Without discussing the main topic (red meat), this is just one of the best videos about how science works, about scientific knowledge, and evidence-based science. Amazing examples, and the step by step move is fantastic. I had to stand up and applaud when the video ended. Thank so much for this, Gil. Abraços!!
We shouldn't need scientists to tell us what to eat. Obesity and Diabetes epidemics of recent times were driven by the intervention of scientists on our diet. And not by meat consumption which if anything has dropped significantly. Studies show that people generally follow recommended eating guidelines.
@@TheCompleteGuitarist Meat consumption hasn't dropped significantly. It's actually slightly increased (depending on when you start the comparison from). From the 60s it's slightly increased in the West and worldwide has massively increased. And I don't know how you're working out that people generally follow recomended eating guidelines? I'm seeing things like "12.3 percent of Americans met their recommended intake of fruit, and 10 percent met their recommended intake of vegetables." which is laughably low. This is similar in the UK and other developed countries. In no way are people generally following recommended eating guidelines unless you're being extremely generous with the term 'generally'. The guidelines themselves are usually sandbagged too so people are actually able to achieve it - they say at least 5 fruit and veg per day but that should probably be 10, but about 0% of the population would achieve that. Science is the best way of reducing doubt from decisions around diet. There is simply no other way to reduce that doubt without performing studies and analyses. Did you even watch the video?
@@TheCompleteGuitarist Obesity and diabetes were not driven by the 'intervention of scientists on our diet'. They were driven by big business, and big agricultural business especially, which peddled sugar as a miracle food to make vast sums of money. Blaming scientists for this is akin to confusing a tree for an entire forest. One thing is bigger than the other.
After having watched content of hundreds of different channels for years, I can confidently say this is the best health/nutrition channel on UA-cam. I can recommend this to anyone I know without any issues. You're doing a service to the whole humanity brother !
That's because he's one of the very few PhD MD most are chiropractors or nutritionists. We need actual scientists and Doctors to help us understand better.
An absolutely brilliant video. Should be compulsory viewing. As a researcher myself ( in a different area) his discussion is SO good. We get so much anecdotal " evidence" ( my grandfather smoked all his life and lived to be 187, etc) that it's great to have someone to explain the scientific method and nutritional research so thoroughly. Many congratulations.
It bothers me that the increased or decreased risks are seldom given in a manner that is clearly understandable. I read a population study with a p value of 0.001 for correlation between the test material and the clinical outcome. Unfortunately, when you ran the numbers, the difference was 8 fewer cases in 100,000 population. As a physician, I cannot in good conscience recommend any significant lifestyle change based on such a clinically insignificant likelihood of a change in outcome for my patient. We need to state all results in terms of number needed to treat to change the outcome in one individual. In this case, you would need to treat about 12,000 people to change the outcome in one person. Unfortunately, even many physicians do not understand the difference between statistical and clinical significance.
I certainly agree with you. Just because you find a statistically significant difference, doesn't mean you have a high practical significance; it's not just medicine this occurs in. This is also true when you provide a harm ratio as it even a seemingly large HR can mean little if you are comparing it against a small number. I've seen papers where the HR indicated a large increase of over 20%, but as the outcome measured was ~3%, the actual difference wasn't that big. That's always an issue when trying to reconcile research with real life.
Always a pet peeve of mine in stats. Not finding a difference at 95%CI,does not mean they proved no difference, only that they could not find a difference. Would you not be OK with making a change at 70% odds ?
