Comment by array_key_first
2 days ago
There is A LOT of evidence that diets high in saturated fats cause heart disease and the whole plethora of metabolic diseases that go with it. It's basically undeniable that red meat is just, like, bad for you.
Not to mention processed red meats are in the same classification of carcinogen as alcohol and Tabacoo. And regular red meat is still higher up than aspartame, aka diet coke.
Meat can be good for you. But it shouldn't take a genius to deduce that a diet of steaks, cheeseburgers, milkshakes, and bacon probably is not.
I don't think that's true. Most of that evidence includes bacon and processed red meats in their studies. We're much less confident that unprocessed red meat is unhealthy.
We are very confident that high saturated fat causes metabolic disorders, and we're more confident that unprocessed red meat causes cancer than we are there aspartame causes cancer. Which is really saying something, because it seems like in the zeitgeist everyone just thinks diet coke is cancer juice.
Point is, health is complicated, and replacing kale and spinach with cheeseburgers and milkshakes is a bad deal. Ultimately I think most people eat PLENTY of meat. But they certainly don't eat plenty of high-fiber foods like vegetables.
> we're more confident that unprocessed red meat causes cancer than we are there aspartame causes cancer.
Yes, I'll give you that, because you're jumping over a pretty low bar.
> replacing kale and spinach with cheeseburgers and milkshakes is a bad deal.
Again jumping over a low bar. Replacing kale & spinach with pretty much anything is a bad deal. Including >99% of all healthy foods.
And cheeseburgers/milkshakes aren't in the list of healthy foods. We can argue whether it's the ground beef patty in there that's unhealthy but there's lots of other stuff in those...
FWIW, raw spinach and especially kale aren't exactly great for you... you really need to at least blanch them to make them more digestible.
Also, I don't see a cheeseburger or milkshake on the recommended list. You also seemed to skip fries... I guess they're okay because they might be vegetarian.
The most significant physical experiment on the issue seems to suggest otherwise. Beyond this, "Kaplan Meier graphs showed no mortality benefit for the intervention group in the full randomized cohort or for any prespecified subgroup."
Reducing saturated fat can reduce serum cholesterol... that doesn't mean improved all cause mortality or coronary events.
https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246
This is one study, we have dozens if not hundreds that demonstrate that lowering serum cholesterol does lower your risk of CVD.
This one study is the only one that actually consisted of a controlled experiment... quality of a study matters.
Like you remember how many cups of broccoli you've eaten on average for the past 3 months.