The finding that eating red meat is harmful, first published in The Lancet medical journal in October 2020, has received further challenge.

In a significant move, World Cancer Research Fund International (WCRF) has joined forces with the Academy of Nutrition Sciences and challenged the assumptions behind the finding by the Global Burden of Disease on the health risks of red meat.

The letter last week to The Lancet medical journal is all the more significant given the WCRF’s earlier finding of a relationship between red and processed meat and colorectal cancer.

Referring to this, the letter stated: “Nevertheless, neither WCRF nor other international organisations recommend complete avoidance of meat. In many diets worldwide, red meat is an important source of several nutrients. Removing meat from such diets is impractical and unrealistic, and carries a risk of nutritional deficiency judged to outweigh future cancer risk.”

Earlier calls

The letter joined earlier calls from other scientists, led by Prof Alice Stanton, Royal College of Surgeons Ireland, asking the Global Burden of Disease investigators to reconsider the measurements they were using to draw conclusions about the links between dietary factors and diseases. Specifically, the findings on red meat are seen as troublesome.

Following the use of new assumptions in the 2019 research, a diet high in red meat was reported to be responsible for 896,000 deaths. This was a 36-fold increase on 2017 which used earlier assumptions.

Essentially, in the space of two years, eating unprocessed red meat moved from being the least important of 21 dietary risk factors to the seventh leading dietary risk factor for ill health and death.

It seems the change had more to do with the method used to estimate the risky levels of meat eating rather than change in how eating it was impacting health according to the Academy of Nutrition Sciences.

Red meat and disease

The lead author of the research group that published the original paper had already confirmed in March that the finding that red meat is harmful is not reliable.

Dr Christopher Murray noted that based on updated methodology, deaths attributable to red meat will be reduced based on this forthcoming analysis.

Indeed, he went further to confirm that based on the new methodology the strength of evidence between red meat and various outcomes is relatively weak.

He also confirmed that is a clear protective relationship between red meat intake and haemorrhagic stroke which will be reflected in the GBD 2020 findings. This has been welcomed by those challenging the data. Notwithstanding this admission, the original paper remains published in The Lancet medical journal and continues to be cited in other research. This gives further weight to the original and unreliable findings.

Neither The Lancet nor the GBD collaborators had responded with a comment to the Irish Farmers Journal at the time of going to print.