For a long time, people have been told to eat less red meat, like beef, pork, or lamb.
The reason? It was thought that red meat could increase inflammation in the body, leading to heart problems and other chronic diseases. But, new research is changing how we think about this.
Dr. Alexis Wood, a nutrition expert at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, and her team decided to dig deeper into this idea. They wanted to use new methods to understand the link between what we eat and our health.
Their study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, looked at data from around 4,000 older adults. This type of study, called cross-sectional, helps us see how diet affects health in real-life settings.
Instead of just asking people what they eat, the team also measured certain substances in the blood, called metabolites, that come from our food. These metabolites can tell us a lot about how food is affecting our bodies.
What they found was interesting. It turns out that eating unprocessed or processed red meat wasn’t directly linked to higher levels of inflammation in the body.
This was especially clear when they considered the body mass index (BMI) of the people in the study. In fact, they didn’t find any connection between eating red meat and C-reactive protein (CRP), a major sign of inflammation and risk for chronic diseases.
This new information is making scientists think twice about the old advice to cut down on red meat. It’s starting to look like body weight, rather than red meat, might be more important in controlling inflammation.
But, as Dr. Wood points out, this kind of study can’t tell us everything. To really understand if red meat affects inflammation, scientists need to do more studies, especially ones where people are randomly chosen to eat or not eat red meat.
These studies, called randomized controlled trials (RCTs), are the gold standard for finding out cause and effect. Some of these trials have already shown that lean, unprocessed beef can fit into a heart-healthy diet.
So, what does this all mean for us and red meat? Dr. Wood says we need more research before we can say for sure whether or not to cut back on red meat for inflammation reasons.
Red meat is popular and has a big place in many cultures. Any advice to eat less of it should be based on solid science, and right now, that science is still evolving.
In conclusion, while we used to think red meat was bad for inflammation, this new study suggests it might not be so clear-cut. It’s a reminder that what we know about nutrition and health is always changing as new research comes out.
For now, it seems that keeping a healthy weight might be more important than avoiding red meat when it comes to inflammation.
If you care about health, please read studies that vitamin D can help reduce inflammation, and vitamin K could lower your heart disease risk by a third.
For more health information, please see recent studies about new way to halt excessive inflammation, and results showing foods that could cause inflammation.
The research findings can be found in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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