@@Nicholas-m8f the proper role of a physician is to provide a risk benefit analysis, suggest appropriate treatments and manage the treatment regimen. Whether or not I would personally be willing to make a change at 70% odds, by which I assume you mean that 7 of 10 people would see a benefit if the change were made, is not really relevant. What is a patient willing to give up in return for a theoretical but uncertain benefit? How important is that benefit to that patient? Some people want to do absolutely everything possible to extend their life span. Personally, no amount of life span gain would be worth giving up the first two cups of morning coffee. The key to making research relevant is to express the results in a manner that the average person without special training can understand. In my experience, if I offer a drug that will only benefit 1 in 40 people taking the drug and that drug is expensive and must be taken for life, most of my patients would reject the use of that drug. Of all potential treatments, life style changes are the hardest treatments to convince patients to undertake. Most patients would make the attempt if they were told that 7 in 10 people would benefit from a specific life style change. Their success in making that change would vary widely. To get them to change, I need a benefit that is important to them. That the change with treatment X is statistically significantly does not matter. Of course, it would matter if it isn’t significantly better or it is actually worse, since I would have no reason to suggest the treatment. Will it make a clinical difference of significance to the patient in most cases? Like it or not, that is the proper standard. In my opinion, antibiotics for pneumonia meet this standard and statins for primary prevention of heart disease do not meet this standard. But it is not currently considered ethical for physicians to make decisions for a conscious patient with the mental capacity to make their own decisions. My job is to discuss benefits and risks and let the patient decide on their own treatment. With this in mind, I advise any scientist publishing a study about any treatment to state the conclusions in the manner a physician will need to state the conclusion in order to get a patient to accept the treatment.
I have watched many, many doctors and nutritionists “gurus” on UA-cam through the years. But I have to say, you have to be, hands-down, the very best channel on UA-cam. You are so methodical and balanced and I never feel like you come in with any kind of an agenda. Your only agenda seems to be to follow the science wherever it leads, but then also staying on top of new data and all of the appropriate factors to consider. I discovered your channel a few years ago, and I am so glad that I did! Thank you for the great work you do!!
Love it, very well done. You inspire me to do some objective breakdowns of eyecare studies. Such as blue light for example. Keep up the fantastic work.
@@waynegolding14 😩/😮/😵🦠🥩 Fat is a heart attack !!!! You can see it !!!!! Clogging your arteries !!!!!! Actual pictures !!!!! Dr. Greger. Clog your arteries and your brain and your heart and down there 👇😩, Alzheimer’s is meat clogging up !!!!! Scientific fact. You’ve got flat teeth 🦷. Little flat teeth 😬. Moving left and right |-_| . Long long guts. We are herbivores. Peer review science 🧬.
It really bugs me that the large studies essentially never control for food preparation - in what kind of oil meat is prepared at what temperature and for how long it is heated. We have so much knowledge that preparation greatly affects health effects of almost any food, and meat is no exception.
True, we should know, but if something continues to look worse as more and more common factors are controlled for, like red meat does, I doubt controlling for additional factors like food preparation will make a difference. At some point, the body of evidence speaks for itself.
Doc i freaking loved this video. I almost didn't care about the topic or the outcome, its the whole thought process that became the highlight of your presentation. Thanks so much for putting stuff like this out there for us
A lot of the studies are either funded by the meat industry or industries that want their products to sell better let's say grain industry, so one says red meat is good the other says it's bad. Personal bias also comes into effect depending what the researchers want to publish. But if you look over let's say 100 studies you'll see the pattern that red meat eaten too much and too often and too fat and fried is unhealthy, and eaten in moderation and rarely it has close to no bad effects.
Terrific video. It's amazing how I, as a self-proclaimed science faithful and also a red meat lover, have let my biases cloud my judgment of the science around red meat, each time finding a caveat to a study explaining the negative effects of red meat. In this video you addressed all those caveats - like controlling for healthy user bias, processed vs unprocessed were my main ones. I will probably continue eating red meat (I don't consume it on most weeks, but can eat up to 1000g/week on some weeks) but in full knowledge of the risk it poses. Thanks for quenching my scientific curiousity around the subject. This video must have taken huge effort. Big thumbs up!!
