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By Coach Jon | Fit To Post Sports

I personally enjoy a good steak, as do many of our Genesis Gym personal training and fitness bootcamp clients. However I have no financial stake (pun intended!) in whether red meat is good or bad for us.

As a gym that focuses not on selling memberships but only on the results of clients, I only have an interest in getting the best possible outcomes for our clients — naturally and without any illegal or possibly dangerous drugs.

So, if avoiding meat was the best way to do it, that's what I would do. However if eating meat (from healthy sources) was the best way, that is what I would recommend.

Recently there was s convincing-sounding report on many media sources about "Red Meat Consumption Linked to Increased Risk of Total, Cardiovascular, and Cancer Mortality".

On the surface it seemed convincing. But any scientist will recognise the problems with the validity of the study.

However, it can be hard for the regular person "on the street" to see through the poorly presented information, and the hastily and inaccurately drawn conclusions.

That's where I can help. I am both a nerd, and a person who has to teach healthy habits to regular people.

Keep your mind switched on as you read this. I will make it as clear and as easily understandable as I can.

What was reported: ""Red meat is blamed for one in 10 early deaths" - and other headlines like it all over newspapers and the internet

What was missed: This is only an observational study, proving nothing.

Observational studies are good for finding possible areas of further research, but cannot prove anything themselves.

It is like saying:

"100 per cent of people die eventually, 100 per cent of people breathe, so breathing is dangerous and we should stop doing it"

Or

"I see firemen at 100 per cent of all major fires, so if we get rid of firemen, all major fires would stop"

Above are wrong conclusions that can be made from observational studies. I have written more about that here.

Anybody can see that these statements do not make sense. All they can do is lead us to ask ourselves how can we study these effects further to prove that they are true or untrue.

What was reported: "Unprocessed red meat consumption also leads to increased risk of death"

What was missed: Hamburger patties were also included in the unprocessed meat category.

This is possibly the most common of the unprocessed meats! And yet, its HIGHLY processed. Would you consider a grass-fed steak the same as a fast food hamburger? Your body certainly does not consider them equal. Ferrari and Cherry QQ are both cars, but nobody would mistake one for another.

Chery-QQ1

Uh, have you seen the labels of a hamburger patty? They include items like...

Texturized vegetable protein - low grade, possibly hormone disrupting protein
MSG - linked to brain dysfunction
Nitrates - a known cancer causing agent
All kinds of flour and other fillers - sometimes meat isn't even the ingredient listed first!

What was missed: Nobody bothered to track the refined carbohydrates that came along with these hamburgers. How many regular (non-gym going, non-health conscious) people eat hamburgers without the bun? This is a huge bunch of processed white flour - a well known heath risk - going down with each patty.

What was missed: In addition, nobody checked to see how the meat was cooked. Meat that is cooked to the point of charred (a favorite among hamburger and BBQ fans) increases the amount of carcinogens entering your body.

What was missed: The method used to gather information was questionnaires which required participants to remember accurately and honestly foods that they ate over the period of four years! And this was done every four years from 1980 to 2006. Here is the questionnaire if you want to try it out yourself.

My team of coaches and I do more than 1,000 nutrition consultations at our training center every year. And it can be hard to get clients to accurately and honestly remember what they ate over the last four days let alone four years. There are numerous factors that lead to differences in reporting including:

If a person has a history of/ a current illness
Gender
Education level
Occupation

The most inaccurate part...

In my opinion, the most inaccurate part of the study was this part detailing the lifestyles of the people eating "Excess red meat". The full information is here (if you are brave, and free enough to read it like I was!)

The people eating "red meat that kills" i.e. the top 20 per cent of red meat eaters, compared to the bottom 20 per cent... also had -

Less physical activity
More smoking (in one part of the study, almost 3x more!)
Less consumption of multivitamins
Increased alcohol intake
Increased diabetes and obesity

So is it the red meat? Or is it the lack of exercise? Or the smoking? Or the lack of essential nutrients? Or being overweight? Or the alcohol?

I don't know, you don't know and neither do the researchers! But "Red meat kills" is certainly a much more attention grabbing and sensational headline than "Lack of exercise is bad".

My team and I are very practical. We always try to lead our clients to good lifestyle choices. So here we go.

Eat lots of veggies - this is one thing that everybody can agree on
Eat protein from truly unprocessed sources - it has to look like it was recently an animal. To your body, chicken nuggets and hamburger patties do not qualify as meat. Try to eat grass-fed meat as much as possible. There are wholesale meat outlets in Singapore that have grass-fed meats at very reasonable prices. (1/5th the price of a restaurant for a steak).
Don't cook your food till black all over. And if you do once in a while overcook your food, eat lots of veggies or a strong multivitamin tablet in the same meal to counter the effects.


http://sg.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/fit-to-post-sports/eating-red-meat-kill-153507560.html