Ultra-processed meat kills! [Well, sorta' kinda' - maybe not so much...]

(Joey) #1

Given widely-held suspicions concerning food manufacturing processes, I think most would agree that un-processed foods are of higher nutritional quality and health safety than are ultra-processed foods.

But what ever happened to that classic alarm insisting that processed meats cause cancer and heart disease? Well, don’t they?

Not according to the fine print reflected in a recently released study in the BMJ which reports that an epidemiological association (based on food questionnaires taken over 30 yrs) has been found between ultra-processed meats and overall mortality. But here are two key conclusions buried in the study (direct quotes) …

“A higher intake of ultra-processed foods was associated with slightly higher all cause mortality, driven by causes other than cancer and cardiovascular diseases.”

“Dietary quality was observed to have a more predominant influence on mortality outcomes than ultra-processed food consumption.”

So, one might expect to see a blazing headling:

"ULTRA-PROCESSED MEAT NOT ASSOCIATED WITH EITHER CANCER OR HEART DISEASE AFTER ALL!"

Yeah, right. Of course, you wouldn’t get any such impression from CNN’s reporting on the study…

And of course the “higher risks” cited in the study are hazard ratios without making it clear what, say, an x% increase in relative risk translates into in terms of absolute risks (e.g., if a 98% of not getting a disease falls to a 97% chance of not getting that disease, this equates to a 50% increase in hazard - since the original 2% risk of getting the disease increased to a 3% chance, 1.5x times higher risk :roll_eyes: .)

If interested, here’s the study on which CNN was reporting…

Go at it, you statistics geeks. :vulcan_salute:

(Shannon) #2

I just saw this article and was hoping someone would post about it. In that same CNN article, it says “Processed meats and sugary foods and drinks aren’t correlated with the same risks as ultraprocessed whole grains, for example, said lead study author Dr. Mingyang Song, associate professor of clinical epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health.” Yet further down, it says “A healthy diet is varied, with as many colorful fruits and vegetables and whole grains as possible,”. Uh, what?

(Joey) #3

@dfossey Yeah, CNN’s reporting is pretty mangled. The study does assert that the risks from processed meats and sugary foods aren’t “correlated with the same risks as ultra-processed whole grains…” but I have no idea what the a correlation between “the same risks” even means.

Nowhere in this study are we talking about causality … just correlation (i.e., association). So perhaps they are referring to a statistic referred to as “covariance.” This is the extent to which one variable moves directionally either with (positive) or against (negative) another variable’s movement.

So, that might suggest that whatever risks are associated with ultra-processed meats, these risks do not move (are NOT correlated) with the way that risk associated with ultra-processed whole grains move. Huh?

What might one infer (still no causality, of course) from such a statement?

For me, it is a confused and confusing expression of a meaningless snippet of math - not health science.

I’m not suggesting that ultra-processed foods (of any type) are the best choice for good health. But I’ll take my processed bacon and salami over “organic” whole grains any day. :man_shrugging:

(Geoffrey) #4

There is so much bovine excrement in that article it’s not just laughable but pathetic.
First off, CNN is one of the most unreliable and agenda driven so called news sources out there. There’s a reason why they are often referred to as the the Clown News Network.
Define “Ultra Processed”. They don’t many meats have very limited processing and yet they were probably lumped in with the “Ultra Processed”. It makes a huge difference in what the processing was and what was added.
They also focused, from what I gathered, on ultra processed food in general, not just meat so that’s just prejudices the findings right there.
Then, “ Every four years, they completed a detailed food questionnaire” ???
What did you eat on May 9 2021?
That alone is the biggest BS of it all as we all know, epidemiological survey studies prove nothing and never will. In fact they are the whole reason there is presently so much misinformation out there concerning health, diet and nutrition. That is proved out by their next statements regarding nutrition with “ A healthy diet is varied, with as many colorful fruits and vegetables and whole grains as possible.”
Then after they say how bad it all is they say “ This is not black and white,” he said. “A particular food is not either good or bad, it will contain elements of both, and the balance between the two may depend on how much you eat.” Good Grief.
Yes, it is black and white but just not in how they represent diet. And a balance between good food and bad food is just preposterous. As long as your eating vegetables and drinking fruit juice a little poison won’t hurt you as long as it’s “balanced”. 🤦🏼
I agree that ultra processed foods are terrible and should not even be allowed in our food supply but freedom to choose gets in the way of that but the this type of pseudo science and misinformation is more detrimental than the foods themselves in my opinion.

(Bob M) #5

I agree with everything you said. Just wanted to note that this is basically how all these are done, although every 4 years isn’t bad. (I saw one study where they gave two FFQs in 30 years.)

I think these types of studies should stop being done. It would create less damage.

(Central Florida Bob ) #6

It’s worse than that. It’s about a study from Harvard’s School of Public Health which has been biased toward vegetarianism and veganism for decades under Walter Willet. If they told me that whole foods were better for you, I’d be tempted to eat more ultra-processed food (whatever that is) just on the belief that if they say something, do the opposite.

The recent crap from Harvard showing the president and many others guilty of plagiarism is just the latest. They’ve been going downhill for a long time. For years before I retired (and that was over eight years ago), our company avoided hiring people from Harvard. Too much ego, not enough good stuff to base that ego on.

(Alec) #7

This is what happens when the evidence does not match the desired narrative. Any study from Harvard’s epidemiology factory is utterly worthless.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #8

A lot depends on the meaning of the word “processed.” Traditional methods of “processing” meat often raise the nutritional value of the meat.

