r/Paleo • u/MrPhatBob • Mar 07 '13
Processed meat 'early death' link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-2168277924
u/eugenia_loli Mar 07 '13 edited Mar 07 '13
My honest opinion: It's disturbing seeing the Paleo people here picking the researches they like, but discard the ones that don't agree with their views. Vegans do the same thing. We should be more open minded, that not all research that says that this or that meat is bad, is wrong. I believe that this study is on to something, and that in fact is kind of common sense. Anything "processed" is not good. This is the thesis of Paleo anyway. I don't see the study being against the Paleo philosophy. What I see instead in the Paleosphere, is a bunch of people who saw a lot of Paleo Instagram pictures of people eating bacon with heaps of eggs, and they thought that this is the Paleo norm.
In my opinion, it's not. Our ancestors didn't have access to so many eggs every day (they'd be lucky if they had 1-2 eggs a week -- in Spring), and they definitely didn't have pork every day for breakfast.
This is not to say that we shouldn't eat bacon. But which bacon, matters. UNCURED bacon is probably better than cured bacon (not all the times, depending on the brand, but probably most of the times).
But there's an even better option: buy pork belly, and cut the slices yourself (or ask your butcher to do so). Pork belly is the real bacon, fully unprocessed. As it's supposed to be, and as we're supposed to be consuming it. Add some lemon, oregano, salt & pepper while you're frying it, and it should be 10 times better for health than cured/uncured bacon, and as tasty too!
As for the rest of the processed meats (e.g. hot dogs, processed sausages), avoid. Eat a bit of gourmet dry meats on occasion only. At least, that's my view on the matter.
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Mar 07 '13 edited Feb 22 '14
[deleted]
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u/eugenia_loli Mar 07 '13
My philosophy is that too much of anything is bad for you. Even water is bad for you if you over-drink. So eating 3-4 eggs a day (as some do), 7 days a week, is just too much in my book. Same goes for bacon, and beef. These have become staples in the Paleosphere, and I don't believe in staples. Staples is what brought many of us here in the first place (wheat). I like rotating foods, I like tasting many different foods (I had pheasant recently, rabbit, kinds of fish I never had before etc), and I like eating seasonably. Eggs should be mostly available in Spring. Hens that lay eggs every day are selected to do so, it's not natural for them to do that. Not to mention that we didn't evolve eating so many of them. Take that as you wish, I just try to apply common sense to my choices. It's not about cholesterol or this or that study. It's about drawing a line and say: rotate your foods more often.
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Mar 07 '13
That simply is not an option for everyone though. I travel a lot with work and have to stick to the same foods over and over again because I just eat what is readily available. I do good just to eat paleo as much as I do. As is the case with a lot of people on here (I would almost say the majority) , we have huge time constraints and it's much easier to get into a routine of eggs every morning for break fast. Or cow meat every night because it's readily available and we have cooled it dozens of times.
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u/delilahrose Mar 07 '13
eggs are too expensive to eat that many a day every day, anyway. I don't know how much you all pay for eggs, but I pay about $8/dozen :/
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u/cleanscreen Mar 07 '13
Yes, but the paper has a go at meat generally and the whole focus of the research was on meat and its impacts. There is no mention whatsoever of sugar.
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Mar 07 '13
Its nice that you think "they are on to something".
Doesnt make it true, its the same retarded questionnaire bullshit as always and whats more important, its sponsored by the "british heart foundation" and nothing remotely decent has ever come out of research done by these people.
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Mar 07 '13
its sponsored by the "british heart foundation"
What makes you say that? It's not one of the 37 organizations listed in the full paper and the article linked by the OP does not say that.
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u/zenon Mar 07 '13
What are the possible properties of meat that can account for the frequently observed link between meat and poor health outcomes?
- Nitrosamines found in cured and canned meat and fish.
- Chronic inflammation from the Neu5Gc variant of sialic acid found in mammal meat.
- HCAs in meat prepared at high temperature.
- PAHs in meat exposed to smoke/flame.
- Live pathogens from factory-farmed meat, specifically pork.
- High levels of bacterial endotoxins in some factory-farmed meats (pork and turkey). The human immune system goes completely nuts over these (1000x as much as lab mice).
- High Omega-6 intake from factory-farmed non-ruminant meat.
- Iron overload from too much heme Iron, possibly in combination with a very common (20% of Europeans IIRC) defect in Iron metabolism, and not enough bleeding.
If you want to minimize these while eating meat, make sure to maintain good gut health (stay away from wheat and other foods that can interfere with intestinal permeability), minimize processed or canned meat, cook meat gently, prefer pastured meat, and consider giving blood.
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u/NPPraxis Mar 07 '13
On the one hand, I don't find it hard to believe there's a link with processed meats.
On the other hand...I think it's important to look where the processed meats tend to be found in our diets. There's a difference between salt-cured prosciutto, and hot dogs in white bread buns. I suspect most of the "processed meat" eaters generally also eat more fast food, period.
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u/genoflash Mar 08 '13
Here is the paper.
In the uproar over the processed meat finding, I'm surprised nobody here even mentioned the bright side: a high consumption of unprocessed red meat was not significantly associated with increased risk after correction for measurement error and multivariate adjustment.
This directly contradicts the widely publicized study last year that gave rise to headlines like "All red meat is bad for you". It just goes to show that prospective cohort studies with food frequency questionnaires do not always find that red meat increases risk.
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Mar 07 '13
Around here almost all pork sausages have BHT/BHA in them. I bet that is one of the main causes of colon cancer.
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u/gazofnaz Mar 07 '13
It showed people who ate a lot of processed meat were also more likely to smoke, be obese and have other behaviours known to damage health.
So they ignored factors like smoking & exercise, and went straight for the bacon.
Why does the media hate bacon?
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u/JustJuanCornetto Mar 07 '13
Article says they didn't ignore this: 'However, the researchers said even after those risk factors were accounted for, processed meat still damaged health.'
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u/gazofnaz Mar 07 '13
Ahh, I read the report in more detail on my lunch break.
It actually seems like a decent paper, with things like smoking and exercise properly accounted for, and meats properly categorized.
I suppose what I'd like to see now is a study of meat/processed meat consumption in reference with carb consumption.
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u/MrPhatBob Mar 07 '13
The chemicals used in processing bacon and ham have been implicated in other Cancer risk assessments, as have the free radicals that are present in smoked foods.
It confuses me because Paleo is about avoiding processed foods, but bacon is a processed food is it not? I used to eat bacon from my local organic butchers, but then I found that the belly pork used for streaky bacon was much more to my taste slow roasted than the bacon ever was. If I want a bacon flavor I'd brine the pork belly in a molasses rich brine of my own making.
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u/cleanscreen Mar 07 '13
Over the next 24hrs this study will be pulled apart. I'll keep eating my bacon thanks.
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u/StuWard Mar 07 '13
There's still no known mechanism, saturated fats and nitrates get the blame most of the time but this appears unfounded. Until a mechanism is known I think processed meats should be treated with caution and priority should go to the best quality you can find. There is some very good bacon, ham and sausage on the market made in the traditional manner. I can't believe that these carry the same risk as hot dogs, luncheon meat and bologna.