just wanted to say this is also my evolution, but ultimately it doesn't change the fact that bacon is delicious. so are pastries. neither are 'healthy' past a certain point. even though I'm healthy now (although not a spring chicken anymore, to the point that I now acknowledge I am no longer invulnerable and going to live forever- ie where good health is taken for granted), I have absolutely adjusted my eating habits (including with information from this and many other sources), and while I do not want to be disordered about what I choose to eat, I now have the privilege of eating with my "eyes wide open" about what the longer-term consequences might be. 'worth the calories' or 'worth the CVD risks' are thoughts that cross my mind before I satisfy a craving. between an active exercise regime and this mindset, I've markedly improved all my bloodwork and overall health. Hoping to keep it that way for a long time with good habits. gil's content is exceptional in the space, despite it being unsexy and non-viral.
@@grumpyoldman6503did you try vegan meat substitutes... they're better than the real thing...i only eat em every once in a while... But then I'm vegan for animals.. so that might be different in your case.. But thanks to this channel (the only channel I can trust as a premed and a science enthusiast), I've started to take care of myself.. I now recreate cakes and pastries from whole foods and they're delicious...
Amazing channel. Reactions I've had throughout a superficial investigation of the matter over a long time compiled concisely and eloquently. You are not just providing quality content but also inspiring respect for the science. Thanks :)
Always, and more and more, one of the best -if not -*-the-*- best- scientific nutrition channel in the UA-cam game; and I've been around for years now. The level of your interventions, from an intellectual, epistemological and heuristical standpoint is just first tier. Keep up the good work sir. It's good to have you back.
The reason you don't see any adverse affect of red meat consumption below 500g per week, is because the benefits from the high nutrient content, balances the adverse effects. When the body has enough of those nutrients, the bad effects begin to show, but they are most likely there from the first bite. So for, for instance a vegan, a little red meat could actually be a good thing, health wise.
This is one of the best videos of this type I have ever listened to. It lays out the scientific method and the step-by-step structure is excellent. In fact, you should use it for every topic you address. So many other nutrition videos jump into describing a piece of the elephant, without context, without a structured approach and leave me more confused than I was before.
Brilliant video! You do a fantastic job at showing both us regular folk and nutrition bookworm warriors how the world of nutritional science really works. Every video is like a master class in nutrition and the mechanisms behind interpreting data so that we can come to our own understanding of the subject with the least biased approach possible. Good job 👍.
It's rare that you find such an inflammatory topic so well done (couldn't resist the puns}. As usual your logical and insightful commentary has drawn a line under the controversy. Cheers Alan
@@franciscomacedo5670Apparently, we really don't know. However, If its very lean and you eat in moderate to scant amounts it is okay. If you have nutritional deficiencies, red meat can be very beneficial.
I like how this channel is called nutrition made simple yet the videos are always 15 min +, with a looot more information than other so called nutrition channels. Yet this is what it takes to actually explain nutrition.
This isn't really the practical advice most people are looking for though. Pretty sure most people are looking for tips to deal with cravings for pizza and cake.
@@frankiegoestothecircus nope but ideally you need to know why your car needs a certain fuel and how to find out which you need and how much. Because you might not always be in the same situation with car x and gas station y.
@@lukasa6374 that's not exactly technical mechanical knowledge. It's like finding a video about how a dizzy works and how the design changed over time across different manufacturers, then saying that this is the sort of video that is going to make people better drivers.
Dr. Gil, This segment is excellent. Such high quality content, your regular non science viewers are going to become budding scientists over time. Thanks for the unbelievably free content.
Hey been binge watching your videos for a week now, thanks for the content. I wanted to know what your opinion was on hemp seeds? Or they better or worse then chia seeds, and is consuming hemp protein bad because of methionine?
Also another factor which should be talked about more: cooking method. Meat is often grilled/charred... which we know produces carcinogenic compounds... (similar for carbs and starch, but it is fat less common to grill those)
Fantastic video, you explained every point very clearly, thanks. I particularly like the part where you say that not knowing everything on a given subject does not mean that we know nothing about it. As simple as it is, it is surprisingly rare to find people who really understand that.
