No adverse association between meat consumption and health

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Background Meat is a highly nutritious food. However, as with any dietary component, it should be consumed in moderation as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle. One reason for moderating meat consumption is that diets high in meat also tend to be high in fat and overall calories. Furthermore, excessive meat consumption (especially red and processed meat) has been associated with early death in some developed countries. As such, nutrition researchers, clinicians, and public health experts continue to evaluate recommendations in terms of meat consumption; however, this requires the availability of a significant amount of information about meat consumption and health across a multitude of populations. In a study published in the October 2013 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, an international research team led by Rashmi Sinha (National Cancer Institute) examined associations between meat intake and early mortality in 5 Asian countries. Their findings, which suggest that meat consumption is not related to increased risk of early death in these regions, are accompanied by an editorial by Dominik Alexander (Exponent Health Sciences).

Study Design The researchers first analyzed meat consumption trends in the United States, Bangladesh, China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan between 1970 and 2006 using survey data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Next, they assessed the relation between meat consumption and mortality collected from selected individuals in the same countries. Meat was defined as beef, poultry, pork, mutton, goat, fish, and wild game. These studies included ∼112,000 men and ∼180,000 women who were followed for 6.6 to 15.6 years.

Results Overall, meat consumption was higher in the United States than in Asia, particularly in terms of beef and poultry. Pork consumption in China and South Korea has increased over time and was similar to that in the United States, but fish consumption was higher in Japan and South Korea than in the United States. The research team found no association between total intake of meat and risk of death from cancer or cardiovascular disease. In fact, they found that men and women who reported consuming the lowest amount of red meat had increased risk of death from all causes combined. Similar inverse relations were found between poultry intake and overall risk of death in men and women and for risk of cancer mortality in women. Women who reported consuming the most seafood had lower risks of overall and cardiovascular mortality.

Conclusions The authors concluded that further study is required to confirm that meat intake is not associated with increased risk of death from cancer or cardiovascular disease within these Asian countries. The researchers also note that 1) intake of red meat and poultry in populations undergoing economic transition may be related to higher socioeconomic status, which can be correlated with access to better diet and health care; and 2) although the data were adjusted for some of these lifestyle characteristics, the statistical associations reported between meat intake and health may be driven by factors other than meat consumption. In fact, beneficial effects were observed for meat consumption across their analyses. Alexander agrees but urges care when interpreting data from nutritional epidemiology studies because results may be affected by methodological limitations and confounding by dietary, lifestyle, and genetic factors. He suggests that results from studies of meat consumption and mortality and chronic disease conducted in North America and Europe may be more strongly driven by other factors (eg, smoking, body mass index, socioeconomic level, exercise, etc) than meat intake itself.

References Lee JE, McLerran DF, Rolland B, Chen Y, Grant EJ, Vedanthan R, Inoue M, Tsugane S, Gao Y-T, Tsuji I, et al. Meat intake and cause-specific mortality: a pooled analysis of Asian prospective cohort studies. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2013;98:1032�41.
Alexander DD. No association between meat intake and mortality in Asian countries. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2013;98:865�6.

For More Information For the complete article, please go to the following URL: https://ajcn.org/content/98/4/1032.full.