And this is yet another reason why we need independent science funding, kids
this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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I'm gonna eat it no matter the results because it's delicious.
The issue with many of these studies is that they compare people who eat red meat to those who either avoid it specifically or don’t eat meat at all. The problem is, red meat isn’t the only variable at play. Vegans and vegetarians, in particular, are likely to have much healthier lifestyles overall than someone who eats red meat - which is more or less synonymous with the “average person.”
What I’d really like to know is the difference between red meat eaters with healthy lifestyles, compared to both the average person and those who don’t eat meat at all.
Most of the studies include processed meat like salami, which has known carcinogens and conflates the result to all red meat.
Every study conflates high sugar consumption with meat consumption. If a pizza is considered a serving of meat, in all fairness it should also be considered a serving of plant based foods. Carbohydrates make up the bulk of pizza. And those come exclusively from plants
We know sugar is bad for health. These observational studies are useless unless they can control for sugar and carbohydrate intake as a factor.
unless they can control for sugar and carbohydrate intake as a factor.
But they can, lol
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Not to mention most of the antimeat studies are observational food surveys with weak hazard ratio outcomes.
Most annoyingly the classification of "meat" is infuriating and biased. In some of the studies any sandwich, any pizza, any sugar covered possible meat containing item counts as meat. It's well established that sugar is very detrimental for health.
The only people avoiding sugar at large care about their health, so there is tremendous healthy user bias, and the advice for the last 50 years or so has been to avoid meat if you want to be healthy... Reinforcing the healthy user bias.
A high quality disciplined study to show the effect of meat on health would include metabolic markers like ketones, track sugar independently, and not use a once every 4 year food questionnaire.
The key to knowing if the study is serious, or sensational, is if they use relative risk or absolute risk in their findings. Nobody publishes absolute risk with respect to meat consumption....
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"I just take scientists out and give them a bunch of funding for their research, and they always give me the results I want. Now of course they could always say no, but they won't because of the implication. You know, that if they produced results that disagreed with me, that I would refuse to fund future studies. Of course I would never do that, but they don't know that. So they give positive results for me. You know, because of the implication."
It's this comment that made me realize that Dennis is the human embodiment of our capitalistic system
Ain't that a surprise. Studies on the effects sugary drinks have on your health backed by Coca Cola are also funny
Rule of thumb: if the presented findings are not in the (commercial, political) interest of the sponsor, they are probably correct. If they do agree though, they are probably false or at least misleading.
And this kind of shit unfortunately is fuel for anti-vaxxers and conspiracy types. It's not just misinformation on social media that we have to thank for people's mistrust, it's also the scientists that downplayed how bad sugar is or who turned a blind eye to what cigarettes do in the interests of money.
There is no such thing as an impartial sponsor; some are more obviously biased than others, but the belief in a fictitious impartiality is part of the problem. It shouldn't take a meta-study for people to see am obvious conflict of interest.
I'm biased. You are biased. Everyone is biased.
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no shit? hmmm
I'm reminded of the scientist paid for by big tobacco in Thank You for Smoking...
My father gave up red meat and soda around 2002. My dad's clone, my uncle didn't give up anything. Yes they are clones, I sequenced them myself. Since then my dad has always been at least 20lbs heavier than my uncle despite having almost identical activity levels since they had similar jobs and shared hobbies for most of the time. Now 23 years later my dad has heart congestive heart failure and a torn meniscus in his knee while my uncle has a perfect heart but has needed both knees replaced. I think the biggest difference is definitely the sugar because my uncle tends to drink diet soda and my dad fruit juice, tea and coffee.
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Did any of the studies find it delicious?
More than a quarter of the independent studies still found neutral outcomes though.
They also define independent as any study not associated with the meat industry.
There are biases in the other direction which were not weighted. How many of these studies are associated with vegans. Let's see that break down because I'm guessing their bias is worse than the meat industry's bias.
Most of the neutral ones compare to other animal proteins though, where the unfavorable ones compare to plant proteins.
Does "bad for your health" mean "if we hadn't been doing this, life expectancy would be about 200 years"?
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Bad news if you're a tiger, I guess.
No shit sherlock.
It also depends on the tone of the social media site discussing it.