Recent studies have suggested that consuming unprocessed meat can lead to thousands of deaths each year, according to both the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Risk Factors Report and the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change. However, an article in the journal Animal Frontiers titled ‘Non-communicable disease risk associated with red and processed meat consumption—magnitude, certainty, and contextuality of risk?’ argues that evidence does not support this claim when intakes of red and processed meats are below 75g and 20g a day respectively.
Moreover, the article finds that even beyond these intake levels, there are only small increases in relative risks (less than 25%). There is little to no effect on absolute risk, and the certainty of evidence remains low to very low, “based on the best available summary evidence.” It must be noted that when meat consumption is part of healthy dietary patterns, harmful associations tend to disappear, suggesting that risk is more dependent on the dietary context rather than meat itself.
Dr. Alice Stanton, of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, supports these claims by stating that “The peer-reviewed evidence published today reaffirms that the most prominent global study which claimed that consumption of even tiny amounts of red meat harms health (the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Risk Factors Report) is fatally scientifically flawed and should be retracted.” Furthermore, she points out that removing fresh meat and dairy from diets could actually harm human health, particularly affecting women, children, the elderly, and the underprivileged.
In addition, the guest editors and authors of the journal edition are also among the almost 1,000 signatories of a declaration warning that livestock systems are too precious to society to become the victim of simplification and reductionism. Dr. Adegbola Adesogan, director of the University of Florida’s Global Food Systems Institute, adds that “Animal-source foods are superior to plant-source foods at simultaneously supplying several bioavailable micronutrients and high-quality macronutrients that are critical for growth and cognitive development. Dietary recommendations to eliminate animal-source foods from diets ignore their importance, particularly the great need for these foods in diets of the undernourished in the Global South.”
Interested readers can access Volume 13, Issue 2, April 2023 of Animal Frontiers here.
