Red Meat causes Diabetes say Harvard

(Bob M) #22

I’m sure Harvard produces good engineers, doctors, nurses, etc. (Though maybe not lawyers, since I know plenty of bad politicians with a law degree from Harvard.)

It’s just they have long-running studies where they use food frequency questionnaires (FFQs). The original idea of the nurses study, for instance, was to get a relatively homogeneous groups of folks to study: mainly women of the same socioeconomic status. One problem, according to Gary Taubes, is they never verified the socioeconomic status. So, you could have a single mother with three kids living in a not-so-wealthy area and a woman whose husband is a doctor or CEO and living in a posh area. Who is most likely to be healthier? Yet they never test this.

And if you were a nurse sending in FFQs every once in a while, would you admit that you’re eating EVIL red (or processed) meat? The people who have the temerity to admit they eat red meat probably drink more, exercise less, smoke more, have more stress, don’t give a crap, etc. Or maybe you’re one of those people who have tons of money and are eating “healthily” with high carb but also meats like salmon, crab, the expensive stuff, playing tennis or whatever, going to the gym with a personal trainer, etc. The people who say they eat red meat are probably completely different from the people who don’t or say they don’t.

And they’ll try and “control” for that, but the chances that you put data like that into an algorithm and “correct” for something like obesity or being overweight and have it be anywhere near reality are near zero. (Not to mention that this is going to be done with bias – Harvard “knows” that obesity = bad, even though I’ve seen quite a few podcasts/youtube discussions where people who are obese are metabolically healthy.)

Anyway, the chances that anything is true based on a study that uses FFQs is near zero. And this includes the studies that go my way, meaning a study where red meat is “shown” not to be bad.

(Joey) #23

I’d like to see a meta-analysis suggesting that FFQs provide near meaningless results.

#24

Correct.

These centres of undoubted excellence produce the best in their fields as per engineers (MIT especially), surgical excellence, well what are the best hospitals alligned to the uni’s faculty?
I’m sure they are ivy league. Produce more lawyers too, lol, as well as big business.

But there are centres of excellence all over, they just aren’t as well celebrated…which sometimes is good because class doesn’t come into it, just talent and ability.

I know that there are unis all over hosting proper real human diets (keto) lectures etc., and these are to be celibrated. (Think Phinney, ‘Sugar’, Low Carb Down Under, Dun.).

Not sure if that has reached Harvard yet though…only a matter of time as the man says.

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #25

Everytime Harvard’s funding is being negotiated I’m guessing these stories appear. Still shockingly poor they should put their name to it.

#26

I think med people are fearful of getting it wrong, on all sides.

I know what worked for me, and my gasteronologist jumped for joy…but he was still non committent to advise the keto diet. But still praised me (T2 weight loss etc.), and himself, even though he’d f all to do with it!

Keto on, spread the word.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #27

However, they can’t dismiss epidemiological data showing that meat is good, since it’s the same type of data they use to say it’s bad. If we could get them to stop relying on epidemiological data, then we’d have to stop using it, too.

I may be wrong, but I thought that had been done.

(Brian) #28

Funny how “studies” seem to show up in response to billionaires who want somethin’, complete with the desired outcome.

#29

Isn’t it though?!? The day before yesterday I was reading a few papers and Harvard appeared on one of them. I was super suspicious and went checking, thinking, this can’t possibly be the same Harvard. I went looking on the net, trying to find out if some other institution somewhere was using their name. I was googling the researchers, trying to establish their scientific pedigree.

For me, it has become synonym with “be super suspicious, sound loud alarms”.

I remember a time when I thought that name meant something of quality.

And I’m not half as you, guys, who are so sure meat is good. I’m still reading about all I eat.

(Polly) #30

One thought “what rubbish”!

(Doug) #31

:slightly_smiling_face::smile: Straight and to the point, Polly.

Exactly.

Some days I’m up for that, some not. It’s happened with Harvard so many times that I often think, “Oh good grief…” - they’ve made themself dismissable in the past with what is essentially nonsense, and do I even want to put in the time and effort to see if there’s anything of merit there, this time?

And at that point I suppose I’m feeling sorry for myself. :smile:

It really is a minefield out there, so many financed studies that are slanted one way or another.

(Central Florida Bob ) #32

This study is so questionable it’s hard to imagine why it’s even published. The conclusion in the abstract says, “Better understanding of the mechanisms is needed to facilitate improving cardiometabolic and planetary health.” There needs to be a demonstration of what the mechanisms are or can be before “better understanding” is called for. They don’t even mention a possible mechanism in there. Discover those first.

It seems to me that “science” (as they call themselves) has lost the idea of cause and effect. The vast majority of these papers find correlations and automatically believe it’s causation.

The studies that find correlations are a first step to find out what to spend more money on to try to find cause and effect. It seems none of the funding groups want to do that stuff. It’s the hard part, after all.

#33

Always jump to the last paragraph on garbage like that!

The scientists added that swapping red meat for healthy plant protein sources would also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change, and provide other environmental benefits.

I used to do a lot of work at Harvard, literally some of the stupidest people I’ve ever met, seriously!

(Bob M) #34

@CFLBob I think you’re correct about the mechanisms. Red meat causes diabetes, how? I saw this study on Reddit Science and I basically said “I dare anyone to eat nothing but red meat and let us know when you get diabetes”. Because I’ve reverse my “diabetes” by eating a lot of red meat.

#35

It will be only about me so doesn’t matter for most people but most important for me… And of course, many other are like me regarding that.

My potentially healthy plant protein source list has only gluten… I am not very sure about its healthiness using it for 80+ g protein every day in my life though.
The other plant proteins are too carby, not healthy or convenient for me in big amounts. Or artificial and probably not tasty…

It’s an inherently wrong idea that “healthy plant protein sources”, whatever one think about saying that, is healthy for everyone when using as our main protein souce.

(Central Florida Bob ) #36

Exactly. We have to exclude people with a virtual genetic guarantee they’ll get it, if we know what that genetic profile is.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #37

Malcolm Kendrick says that you can pretty much tell the conclusions of the paper from the names of the authors. He further says that the best thing to do with those studies is to print them out, and put them immediately into the rubbish bin. “So much printing, so much binning,” he says. :grin::grin:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #38

Yeah. Reading comprehension correlates very strongly with shoe size, so if you want to read better, get bigger shoes! :rofl::rofl:

(KM) #39

Rubbish, first you need to massage your toes daily with $500 growth hormone available solely from Johnson & Johnson, because it’s the foot size that counts, the study clearly shows that’s the correlation. THEN you can buy some size 13 Nikes. Oh, and Patagonia socks, at which point you should also consider rain spats in case you’re hiking in a cloud forest. And then … what were we talking about? Meh, doesn’t matter, let’s find something else you need to buy. :money_mouth_face:

(Central Florida Bob ) #40

One of the first spurious correlation stories I heard about was in a statistics seminar at work, not in school. It was that they found the best generals had a longer second toe than first.

I can imagine guys at West Point trying to figure out how to lengthen that toe. Nah, they never really recruited on toe length.

(Bob M) #41

Zoe Harcombe weighs in:

https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2023/10/red-meat-type-2-diabetes/