Moreover, nitrates are often used in curing meats, and people often believe that the nitrates in celery, for example (the traditional source for meat-curing), are somehow different from nitrates produced some other way. So that the nitrates in the celery we eat don’t cause cancer, but the nitrates that end up in the meat (from celery!) are somehow highly carcinogenic. And this, even though the amount of nitrates per gram of meat is far less than the nitrates per gram of celery (no mean feat, when we consider that celery is mostly water!).

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #9

There is one thing that an epidemiological study can prove, and everybody ignores it: Namely, that an inverse association (such as lower cholesterol levels associating with higher cardiovascular risk) is necessary and sufficient proof of a lack of causation. :smile:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #10

Unfortunately, that would reduce the number of research positions available. :wink:

#11

How many times I have read similar things… And it even encouraged to consume the “bad but fun” things too as you can’t just eat good food, you would go crazy…! So make sure to include the bad ones and their bad items aren’t anything like my bad but not totally banned ones…
They already lose me when they consider vegs and fruits good… And I am not even against plants, I mean they are fine on many people’s good diet. They just aren’t good food for me. I can handle a bit occasionally though so if I can’t resist completely, so be it.

(Geoffrey) #12

Good point. :+1:

(KM) #13

Lol. Yes. Before we even eat this stuff we’re basically told a “balance” of good food and crapola is a valuable strategy. By this logic, flushing half your income down the toilet, or maybe driving while drunk but only on Thursdays, is a mentally “refreshing”, rewarding and necessary break from staying on course :roll_eyes:

#14

I heard about certain hobby bodybuilders that one is a horribly overly obsessed, stupid one if they don’t eat everything on birthdays and holidays. Because OF COURSE it is a white-knuckled restriction to eat the way they eat (well, reading about their diets, it sounds about right… the smarter ones had to write so many times it’s fine eating something else than chicken breast and rice and protein powder… and broccoli, yep, that was there too) and it wouldn’t work without going WILD sometimes. Not just eating on a somewhat relaxed, more enjoyable way, they need to offset their very joyless diet and the way is apparently eating everything or IDK, don’t remember the details but it wasn’t something sane from my viewpoint. When they just could eat some semi-decent diet on their normal days without sacrificing their results even if it meant their meat would contain 5% fat (gasp!) instead of 0-1 and there were valid options for the other items too.
Sometimes people get really determined and mentally strong, too bad it’s for something not necessary.

And I don’t say they mustn’t eat whatever they fancy for a few days per year. It’s their decision and it may work for them. But they truly considered all people who were strict all year long seriously messed up beings who had no idea how one should live and eat. I had problems with that.

(Joey) #15

I’d venture to add that the lack of an association would also strongly suggest there is no causality.

And so, the lack of an association/correlation between ultra-processed meat and cancer or heart disease (as found in this study) would seem to disprove the notion that this food item causes cancer or heart disease.

Am I missing something? (Other than the fact that this epidemiological observational study based on food questionnaires collected every 4 yrs makes for a garbage-in<>garbage-out study?)

(Joey) #16

Ergo: Poorly conducted scientific studies are positively associated with an increase in national employment.

(Geoffrey) #17

I guess I’m one of those messed up people. Lol!
Lucky I don’t have to white knuckle it because I just don’t have any desire for junk food.

#18

Yeah I get it. I don’t want junk food either (it’s not true for carby food in general though, some are still tempting sometimes). So the ones who say one basically must eat sugary cake at birthdays would have problems with me too :smiley: Not like I couldn’t make carnivore let alone keto cakes, I just don’t want those because I ate too much cake on keto and got bored of it. I was off on the last birthday and tasted the cake I made (carrot cake for my SO). I didn’t like it except the blueberry mascarpone top, that was nice and colorful.
Anyway, desserts are the easiest on keto. Even carnivore desserts are great if one gets used to them. Not every kind is possible though, I have problems with making crunchy cookies (and I definitely want them sometimes. they must be homemade so I just never eat crunchy cookies, woe me. it doesn’t help if I allow starches, mine still always end up too soft). So I comfort myself with cheese whisps and scratchings… :smiley: Crunch is something I can’t go without for long.

(KM) #19

Uh, I just noticed another “little” glitch. They discarded the data of anyone leaving more than 70 of the food items on their questionnaire blank! I want to see the questionnaire! I can envision it. How many servings of Cheetos did you eat? How many times a week did you eat ice cream? How many bowls of oatmeal did you consume? What? None? You ate BBBE? You ate primarily carnivore? You ate a limited menu of nearly entirely whole foods? You’d be the perfect baseline of No ultra processed foods, but sorry, your data doesn’t count.🤦

They also excluded anyone eating a diet of more than 4200 calories. 3500 for women. So basically anyone who grew really big from eating addictive carbs.

“Moreover, as wholegrain foods have established benefit for lowering all cause mortality, we removed whole grains from ultra-processed foods in the primary analysis.”.

What the everlovin’ F. Could this data get any more Cherry picked?

(Bob M) #20

You can see the questionnaire for the Nurse’s Health study here:

https://www.nurseshealthstudy.org/participants/questionnaires

Here’s the extent of the meat part:

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Edit: It’d be pretty easy for me to fill this out: 6+ servings of beef a day. But I also eat chicken, pork, turkey, some fish, some vegetables, some dairy. The problem is that they ask average use per last year. I eat a very limited set of foods and couldn’t guess at that.