Stellar content, as always. Your treatment of uncertainty gave me chills. Good chills. But there’s one crucial dimension of analysis missing in this discussion on meat: signal strength. Your closing analogy, when compared critically, makes this clear. We know that smoking causes lung cancer not simply because all the studies show it, but because they all show an unmistakably powerful signal. Hazard ratios consistently reach double digits, like in the 15-30 range, if I recall. This is an order of magnitude greater than any effect seen from meat, where confidence intervals often cross unity and HR’s top out around 1.5 (again, my recollection may be imprecise - please correct me). The comparison of meat to cigarettes is therefore flawed. Is smoking bad for you? Yes. How bad? Very. Bad enough to yield an undeniable correlation in every study, no matter how the data is sliced. Is meat bad for you? Probably, kind of, depending on a bunch of things. How bad? Barely. Barely harmful enough to be barely discerned through decades of painstaking research and careful statistical analysis - and still debatable enough to be questioned by some of the smartest minds in medicine and nutritional science. Consistent with your thoughtful, anti-dogmatic approach - which thrills me every time I listen - you suggested several real-life situations in which animal consumption might offer more good than harm. If the actual risk from meat were appropriately quantified and contextualized, we might find that balance tipped toward it even more often. Indeed, many intelligent, informed, health-conscious people have done that. They weigh the real benefits they derive from meat against the small potential for harm and decide, rationally, in favor of it. The same cannot be said of cigarettes.
And if one factors in the ease with which toxic eating disorders seem to be overcome with keto/carnivore diets, and the subsequent life transformations, it is reasonable to conclude that for a subset of the population, not eating meat in "large" quantities can carry incredible risks.
very insightful and careful comment. magnitude of effect will depend entirely on contrast and time of exposure and comparator (replacement). an average of 50g/d shows a small signal in meta-analyses. 100+ shows a stronger signal. on the other end of the spectrum, a very large amount of fatty meat consumed over the long-run (e.g. lifetime) sufficient to result in a substantial elevation in LDL-c could increase risk by several fold (approx 2X per 38mg/dL increase in LDL-c for lifetime exposure) this is of course contingent on quality of replacement a similar argument could be made for cigarettes by reducing the dose of exposure and considering the positive associations (e.g. lower risk of Parkinson's)
What is the reference group in the studies of meat? For cigarettes it’s never smokers, not current non-smokers, which includes never smokers and former smokers. I don’t see such contrasts in diet studies. So the comparisons of relative risks is flawed.
@@garygiovino3776 Your point is a reiteration of Gil's "duration of exposure" point, and it's a good one. A trial in which one group eats red meat for decades but then abstains for 3 years would show minimal improvement, much like abstaining from smoking for 3 years would show small benefits compared to never smoking. To truly compare, we'd have to look at populations who "never" consumed red meat -- like Indians and Adventists, as I mentioned above. Yet studies on those 2 populations don't show risk reductions anywhere near those seen among never-smokers. Granted, the typical never-smoker has probably smoked less than 10 cigarettes in their life, a truly negligible amount, while the lifelong abstinence from red meat among Indians and Adventists may not be as absolute. Perhaps their occasional dabbling in carnivory is enough to alter their hazard ratios by an order of magnitude or two. If so, that would truly be worth knowing.
This was an exceptional summary of how science works. My professors in graduate school taught me the principal of "weight of evidence" in my first year. They also taught me to double-check the results to make sure statistical significance was also biological significance. In addition to that, I learned to look at the criteria used for subject selection (demographic limitations), what uncontrolled variables may exist, and what assumptions the authors made. To this day, I take the time to look at all these things and more when I read a study.
Ive worked in the elder care. When You get people in that are in a bad general shape, You give them red meat. Even raw minced meat and liver. Old elder people often get deficient. Raw minced meat and liver adjust this really quickly.
