The debate on whether red meat is healthy or harmful has a new talking point, as one study finds no causal link between red or processed meat and heart disease.
A new study indicates that eating red or processed meat is not linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. The findings buck recent trends in health research that say people whose diet contains a lot of red or processed meat face an increased risk of heart disease.
A research team out of China looked at UK Biobank data from over 1.8 million people: roughly 460,000 who ate processed meat, pork, beef, and mutton, respectively. Anyone with a history of cardiovascular disease was omitted from the study.
The team found no health risks associated with heart disease among those who ate processed meat. All odds ratios (ORs) of a person developing cardiovascular disease, coronary artery disease, stroke, heart failure, or atrial fibrillation were not significant. An odds ratio of 1.00 means there is no significant difference between eating meat, for instance, or not eating meat. An OR higher than 1.00 indicates the person is more at risk, and an OR below 1.00 means one is less at risk or that the intervention has a protective effect.
The link between beef intake and heart disease was even lower, with an OR of 0.7 for developing cardiovascular disease. Beef eaters were also at low risk for developing atrial fibrillation (OR 0.85) and heart failure (OR 0.80) but at a higher risk of experiencing stroke (OR 1.29).
Individuals who ate pork were at higher risk of developing heart failure (OR 1.71), stroke (OR 1.15), and coronary artery disease (OR 1.25). However, the researchers still considered these outcomes insignificant in terms of causality.
Mutton intake did not reveal any health risks associated with heart disease either, the research team found. Much like processed meat, mutton had insignificant OR outcomes for risk of cardiovascular disease, coronary artery disease, stroke, heart failure, or atrial fibrillation.
By Amie Dahnke
