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Category Archives: red meat


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12 Top Vegan Iron Sources

Melissa Breyer   August 7, 2011

If you are a vegan, what is the first argument you hear from meat-eating advocates? Well the sarcastic ones might say something about plants having feelings too, but the most popular rebuttal usually has something to do with iron. And yes iron is an essential mineral because it contributes to the production of blood cells. The human body needs iron to make the oxygen-carrying proteins hemoglobin and myoglobin. But just because you don’t eat meat doesn’t mean your going to wither away with anemia.

However, anemia is not something to be taken lightly. (Although I realize I just did.) The World Health Organization considers iron deficiency the number one nutritional disorder in the world. As many as 80 percent of the world’s population may be iron deficient, while 30 percent may have iron deficiency anemia. The human body stores some iron to replace any that is lost. However, low iron levels over a long period of time can lead to iron deficiency anemia. Symptoms include lack of energy, shortness of breath, headache, irritability, dizziness, or weight loss. So here’s the 411 on iron: how much you need, where you can get it, and tips to maximize its absorption.

Iron Requirements
The Food and Nutrition Board at the Institute of Medicine recommends the following:

Infants and children
• Younger than 6 months: 0.27 milligrams per day (mg/day)
• 7 months to 1 year: 11 mg/day
• 1 to 3 years: 7 mg/day
• 4 to 8 years: 10 mg/day

Males
• 9 to 13 years: 8 mg/day
• 14 to 18 years: 11 mg/day
• Age 19 and older: 8 mg/day

Females
• 9 to 13 years: 8 mg/day
• 14 to 18 years: 15 mg/day
• 19 to 50 years: 18 mg/day
• 51 and older: 8 mg/day


Non-animal iron sources:
Eating red meat and organ meat are the most efficient ways to get iron, but for vegans, obviously, that’s not going to happen. Here are 12 plant-based foods with some of the highest iron levels:

Spirulina (1 tsp): 5 mg
Cooked soybeans (1/2 cup): 4.4 mg
Pumpkin seeds (1 ounce): 4.2 mg
Quinoa (4 ounces): 4 mg
Blackstrap molasses (1 tbsp): 4 mg
Tomato paste (4 ounces): 3.9 mg
White beans (1/2 cup) 3.9 mg
Cooked spinach (1/2 cup): 3.2 mg
Dried peaches (6 halves): 3.1 mg
Prune juice (8 ounces): 3 mg
Lentils (4 ounces): 3 mg

Tips to get the most iron out of your food:

Eat iron-rich foods along with foods that contain vitamin C, which helps the body absorb the iron.

Tea and coffee contains compounds called polyphenols, which can bind with iron making it harder for our bodies to absorb it.

Calcium also hinders the absorption of iron; avoid high-calcium foods for a half hour before or after eating iron-rich foods.

Cook in iron pots. The acid in foods seems to pull some of the iron out of the cast-iron pots. Simmering acidic foods, such as tomato sauce, in an iron pot can increase the iron content of the brew more than ten-fold. Cooking foods containing other acids, such as vinegar, red wine, lemon or lime juice, in an iron pot can also increase the iron content of the final mixture.

source: care2.com
 


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Eating red meat raises ‘substantially’ risk of cancer or heart disease death

Data collected over 28 years reveal striking link – and show that consuming fish or poultry instead contributes to a longer life
Press Association     guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 March 2012
Regularly eating red meat increases significantly risk of death from heart disease and cancer, according to a study of more than 120,000 people carried out over 28 years.
The findings show that each extra daily serving of processed red meat – equivalent to one hot dog or two rashers of bacon – raised mortality rate by a fifth.
Conversely, replacing red meat with fish, poultry, or plant-based protein foods contributed to a longer life. Nuts were said to reduce mortality rate by 20%, making a case for swapping roast beef for nut roast.
Data from 121,342 men and women taking part in two large US health and lifestyle investigations were analysed to produce the findings, published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.
The studies monitored the progress of their participants for more than 20 years and gathered information about diet.
Scientists documented 23,926 deaths, including 5,910 from heart disease and 9,364 from cancer, and there was a striking association in the data between consumption of red meat and premature death.
Each additional daily serving of unprocessed red meat, equivalent to a helping of beef, lamb or pork about the size of a deck of cards, raised the mortality rate by 13%, while processed meat increased it by 20%.
When deaths were broken down into specific causes, eating any kind of red meat increased the chances of dying from heart disease by 16% and from cancer by 10%. Processed red meat raised the risk of heart disease death by 21% and cancer death by 16%.
Senior author Professor Frank Hu, of Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, US, said: “This study provides clear evidence that regular consumption of red meat, especially processed meat, contributes substantially to premature death.
“On the other hand, choosing more healthful sources of protein in place of red meat can confer significant health benefits by reducing chronic disease morbidity [illness] and mortality.” Previous research has linked red meat consumption to cancer risk.