I worked on long-term care. Raw meat is an absolute no-no. It's never, ever done, not here in Canada. Far too dangerous, especially for frail, elderly people. When you say "they often get deficient" you need to be specific. Deficient in what? If it's B12, we give them B12. It's not rocket science.
Liver is one of the most nutrition dense food You can eat. Other organ meat and red meat is also good. When old people get into the elder care they are usually deficient in most vitamins and minerals. In most cases its due to them not taking care of themselves and eating properly.@@rebekahhobbs9605
Seems like most people are looking for diet advice but 12 years ago I started getting full blood work every 6 months and reviewing it with a local doctor to get guidance as to what is most optimal. Since then I've done a bunch of different diets (for fun) and currently do eat a fair amount of steak but am careful to make sure lipids, iron, waist/weight, insulin, glucose, fitness, etc continue to stay in optimal ranges and of course don't smoke or drink. My thinking is that if you keep fit *and* watch your markers closely and adjust as needed, you'll be fine. I would love to see a video that discusses this way of marker-watching way of monitoring one's health. Seems like all these people in studies who are higher risk are distinguishable not just by what they eat but by their resulting blood markers, and if they watched their markers more closely they would have way more flexibility as to how they eat cuz they can actually see the results.
There is a meta analysis that rates previous studies based on their quality and bias and only uses the studies that received the highest ratings. "Association between intake of red and processed meat and the risk of heart failure: a meta-analysis" Based on that meta analysis there's was an association with processed red meat and none was found with unprocessed read meat. In essence we have one study that apparently adjusts for smoking, BMI and exercise whilst the vast majority do not. You shouldn't be using the other low quality studies to increase your confidence meter especially when you know that these factors are of high importance.
you're probably referring to the Cui study? it looked specifically at heart failure which can happen for a number of reasons not necessarily related to atherosclerosis. most of the analyses shown here look at CVD in general or IHD in particular since that is what red meat/saturated fat are thought to affect PS. all epi studies shown adjust for the obvious confounders like smoking, BMI or alcohol. nowadays I don't think a study can be published without those adjustments (not in any reputable journal anyway), it's standard
@@Crazycorn2 check the adjustment model, it was identical for the others, we even had more than 1 in that section of the vid then edited out to avoid unnecessary repetition
He literally says no about 3/4 into the video, and then goes on about possibility of any hypothesis vs making decisions informed by plausibility based on evidence we do have I.e. "it's very possible that grass-fed, grass-finished, nose to tail, regeneratively planned carnivore dieting is completely exempt from all the issues that plague every other outcome on the topic.... But currently all we can say is 'we don't know, but all available evidence suggests for the majority of people in first world, western nations suggests otherwise'*
Do you have a video on the breakdown on CHD risk? I would like to see what the hierarchy of risk is? I think there is a lot of confusion among the risk factors themselves. Thanks for this amazing video and all your others. I am a dedicated listener.
The risk factors may be personal as well - what may be a risk factor for you, may not be a risk factor for someone else- or may be counterbalanced by something else. It’s a more complex issue than we realise.
Great video. Not only on the topic, but on the way scientific research works overall. Finally a channel that confuses you less. Scientific uncertainty is far way better than fake or doubtful confidence.
You’re so right! Some people look for certainty presented in a very confident way and lap up any propaganda that matches their preferences. The rest of us (the silent majority) are left in the middle trying to find the middle ground amidst conflicting narratives.
Ha I worked on some of those AARP meat studies, although I didn't run the models for the particular paper you mentioned. I am named in the references though :). It's great to see familiar studies placed in their larger scientific context - another great video.
@@NutritionMadeSimple I do remember the paper "Meat intake and mortality: a prospective study of over half a million people", which I ran the models for, making news in the mainstream media, and it was a bit illustrative as to how the media tends to "both sides" everything, as I remember some of the articles on the paper including quotes from special interest meat groups downplaying the study. And of course some of the things they said weren't necessarily wrong - as you pointed out in this video, there is a lot of uncertainty in the scientific process, the problem is just when people confuse uncertainty with total worthlessness haha. And I think the mainstream media, which is not very scientifically literate as a general rule, sometimes unwittingly reinforces this. You did a fantastic job explaining the difference though.
