
I will cover the issues of methionine, glutamine etc. elsewhere more specifically. There are considerations and some conflicts that fed into this overall decision around those amino acids. This issue is a little tricky and if you only have Stage 1 cancer, it may be easiest and best decision to keep these low, but for late stage we needed to take into consideration what is called the Tumour Micro Environment (TME), but more on that elsewhere.
Red Meat is Great!
This may be a bit of a paradigm shift for many people, especially since so many ‘’health guru’s’’ advocate for a vegan, vegetarian or heavy plant based diet and strong recommendation against avoidance of red meat, but the scientific evidence does not support this. The fact is that the ‘knowledge’ of meat being carcinogenic (cancer causing), just below smoking, is an extremely weak conclusion derived from correlation factors in epidemiological studies, but repeated as certain because of the frequent repetition. Scientists that report it tell us that their confidence is high for exactly this reason.
The truth is a little different, actually very different, which becomes evident if one spends a bit more time reading broader reviews and meta-analysis and analysing the underlying data. (6.84, 6.85, 6.86, 6.87 etc..).
A 2019 Meta-analysis (6.84) puts it well;’’Inadequate adjustments for cofounders, residual confounding due to observational design, and recall bias associated with dietary measurement.’’ Despite any reported associative effects is ‘very small’ and the evidence of ‘low certainty’, the overly simplistic negative conclusions were taken up as head-lines by the WHO and spruiked across media the world over as fact.
The hard fact is there is insufficient evidence that red meat is a primary causal factor for colorectal cancer, neither via the haeme iron, nor via heterocyclic amines (HCAs) or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) (ref 6.33) It is difficult to grasp why HCAs produced during the cooking process of chicken, vegetables, cereals and meat can support a conclusion that only those produced during the preparation of red meat is problematic? Or why PAHs from red meat would be a real concern, while our exposure in the surrounding air can on average be higher than what is ingested from eating red meat? (6.33)
It is therefore no surprise that the Nutritional Recommendations Consortium (NutriRECS) says in 2019, based on performing five separate rigorous systematic reviews, that;’’…both the uncertainty associated with possible harmful effects and the small magnitude of effect … even if it represented true causation, which we believe to be implausible.’’ Concluding that unprocessed and processed meat unlikely causal factors to adverse health outcomes.(6.85)
It is becoming very obvious lately that there is a global concerted effort to make us all dependent on manufactured foods and a push away from eating wholesome organic meat. However, there is no evidence that replacing red meat with plant based proteins, other meat sources provides any benefit! A meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials published in 2021 (6.82) concluded that the consumption of red meat over a period of 4 months did not negatively affect changes in biomarkers associated with glyceamic control (blood sugar) and inflammation in those considered at risk of cardio-metabolic disease. Both of these markers are very important for cancer prevention too, which makes this also a significant conclusion for those looking to prevent or heal from cancer, diabetes and obesity. (6.82)
On the contrary, replacing carbohydrates with red meat had a positive effect on reducing insulin, insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), and inflammation (CRP)! A more recent study, published in 2023 (6.83) comes to the same conclusion that neither processed nor unprocessed red meat intake had any effect on inflammatory markers, however BMI does, which makes weight a significant contributing factor not accounted for in other publications and simply mentioned as a possible confounding factor. This study, like the earlier 2021 meta-analysis, found the lack of red meat’s effect on inflammation quite surprising, as in both they were expecting the oposite. (I suppose based on the earlier falsely confident conclusions perpetuated as fact. (nee myth).
This study (6.83) also concluded that glutamine, as protein derived from branch-chained amino acids (BCAA), of which red meat is a primary source, does go up with red meat intake, but causes a reduction in CRP (inflammation, because glutamine has powerful anti-inflammatory effects, both at local and systemic level. Glutamine is a protein often considered important in the cancer battle, and is a primary fuel source for tumours in their TME. It is so important, a special section is dedicated to discussing this protein.
If this wasn’t sufficiently clear to highlight that red meat (especially quality red meat, such as organic grass fed and grass finished beef for example) is healthy for you, a systematic review and meta analysis in 2016 (6.86) looked specifically at the correlation between meat consumption and colo-rectal cancer risk. After detail analysis (but without fully addressing confounding issues) they concluded no associations between eating red meat and processed meat and rectal cancer and no associations between the consumption of red meat and distal colon-cancer risk and processed meat and proximal colon-cancer risk. It must be noted that any minor association (ie relative risk) between distal colon cancer risk and processed meat and proximal colon-cancer risk and red meat, is based on observational studies only and that ‘’residual confounding and unmeasured factors cannot be excluded.’’ (6.86)
This means a study that specifically looked at red meat consumption and risk of colorectal cancer, by location, concluded – based on available (may I say biased) evidence – that there is no risk for certain types and the cross over in this reported outcome seems ridiculously implausible indeed.
The conclusion: eat quality red meat! (and leave the carbs and seed oils out)
* references can be found in the book