The study found that cutting red meat out of the diet entirely led to significant benefits. Halving red meat consumption could have prevented 9.3% of deaths of men and 7.6% of women taking part in the study.

The researchers came to their conclusions after taking account of known chronic disease risk factors such as age, body weight, physical activity and family history.
The World Cancer Research Fund recommends that people avoid processed meat entirely and limit their consumption of red meat to 500g a week. Dr Rachel Thompson, the charity’s deputy head of science, said: “This study strengthens the body of evidence which shows a link between red meat and chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
“The study calculates that lives would be saved if people replaced red meat with healthy protein sources such as fish, poultry, nuts and legumes. We would like to see more people replacing red meat with these type of foods.”
The findings were challenged by Dr Carrie Ruxton, of the Meat Advisory Panel, an expert body funded by the meat industry.
She said: “This US study looked at associations between high intakes of red meat and risk of mortality, finding a positive association between the two. However, the study was observational, not controlled, and so cannot be used to determine cause and effect.”
Dr Ruxton pointed out that meat and meat products were significant sources of essential nutrients such as iron, zinc, selenium, B vitamins and vitamin D.
In the UK, red meat was “critically important” to zinc intake, contributing 32% of the total for men and 27% for women. Red meat also contributed about 17% of total dietary iron intake in the UK.
Victoria Taylor, a dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, said: “This study links red meat to deaths from CVD [cardiovascular disease] and cancer.
“Red meat can still be eaten as part of a balanced diet, but go for the leaner cuts and use healthier cooking methods such as grilling. If you eat processed meats like bacon, ham, sausages or burgers several times a week, add variation to your diet by substituting these for other protein sources such as fish, poultry, beans or lentils.”
• This article was amended on Tuesday 13 March. The original stated that an extra serving of red meat raised mortality rate by a fifth without specifying frequency of consumption. This has been corrected.


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Safer Grilling Methods Might Cut Cancer Risk

SUNDAY, June 17 (HealthDay News) – A few simple changes in how people grill outdoors, such as avoiding too much beef or processed meats and not charring foods, can aid in cancer prevention, according to an expert.
“Two aspects of the traditional American cookout, what you grill and how you grill it, can potentially raise cancer risk,” Alice Bender, a dietitian with the American Institute for Cancer Research, said in an institute news release. “Diets that feature big portions of red and processed meat have been shown to make colorectal cancer more likely. Evidence that grilling itself is a risk factor is less strong, but it only makes sense to take some easy cancer-protective precautions,” she added.
One way to help prevent cancer is to avoid overcooking foods on the grill, Bender said. Charring, she explained, results in the formation of cancer-causing compounds called heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

Bender offered four other ways to grill more safely:
  • Add color (but not red meat). By cutting back on red meat and grilling a wider variety of colorful fruits and vegetables, people will increase their intake of phytochemicals. These naturally occurring compounds found in plants offer protection against cancer, Bender said. She suggested grilling vegetables like asparagus, onions, mushrooms, zucchini, eggplant and corn on the cob, which can be grilled whole, in chunks or in a basket. When grilling fruits, she noted, brush them with olive oil so they won’t stick. Bender added that fruits should be grilled a day or two before they are completely ripe so they retain their texture.
  • Mix it up. Opt for chicken or fish instead of hamburgers or hotdogs.
  • Marinate. Marinating meat reduces the formation of HCAs, Bender advised. Marinating meats in seasoned vinegar or lemon juice for even just 30 minutes can be beneficial, she noted.
  • Pre-cook (partially). Pre-cooking meat will reduce the amount of time it spends exposed to high heat on the grill and reduce the formation of HCAs. Bender cautioned that partially pre-cooked meats should be transferred from the kitchen to the grill right away.
  • Cook slowly. By grilling meats slowly at a lower heat, they are less likely to burn or char. Bender said this will reduce the amount of HCAs and PAHs that end up on people’s plates.
Bender added that visible fat should be trimmed off meats to avoid high flames or flare-ups, and that any charred portions of meat should also be cut off.
– Mary Elizabeth Dallas


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Can Less Red Meat Add Up to a Longer Life?

Study Ties Red Meat to a Higher Risk of Death From Heart Disease and Cancer


By
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD


March 12, 2012 — People who eat less red meat may live longer than people who regularly eat burgers, steaks, and processed foods like bacon, hot dogs, and sausage, a new study shows.

For the study, Harvard researchers delved into the diets of more than 120,000 men and women who are taking part in the long-running Health Professionals Follow-up Study and the Nurses’ Health Study.

Every four years, people in the study were asked detailed questions about their eating habits. They were also asked about other health determinants like smoking and drinking, exercise, and body weight.