Please do a video about the nightshade famiy. This is a really confusing one for me, because event doctors tells to avoid the nightshades when you have an autoimmune disease, despite not much actual research on the topic is present
Just watched video on another channel that is carnivore oriented and they were discussing the possible cardiovascular harm caused by oxylates found in plants. Some people wrote how badly spinach affects them and how the carnivore diet cured virtually all their ills. Some said veganism ruined their health. This does get confusing.
@@casper862 Thanks Casper. The main reason this is important is that spinach is often referred to as a 'super food' for various reasons. So one would like to eat it as long as it is not doing damage to the vascular cells.
@@hervedelnorte7928 I never probably can go vegan because of these issues, so now i mainly cosume rice, oats, skinned white potatoes, squash, chicken, turkey, eggs, beef liver, avocado, olive oil other lower oxalate veggies and fruits + berries.
As long as you eat a well balanced omnivore diet without eating too much processed food and exercise a lot you're fine. No need to overcomplicate it too much
So the best way to know if red meat is good for me is by figuring out where I currently stand, running a healthy lifestyle (exercising regularly, eating a good amount of fruits and vegetables, etc.) THEN adjusting my red meat intake based on that and FINALLY testing everything like ApoB levels, cholesterol levels and blood work in general. If the test goes well, I'm doing a good job. Is this the best way to figure out individually if red meat is doing more harm than good?
The problem with the RCTs on red meat is that they focused almost exclusively on lipids. Michael Lustgarten, PhD, who measures every gram that he eats and checks for correlations with his blood tests, saw a detrimental impact of unprocessed beef on his ALT (a liver enzyme), RDW% (the variance red in blood cells size ) and Creatinine (kidneys)
And UA-cam makes it more difficult - credible champions of carnivore, and others plant based. As a 79 YO I eat what I like except sugar and processed products. Lots of meat, and lots of veges. It is interesting that most of the proponents of any approach are in their early years.
I always enjoy your videos. Thanks for this one! A lot of information to digest, but very helpful for someone like me who has heart disease. I stopped eating red meat several years ago. Might be fine for some people, but with my family history of heart disease, I decided to cut it out of my diet.
I love how you describe this sciencey stuff in terms that we can all understand. Thanks a lot and I really appreciate it, it's helped with a lot of questions I had in regards to nutrition.
😭😭😭 Great video, very well done. REALLY not what I want to hear though, but I'm listening... I would really love to hear a breakdown just like this for fish, also fruits. As many studies as you can find! There's sooo much uncertainty about whether these are more harmful than healthful.
And thank you for bringing up context - so very important and something I don't hear discussed much. It's much different to be in a modern Western nation than being in a third-world nation where food is hard to come by. People love to fudge statistics to suit their thesis! (Or desires.) 🙏🏼
Great content. By highlighting all the variables that can influence study outcomes you help us appreciate just how many building blocks and iterations are required to reach accurate conclusions with any level of confidence.
What's the opinion regarding Hong Kong population with highest meat consumption in the world with less health issues in the world regarding what's attributed to meat? Japan for instance and Korea? How about those countries compared to Western world? There's a whole generation of "rat" labs and they're among the healthiest in the world?
I find myself curious to know if the monetary/funding sources of studies (mentioned in this video) that show a disadvantage to eating red meat are from the food industry and LDS church. That has been very revealing in terms of bias in other studies that show that red meat is harmful.
@Dookie Bookie Except that red meat, fish has been a part of our ancestral diet without causing increased disease before industrialized food, plant based food and sedentarism came around.
I always have a good variety of veggies, legumes, meats, cereals, fats and carbs so in case a food can cause certain health issue but my body has several nutrients to counter that and I am increasing my physical activity so I usually have a 45 minutes cardio session and 1 hour lifting session at the gym. I also add supplements such as creatine, a good relax tea and make sleep a priority too.
