To Determine if Red Meat is Healthy or Dangerous, a Nutritional Study is Conducted.
Nutritional studies are mostly based on observation. They ask people what they’ve eaten over a certain period of time and try to correlate their answers with a particular outcome. As you can imagine, these types of studies always have confounding variables. So, just because there is a correlation in a study, this doesn’t establish causation. As a result, that means you cannot say it caused a particular outcome.
About a year ago Harvard put out another nutritional and observational study with the title, “Red Meat Consumption Associated with Increased Type 2 Diabetes Risk.“ This study was required to use the word “associated” in the name of this article, because it cannot offer a definitive conclusion.
Dr. Eric Westman is an internal medicine doctor who works at the Duke Outpatient Clinic in North Carolina. He is a specialist in dealing with obesity, which is a huge risk factor for type two diabetes. He is an advocate of eating red meat, and we thought we would share his thoughts with you.
Does the Harvard Claim: “Red Meat Consumption Associated with Increased Type 2 Diabetes Risk,” Make Sense?
Dr. Eric Westman states that if you think about the physiology involved in eating red meat, the claims of Harvard make absolutely no sense. He has treated many patients who eat red meat, and when you check their glucose, it doesn’t go up. The fact is that we know hamburgers (the patties) do not raise blood glucose. You can wear a continuous glucose monitor and see that consumption of this item does not increase blood sugar. The spike in sugar comes if an individual adds a bun, french fries, a soft drink, or a sugary condiment into the equation. Those items spike sugar, not the hamburger patty. If you eat pasta, rice, potatoes and bread, the glucose monitor will show your glucose spiking rather high. It’s an easy no-brainer.
Dr. Westman reminds us, that 100 years ago in the Osler Textbook of Medicine, part of the treatment for people with diabetes was to mainly eat meat. Today he does the same thing to help diabetics.
Do People with Vested Interests use Limited Data to Promote their Agendas?
Dr. Westman states that there is a fascinating use of limited data trumpeted by people with vested interests who don’t want you to eat meat. He quotes a classic line from a surgeon in the UK, Dr. Cleve, saying, “For a modern-day disease to be related to an old-fashioned food is one of the most ludicrous things I have ever heard in my life.” People have been eating red meat for thousands of years and heart disease, cancer and diabetes are only modern-day diseases.
Beneficial Aspects of Red Meat:
- Saturated fat has a lot of nutritional value and is often found in red meat. It provides benefits to our brain, cell membranes, and nerve cells, among other things.
- Grass-fed and grass-finished beef is always going to be best. Grass fed contains significantly more omega-3 fatty acids (which are anti-inflammatory) and something called conjugated linoleic acid. This is a type of polyunsaturated fat that we need to get from our diet. It is known to be helpful in fighting cancer and diabetes, and in blocking weight gain and obesity. These high levels are almost exclusively found in high-quality, grass-fed cows and other grass-fed animals.
- Red meat also provides branched-chain amino acids that help to support muscle preservation and metabolic health. It is a complete source of all essential and non-essential amino acids and a major source of heme-iron required to help build muscle and cardiovascular health.
- According to Healthline, red meat is also a good source of glutathione. It is an important antioxidant in our bodies. Red meat contains preformed glutathione, making it beneficial for maintaining adequate levels in the body.
Listen to doctors like Westman who provide great research to back up everything they say. Plus, he has treated hundreds of healthy patients who are no longer diabetic, obese, or have heart disease to prove it.