Viewpoint: Controversial red-meat review challenged ‘deeply entrenched’ nutrition advice with strong science

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Image: Slate/catalby/iStock; Lisovskaya

That last food flip-flop made big headlines last week. It was a “remarkable turnabout,”jarring,” “stunning.” How, it was asked, could seemingly bedrock nutrition advice turn on a dime?

The answer is that many of the nation’s official nutrition recommendations — including the idea that red meat is a killer — have been based on a type of weak science that experts have unfortunately become accustomed to relying upon. Now that iffy science is being questioned. At stake are deeply entrenched ideas about healthy eating …. [W]ith many scientists invested professionally, and even financially, in the status quo, the fight over the science won’t be pretty.

The highly rigorous four-paper review of the science, in the prestigious Annals of Internal Medicine journal, looked at all the research examining health and red meat and concluded that only “low- or very low-certainty” evidence existed to show that this meat causes any kind of disease — not cancer, not heart disease, not Type 2 diabetes. Eating red meat isn’t killing us

The nutrition establishment went ballistic.

Read full, original article: Eggs are bad; eggs are good. Fat is bad; fat is good. Meat is bad; meat is… OK?

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