I love your content and the balanced way you present it, particularly around this subject. Could you address the so-called antinutrients contained in certain plant foods in a future video?
I just want to explain, in classical logic it refers to the type of argumentation, induction, as giving us a probability as opposed to certainty and this type of argumentation, induction, is what science uses. So if you accept classical logic of course we don’t have 100 certainty of anything in inductive inferences because that’s not a defining characteristic of induction. In opposition deduction is said to provide use with certainty. It is ‘conclusive’ supposedly. I recommend you read critical reasoning for beginners by marianne talbot director of studies at Oxford university just to learn this stuff, or if you don’t want to pay you can view her lectures on logic on UA-cam for a generally similar if not a bit more flawed presentation of the concepts.
Just wanted to mention that for folks like me who tend to listen to your videos while walking/hiking, the siren sound clip is not pleasant at all. Kept making me jump lol. But great video content!
Would love to see you mention and differentiate for the group between Relative Risk and Actual Risk as these are used many times to make findings appear more significant than they really are.
I appreciate your channel because it helps me break down my personal walls of bias and dogma. Your videos aren't easy to watch because I don't agree with all of what you say, but Ii also try to have a critical mind when it comes to nutrition. I like what Dr. Robert Lustig says in his book, Metabolical "It's not what's in the food, it's what's been done to the food" I believe red meat has a place in a healthy diet, but with all things, you need a balanced diet. It's not just meat, it's also clean water, vegetables, meditation and exercise, and good sleep.
the big variable i think needs more examination:what is the impact of omega 3/omega 6 ratio over time? that has changed markedly in biospies of american's body fat since 1960.
good question. sometimes science is counter intuitive. fasting glucose is determined by liver insulin resistance, not by amount of glucose eaten per se. see the interview with diabetologist Dr. Roy Taylor (a 2 part video) for more details
Phenomenal video Dr Carvalho. Beautifully broken down and explained in a really unbiased way. Beautifully pragmatic description of the scientific process too
I think this one video is your very best, and should be required viewing for everyone. It's important to remember that tobacco has never undergone a proper long-term randomly controlled trial, and therefore we know only by observation that smoking causes cancer and emphysema. My biggest complaint around cardiovascular disease is that doctors focus mainly on the numbers: getting LDL-c lower for example, without paying much attention to death from all causes, the only thing patients really care about. For this reason, statins are heralded as miracle drugs while CVD incidence continues to climb.
We should also, not look just from the perspective of longevity? Im very curious, if on average people who eat more red meat have more muscle, stronger bones etc. Yes, it would be correlational and probably a modest effect, but thats the case too with the longevity aspect
Gil, around the 8 minute mark you say you're not a fan of large trials looking at entire dietary pattern because they're inconclusive when it comes to red meat because they change 1000 times; so you cant tell what is or isn't caused by red meat. But earlier in the video you discuss studies that are able to control for other factors like smoking, being less active, to be able to arrive at red meats effect on people. Well, can't you control factors in studies looking at dietary patterns too? If you can control for a variety of lifestyle factors, why can't you control for a variety of foods being eaten?
this is a great and original question. in practice you can get at this in RCTs using some statistical devices like meta-regressions for example. it's an analysis where you ask which factor(s) were responsible for the change. some RCTs report those, but most don't
Great video as always. This is exactly what people need to need to know about the research. Would love to send this to all those "Health" journalists out there who write headlines like "Red meat is back on the menu" because one study funded by the beef industry "proves" that it's harmless.
I really enjoyed this video! Thought it was very unbiased and really respect the research brought into it. I noticed on your channel you didn’t have anything on Creatine. What are your thoughts on the safety of it and what the science indicates about it? Could you possibly make a video about it in the near future?
As a psychology major I really appreciate your explanation on studies and their certainties. And the frequent use of studies is very helpful! Overall love the video!