Men were in their early 50s, on average, when the study started. Women were in their mid-40s.

During the next 20 years, researchers found that people who ate the most red meat were more likely to die, and die of cancer or heart disease, compared to people who reported eating the fewest daily servings of beef, pork, and lamb.

Researchers estimate that a single daily 3-ounce serving of unprocessed red meat, which is about the size of a deck of playing cards, raises the risk of dying of heart disease by about 18% and raises the risk of dying of cancer by 10%.

Processed meats appear to be even more hazardous. A single daily serving of processed meats like bacon (two slices), sausage, or hot dogs (1 piece), raised the risk of dying of heart disease by 21% and dying of cancer by 16%.

“Processed red meat is definitely more harmful than fresh or unprocessed red meat,” says researcher An Pan, PhD, a research fellow in the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston.

Go Nuts (or Fish, or Chicken)

Replacing red meat with leaner proteins like fish, chicken, nuts, low-fat dairy, whole grains, or beans may lower the risk of early death by 7% to 19%, the study shows.

“Substituting almost any other food for red meat reduces risk, sometimes substantially,” Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH, a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, says in an email.

“This is a call for a more varied diet that substitutes other foods for red meats, especially nuts,” says Nestle, who was not involved in the research.

Other experts agree.

“These lifestyle and diet changes really do make a difference,” says Dean Ornish, MD, founder and president of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, Calif. He is also clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

“I think everybody would be better off if they consumed a plant-based diet. But even modest changes — substituting chicken for beef, for example, or fish for chicken — also play an important role in reducing risk,” says Ornish, who wrote a commentary on the study but was not involved in the research.

The study and commentary are published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Industry Response

Beef producers point out that this is a specific type of research called an observational study, which can’t prove cause and effect. They say other studies have shown that eating lean beef can be part of a healthful diet.

“If there is one thing scientists agree on, it is that responsible dietary advice must be drawn from a look at the entire body of evidence, including rigorous, gold-standard randomized control trials when they are available,” Shalene McNeill, PhD, RD, executive director of Human Nutrition Research for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, says in a written statement.

“In the case of beef, there are several randomized control trials which have convincingly shown that lean beef, when included as part of a healthy, balanced diet, improves heart health by lowering cholesterol,” she says.

“Most recently, the BOLD (Beef in an Optimal Lean Diet) study showed that eating lean beef every day, as part of a heart-healthy diet, could reduce [unhealthy] LDLcholesterol…” McNeill says.

Why Worry About Red Meat?

Red meat is high in protein, which helps maintain muscle. It’s also high in heme iron, which can be helpful for those who suffer from anemia, or iron deficiency.

But along with its virtues, red meat also is high in saturated fat and cholesterol, for example, which are thought to contribute to heart disease and cancer.

Processed meats like bacon and salami are often high in sodium, which may contribute to high blood pressure. They also contain preservatives like nitrites, which have been linked to cancer, such as pancreatic, kidney, and bladder cancers.

And cooking meat, including red meat and chicken, at high temperatures, by grilling or broiling it, for example, is known to generate chemicals linked to cancer.

Still, the study does not prove that red meat is directly harmful to health. It could be that people who eat lots of red meat are just also more likely to engage in other behaviors that may shorten their lives.

Indeed, researchers note that people in the study who ate a lot of red meat were less likely to exercise and were more likely to smoke, drink alcohol, and beoverweight than people who didn’t eat as much red meat.

Knowing that, however, researchers were able to adjust their data to try to account for the influence of those other unhealthy behaviors.

The study echoes previous research which has also linked diets high in red meat to a shorter life span.

In 2009, a study by the National Cancer Institute found that people who ate the equivalent of a quarter-pound burger or small steak each day had about a 30% greater risk of dying over 10 years than people who only ate red meat occasionally.

High red meat consumption has also been linked to obesity and type 2 diabetes.

“The notion that eating meat might be bad for us is tough to swallow for a generation that has drunk deep of the ‘low carb’ Kool-Aid!” David L. Katz, MD, MPH, founder and director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center in New Haven, Conn., says in an email to WebMD.

But Katz says the evidence clearly shows that more is not better when it comes to red meat.

“Eating ‘more’ meat means eating a lower proportion of calories from plants — vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans, lentils, whole grains — which are decisively associated with better health,” he says.

source: webmd.com


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Bacon, Processed Meat Linked to Pancreatic Cancer

Ann Pietrangelo

January 13, 2012

Hold the bacon, hold the sausage. Researchers in Sweden suggest that eating an extra 50g of processed meat each day — that a couple of slices of bacon or a link of sausage — could increase your risk of pancreatic cancer by 19 percent.

The risk of pancreatic cancer increases by 38 percent for people who eat 100 grams a day and 57 percent for people who eat 150 grams a day of processed meat, compared to those who eat none.

