(KMOX) — More blowback following last week's release of a controversial study that concluded eating red meat may not be as bad as we thought.
Published last Monday in the "Annals of Internal Medicine," a team of international researchers concluded there's insufficient evidence to support claims that red meat poses significant health risks, including a link to cancer and heart disease.
The authors of this controversial study say the link to cancer and heart disease is weak, and there's not much certainty meat is really the culprit. Other diet and lifestyle factors could be at play, the researchers said.
"Linking nutritional studies to any kind of health outcomes (is) just so hard to do," said Dr. Buckhold. "To do them well takes time and it costs a lot of money. In this day and age, it's just difficult to do. So to get the answers, sometimes scientists will take shortcuts — just try to do a more shallow analysis of data that's already out there. And that's subject to what we call bias. That's why you get all these studies that say eggs are bad for you and then another study that says eggs are good for you. People are left saying what the heck is going on?"
"My take from reading this study is really they are just saying there is no evidence that red meat causes bad long-term health outcomes that they can find," Dr. Buckhold told KMOX. "And that doesn't mean they do or they don't. It just means those pieces of evidence aren't out there."
Dr. Buckhold sees it this way: "There is no evidence that shows a parachute is helpful when you jump out of an airplane, but most people would want to jump out of an airplane with a parachute — I know I would."
"I think these researchers are just saying we can't find the evidence for these long-held red meat consumption claims and making big, big recommendations that affect people's lives is not warranted based on this panel's review of that literature," said Dr. Buckhold.
Dr. Buckhold's advice is to stay the course.
"I think so," said Dr. Buckhold. "To me, in my personal diet, I love steak and I love bacon. I'm not sure of the long-term health consequences so I'm just kind of making the decision for myself this is not something I want to eat every day. I think diversity in your diet is probably a good thing. So with my bacon — which I have once a week, I'll also have granola or fruit or cereal or something else. The same thing with my dinners. Instead of ground beef every night, I'll try to eat fish or chicken or other poultry and just have that diversity. I think diversity is probably the key."