> the fairly compelling direct evidence that red meat is bad for you
In large quantities*. It's still very nutritious and dense in important stuff like iron, protein, so consumption in limited quantities is OK. Eating 500g of it twice a day is not.
In large quantities*. It's still very nutritious and dense in important stuff like iron, protein, so consumption in limited quantities is OK. Eating 500g of it twice a day is not.
To be clear on the quantity, I just checked my latest pork steak package in our fridge. It’s 4.47 pounds, across four steaks. After cooking it probably reduces to about three pounds. 500g is 1.1 pounds, so that’s about two of the four steaks. And eating two pork steaks over the course of a day isn’t uncommon for me.
500g twice a day would be the entire pack of 4 over the course of a day. I could imagine myself eating that much, but it would feel more along the lines of participating in an eating contest than my usual intake.
Is there a scientific way to determine, based on available factual evidence, whether I’m at risk of long term problems from this habit? All in all, I usually order a pack of 4 twice a week, and that’s when I’m only eating pork steaks. I usually get bored and switch to sandwiches, salads, cheeses, and other foods. But again, it’s within a factor of three of your warning level, which prompts me to ask.
As far as I can tell, the current bad stuff is trans fats (hydrogenated oils), followed by processed meat (preservation like smoking, nitrates, high salt), followed by some uncertainty, maybe high temperature grilling. Meat fat itself is a mixed bag; some good stuff, some bad stuff, some neutral stuff.
Some people can make do just fine with that but they're usually burning that off or actually consuming the excess protein from post-exercise recovery, even then, 1kg is still a lot.
A lot by how much, that depends on your body composition and the fat percentage of those steaks.
But anyway, on data: Red meats are classified as <probable carcinogenics> (key: probable). https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/can...
Quantifying data: "The cancer risk related to the consumption of red meat is more difficult to estimate because the evidence that red meat causes cancer is not as strong. However, if the association of red meat and colorectal cancer were proven to be causal, data from the same studies suggest that the risk of colorectal cancer could increase by 17% for every 100 gram portion of red meat eaten daily."
What is not clear to me is if this was measured raw or cooked. Cooked meat will shrink and weigh less.
If I were you, I would just go get some checkups, see if you got any deficiencies or anything wrong that might be caused by your eating habits, and if not, just keep enjoying your 1kg of pork steak a day... anyway, I'm amazed you can eat that much pork in a single day, lol.
Is two pork steaks a day really an amazing amount? Usually it’s one (often none), but if I didn’t eat anything else, two is about how many I’d go through. I honestly had no clue it was far outside the norm… Interesting.
Ironically I’m half Jewish, so maybe there’s a genetic craving after thousands of years of pork denial.
Well, I guess I’ll downshift away from red meats as I push 40. Luckily my other vice is apples (one time I bought so many that the cashier was convinced we were making apple pies, but I told her it’s my standard weekly intake) so the transition won’t be too jarring. Cheers.
If it serves as a guideline, the calorie tracking app I use has a default serving suggestion of 100-150g, raw, for different meats. So even 2 servings of those, twice a day, would still be around half of 2 of those steaks, which happens to be about what I eat in a day, between chicken and lean beef.
Different things come to mind with the size of those steaks but honestly I would just be assuming things and spouting probable nonsense. If they're packaged raw, I would check if they're heavily injected with water to boost the marketable weight. If it's not cheap meat it's probably not an issue.
Out of curiosity, what's the app name?
It is an increase of 17%, not 17% cancer risk.
1.51% cumulative risk of colon cancer among men age 0–74 years, and a 1.12% risk among women. [0]
If you eat 100g red meat daily you increase that risk to ~1.7667% for men and ~1.3104% for women.
The current recommendation is down to 50g a day.
If we look at how prehistoric humans actually lived, we can take a look at today's remaining hunter-gatherer societies. Most of which eat up to 15% of their daily energy intake as meat. The fossil record shows similar patterns since before the emergence of homo erectus, so we can be reasonably sure that this value is relatively consistent over time.
Hunter-gatherers primarily ate meat from small mammals, fish and poultry. If we use the nutrient values of rabbit meat, this would be equivalent to about 200g of meat per day per person, so a rabbit could feed one person for 5 days at least.
Realistically, it would be significantly less than that, as most hunter gatherers had access to fish and poultry.