Is Red Meat Bad for You?

Many of my friends and family have been switching to a red meat free diet. Generally, they seem to support this decision through either prospective environmental benefits, or health benefits. The environmental benefits are well supported, as the meat industry clearly produces a heavy carbon footprint. With regards to the health benefits, anecdotally I have heard many people claim that they “feel better” after cutting red meat from their diet; but this is not enough to prove red meat is unhealthy. I want to know: Is red meat considered a healthy food option?

To find out, I followed the standard procedure in answering any generic question in the modern age: I googled it. This grueling methodological process led me to an article entitled “Is Red Meat Bad for You, or Good? An Objective Look” from a website called HealthLine. This articles attempts to answer the question that is its namesake by providing lots of data from three different categories: Distinctions between kinds of meat, nutritional data of the average red meat portion, and data from studies concerning red meat’s links to diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. The article uses these three data sets by considering the data about types of meat to assist in analysis of studies that argue red meat is unhealthy, and then weighing that analysis against the raw nutritional benefits of red meat. Through this data, the articles provides a compelling study driven argument that “there is no strong evidence linking red meat to disease in humans” and that “properly cooked red meat is likely very healthy”.

The article explains the key differences between types of red meat, including the risks and benefits associated with them. This includes processed meat, conventional red meat, and grass-fed, organic meat. The article then asserts that these differences are vital in comparing studies that concern the health benefits/risks of red meat, since these categories each have different proven nutritional compositions. This is a responsible framework to set up for analyzing the data from different studies, because it acknowledges that “red meat” is a broad category and should be broken up into smaller, more measurable pieces. It also introduces an important metric of quality to the question at hand.

The article then details the known nutritional benefits of red meat. This is helpful data because when determining if a food is healthy, the nutritional facts are vital. This is also helpful because many studies are trying to prove that red meat is unhealthy. We need to be able to weigh the risks determined in those studies appropriately against the known benefits in order to successfully answer the question at hand.

The article then cites numerous scientific studies as data both in support of and against red meat. The article assesses the credibility of studies linking red meat consumption to various diseases, and determines that because they are observational studies, they are not conclusive. It then proposes that randomized controlled trial based studies would be more conclusive, because they contain less margin for confounding factors. While the observational studies established a correlation between red meat consumption, the randomized controlled trials did not.

By looking for more reliably unbiased data, and by including additional metrics for evaluating that data, this article answers the question of whether or not red meat is healthy in a logical and transparent way. Each data source is cited and linked, which makes the argument more reliable as well.