Could red meat possibly be the kiss of death? According to the article I read, it very well could be. There has been a long-running study that the results would be rather shocking. It stated that people who eat a portion of red meat daily boosts their risk of dying young by up to 20 percent. The study was conducted on more than 120,000 people and was conducted by Harvard University. How they came to the conclusion is the fact that the consumption of red meat increases the risk of heart disease and cancer significantly. The study on the flipside also reveals that when the subjects ate fish and poultry, the risk of early death was lower.
The specifics on the study were that approximately 37,698 men and 83,644 women were tracked for 22 years. The data was collected from surveys they took about their eating habits every four years. The findings were that those who ate unprocessed red meat had a 13 percent higher risk of dying and those who ate processed meats such as hot dogs or bacon had a higher risk at 20 percent. The reason for the more significant jump is because processed meats have been known to contain preservatives and ingredients such as sodium nitrites which are linked to carcinogens that including heart disease and cancer.
I can somewhat feel that I can side with the study that was conducted by Harvard and it could very well be the reason why there are more hospital visits in regard to chronic diseases. The study however I felt was flawed. The reason being is that even though I am not a red meat consumer myself, I do know that there is a major difference between conventional factory farm meat and grass-fed meat. I believe that anything in excess obviously can’t be too good for you. However, with this study, the consumption of the conventional factory farm meat was the culprit at causing a spike in the probability of early death. What many fail to understand is the diets the cows are fed in these factories are corn and naturally, cows are not made to eat corn meal. And within the cow receiving it’s “nutrition” from corn, it gets passed on to meat that is anything but high quality. The grass fed cows produce a better quality meat. I also could come to the conclusion that perhaps their subjects ate low-grade red meat from fast food restaurants which are pumped with more preservatives and unhealthy ingredients.
Article was found on yahoo news.