The Latest "Meat Kills!" Study
Tom D. Naughton does a detailed and terrific job tearing it apart. An excerpt:
Q: Did the researchers control their variables?A: Not really, no. In the full text of the study, the researchers admit that the participants are not a representative sample of the British adult population. In fact, both the vegetarians and non-vegetarians in the study population had lower-than-usual rates of heart disease. Then there's this little issue:
Risk factors such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes may be mediating factors through which vegetarianism affects the risk of IHD; therefore, the analyses were not adjusted for these variables.
In other words, since we believe meat-eating causes hypertension, hyperlipidemia and diabetes, we didn't adjust for any of them. When I read that sentence, I scoured the study to see if rates of diabetes were reported. Yup ... and the non-vegetarians (let's just call them meat-eaters from here on) had more than double the rate of diabetes.
Now ... since diabetics are three times more likely to die of heart disease than non-diabetics, do you think maybe we have a confounding variable here? If you believe eating meat causes diabetes (as the vegetarian researcher probably does), then yes, you could choose to ignore that as a variable. But if you believe diabetes is caused by excess sugar consumption, you can't.
Since clinical studies have shown that low-carb, meaty diets can control and often reverse diabetes, I seriously doubt eating meat causes diabetes. So what we're likely seeing here is that the vegetarians consume less sugar than the meat-eaters - once again, comparing health-conscious people to the population as a whole.
The upshot:
In other words, We'd like more funding so we can keep torturing the data until it tells us that eating meat will kill you.Go enjoy your steak.
via @AnnChildersMD
Tom's 2nd point, which you leave out in your post, is a lot more persuasive: That the study didn't control for age!
The jury's out on whether sugar consumption causes diabetes (a low carb diet likely reduces symptoms in diabetics, but doesn't cure the underlying metabolic disorder, and for that reason people who have the metabolic disorder but have low carb diets are less likely to be diagnosed). Genetic factors are a lot more important. But age is very strongly correlated with all 3 of the conditions mentioned: hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes.
In the study, the average meat eater was about 8 years older than the average vegetarian! So of course the meat eaters had a higher mortality rate! I could prove a low carb diet to be horribly unhealthy that way if I compared 45 year olds on Atkins to 20 year olds on steady junk food diets!
Brian at February 5, 2013 1:16 PM
Amy Alkon
https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/02/the-latest-meat.html#comment-3593664">comment from BrianTom's 2nd point, which you leave out in your post, is a lot more persuasive:
I include the link so people can read Tom's entire post over at Tom's site!
Amy Alkon
at February 5, 2013 3:10 PM
If you start a thesis by assuming that what you're trying to prove is true, then the thesis becomes pretty easy. More grant money for everyone!
Cousin Dave at February 6, 2013 6:35 AM
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