Researchers analyzed data from 11 other trials, involving 6,643 patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, concludes that, “processed meat consumption is positively associated with pancreatic cancer risk. Red meat consumption was associated with an increased risk of pancreatic cancer in men. Further prospective studies are needed to confirm these findings.”

Pancreatic cancer has a relative survival rate of about 5.5 percent, making it one of the most lethal types of cancer.

Processed meat has been linked to a host of other health problems.

Associate Professor Susanna Larsson, study author based at the Karolinska Institutet, said in a press release:

“Pancreatic cancer has poor survival rates. So as well as diagnosing it early, it’s important to understand what can increase the risk of this disease.

“If diet does affect pancreatic cancer then this could influence public health campaigns to help reduce the number of cases of this disease developing in the first place.”

Sara Hiom, director of information at Cancer Research UK, said:

“The jury is still out as to whether meat is a definite risk factor for pancreatic cancer and more large studies are needed to confirm this. But this new analysis suggests processed meat may be playing a role.

“We do know that, among lifestyle factors, smoking significantly ramps up the risk of pancreatic cancer. Stopping smoking is the best way to reduce your chances of developing many types of cancer and other diseases as well.”

source: care2.com


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Well-done red meat linked to aggressive prostate cancer

This is another piece of evidence for the notion that ... grilled meat, contains carcinogens, Ronald D. Ennis says

By Amanda Gardner, Health.com
November 23, 2011


(Health.com) — Cardiologists and other doctors already view artery-clogging red meat as a villain, and they now have another reason to urge their patients to steer clear: A new study has found that men have a higher risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer if they consume a lot of ground beef and other red meat — especially if the meat is grilled or well-done.

The men in the study who ate about two servings of hamburger or meat loaf per week were more than twice as likely to have been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer as the men who ate none. But most of that increase in risk can be attributed to how the meat was cooked.

When the researchers looked only at the members of the burger-loving group who ate their meat grilled or barbecued, the numbers told a different story: The men who preferred their burgers well-done had double the cancer risk, while those who liked them medium (or rarer) had a negligible increase in risk — just 12 percent. A similar pattern was seen with grilled or barbecued steak.

“This is another piece of evidence for the notion that red meat, particularly grilled meat, contains carcinogens that may relate to prostate cancer,” says Ronald D. Ennis, M.D., director of radiation oncology at St. Luke’s — Roosevelt Hospital Center, in New York City, who was not involved in the study.

When meat is cooked — and charred — at high temperatures over an open flame, a reaction occurs that causes the formation of two chemicals: heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). In animal studies, these chemicals have been shown to cause several types of cancer, including prostate cancer.

Although by now it is well established that red meat increases the risk of heart disease and colorectal cancer, its role in prostate cancer has been less clear. Numerous studies have investigated a possible link between meat consumption and prostate-cancer risk, but the results have been inconsistent.

“This study not only associates red meat with a risk of prostate cancer but it takes it a little bit forward by looking at the method of cooking and the degree of cooking,” says Lee Richstone, M.D., an associate professor of surgery and a prostate-cancer specialist at the Smith Institute of Urology, in New Hyde Park, N.Y. “It helps contribute to our understanding of a potential mechanism in the form of [HCAs] and [PAHs].”

In the study, which was published this week in the journal PLoS One, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco compared about 500 men who recently had been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer to a cancer-free group of similar size who served as controls. All of the participants filled out detailed questionnaires about their diets over the previous year, including the amount of meat they ate and how it was prepared.

Men who ate the most ground beef were 2.3 times more likely than men who ate none to have aggressive prostate cancer. Higher consumption of fatty lunchmeats (such as salami) and liver was also associated with an increase in cancer risk. On the other hand, poultry, bacon, and low-fat hot dogs and sausages appeared to have little influence on cancer risk.

The study “certainly supports the notion that these types of foods may be harmful in some ways,” Ennis says.

Close to one-fifth of U.S. men will at some point in their lives develop prostate cancer, which ranges in severity from benign tumors that need little or no treatment to very aggressive forms that are usually deadly. Age, family history, and genetics all have been shown to increase risk. The evidence for environmental risk factors — including diet — is less clear, though researchers have long suspected they play a role because of the wide geographical variation in prostate-cancer rates.

The study is far from airtight. The data on meat consumption relied on the memory of the participants, for instance. And although the researchers took into account several known risk factors for prostate cancer (such as family history, smoking, and body mass index), it’s possible that other unidentified factors contributed to the apparent link between meat consumption and cancer risk.

Still, the findings are compelling enough that men should consider exercising “moderation and caution,” Richstone says.

“There’s an expanding and building body of literature that does point to this type of connection, and I think papers like this make for a stronger and stronger argument that men need to moderate their intake of highly cooked meat,” he says.

Health Magazine 2011

source: CNN