Is this study wrong?

jam_mac_jam

I am asking not arguing, I am confused by what I read in different places seems very contradictory and I do not have the science background to understand fully, so can somebody point out why this is wrong?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10726414

El_Dangeroso

It's junk science.

1. This is an observational study, and weight and food intake were self reported, this is a very notoriously innaccurate form of data collection. For example, if you don't keep a food diary, could you tell me what you ate in the last three weeks? How likely are you to forget things you ate? I have trouble remembering to log things on a daily basis (when I do log) so I really wouldn't have much faith in my recollections over longer periods of time.

2. You can't pull causation from correlation. If the results are very accurate (unlikely), are the people getting fat because they are eating more meat, or are they eating more meat because they are getting fat? Putting on weight requires considerably higher protein requirements, you don't just put on fat, you increase your lean body mass and organ size to compensate.

3. There are cultures that eat even more meat than the western world and they are they are thinner, not fatter than the west. For example, Mongolians eat 120kg of meat on average per person per year. Don't have direct statistics, but if their obesity rates were anything like that of the west, we'd probably have heard about it.

4. No disrespect to vegetarians but the BBC news website has a serious vegetarian publishing bias. Notice no other news outlet has picked up on this story, they also once published a study that linked red meat and cancer, when two studies came out the exact same week showing no link whatsoever.

I'm not saying that their conclusions aren't true (though better designed trials do not support the hypothesis, even the authors of that study admit that intervention trials had 'mixed results') but you cannot prove it from this study, never mind make recommendations either way based upon it.

And in my own personal experience, though I don't eat a huge amount of meat, I do find it helpful for getting good quality protein and certain nutrients that satisfy me and keep my appetite in check.

EileenG

I'll just comment that an "extra 250g of steak a day" is a huge amount, if that's on top of whatever meat you'd normally eat. I eat low carb and love my steak, but my portions of steak are usually 100-150g each, and very rarely go over 200g. I suspect the number of people in the study who really did eat an extra 250g of steak must be very small.