Table 1 Policy summary
From: Health effects associated with consumption of unprocessed red meat: a Burden of Proof study
Background | Characterizing the health effects of red meat intake is essential for making informed policy and diet recommendations. Previous meta-analyses on the effects of red meat have generated mixed findings and do not formally assess evidence strength. |
Main findings and limitations | When between-study heterogeneity and other forms of uncertainty were incorporated into our analysis, unprocessed red meat was weakly associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer, breast cancer, IHD and type 2 diabetes, by at least 6%, 3%, 1% and 1%, respectively. On a five-star scale with one star suggesting no evidence of association and five stars suggesting very strong evidence of association, these pairs each received two stars. Under this same interpretation of the data, there was no evidence of an association between unprocessed red meat and ischemic stroke or hemorrhagic stroke. These pairs received one star. RR for the six causes combined was minimized at 0 g d−1, but with wide uncertainty. Limitations of this study include sparse data of varied quality, potential for recall bias and other reporting or measurement errors in the data and difficulty with evaluating publication and reporting biases other than those related to the association of reported effect sizes and s.d. Further, for some risk–outcome pairs, there may be smaller ranges of exposure within which the magnitude of the association was larger and significant, but we chose to assign risk–outcome scores based on an average of a wide range of exposure levels (15th to 85th percentiles), which could obscure such effects. |
Policy implications | The available evidence suggests that elevated unprocessed red meat has a weak association with the risk of colorectal cancer, breast cancer, IHD and type 2 diabetes. It may have an effect on ischemic stroke or hemorrhagic stroke, but there is currently insufficient evidence to draw this conclusion. The available evidence suggests that eating no unprocessed red meat may minimize the risk of disease incidence and mortality compared to consuming any, but there is insufficient evidence to make stronger or more conclusive recommendations. More rigorous, well-powered research is needed to better understand and quantify the relationship between unprocessed red meat intake and chronic disease. |