One huge thing you didn’t mention is seed oils, which are very often used to cook meat. Seed oils also have been shown to have a big correlation with heart problems.
Fantastic. I'm going to show this to my 14 yr old who I'm trying to get interested in science. Thank you for taking the time to put together this video.
bacon/sausage/pork is considered "red meat"? I have never heard that. It was always referred to as white meat. The pork commercials on TV years ago called it "the other white meat."
yeah from mammals it´s red meat, from birds it's white. pork and sausage (assuming it's from pork) would be processed red meat. unprocessed pork=unprocessed red meat
i hear ALOT of people who espouse the carnivore diet talk about how it's impossible to control for the healthy user bias, but the studies you talked about that did, showed an increase in risk factors. That's alarming.
Gil, it's high time someone with your expertise fact checked Ken Berry. You've done Ekberg and Berg - you should complete the trio! There's a video from about 3 months ago on red meat and inflammation. (Good scope for a joke there, and he doesn't disappoint.) Unlike most of his adoring commentators, I read the study referenced, and then pointed out in a comment how he was cherry picking the data, and how the study fell far short of supporting his recommended cure-all keto-diet - high in saturated fat, nitrites and salt. Of course he ignored the comment.
I just saw another video by another scientist saying that none of these studies even matter as it’s practically impossible to isolate red meat with other variables. It’s a long video and I suggest everyone to watch it. Now, I’m no carnivore or vegan or anything tbh. I eat clean, meat, veges (quite a lot tbh) so I don’t bias any sides. However I do have a question. How does the researchers isolate (or at least tried to) isolate red meat? How do they not include the buns with the meat on a hamburger, (for example), especially on n=millions like these studies? isn’t it practically impossible mathematically? I really hope you could make a video on how these studies are conducted especially the epidemiological ones. thanks doc ❤️
depends how detailed the questionnaire is. in one of the studies shown on screen for example they did the mutual adjustment for red meat and ultraprocessed foods. plus you have the trials with much tighter isolation skepticism is good as long as it's consistently applied. all foods must clear the same bar. if I claim the evidence for food X isn't good enough I must explain what evidence I´ve seen for ultraprocessed junk that isn't available for food X
I absolutely love this video. Subject matter (red meat) aside, it has boosted my confidence in living in such uncertainty and just makes the challenges of exploring nutrition and learning more that much more exciting. Thanks again Gil!
Why does everything seem to make one of the simplest things(eating) so difficult? You previously replied to one of my comments on another video about my blood pressure and the carnivore diet. I've been strict carnivore for 3 months now. All blood work is perfect with the exception and expectation of LDL. I've consumed almost 0 carbs every day, with the odd day having some berries etc. My blood pressure is stable 122 75 at rest. I'm now going to go back to normal eating for no other reason than my general concern with long term 3x a day of meat only(red, white, fish or organs). What do you believe to be the overall most accepted diet for general health and well being? I don't experience bloating anymore. I pass stool once a day, perfectly and on time every time. Apart from my LDL number playing on my mind, I've never felt better, ever. I did have some onions with my steak about two weeks ago and suffered some extreme cramping and gas. I just don't know what to do. I feel so good now but it's not sustainable and there is no long term study for what I do. The vast majority of my meals are not processed. Occasionally I have bacon or home made sausages. I'm from Australia. I'll pay you for some time via email. Happy to chat and send you blood work.
hi, I don't do paid consults but maybe I can refer you to qualified RDs if it helps (I dont make a commission). sounds like you had some GI issues beforehand? ideally those would be diagnosed, at least in some cases they can be addressed so food tolerance is restored. may be best not to do any drastic shifts but rather work from where you are and try some targeted changes heading toward a pattern that is sustainable and maximizes long term health
@@NutritionMadeSimple who would you recommend down here? I've seen a GI specialist and I honestly had no confidence from him. His first suggestion was to take steroids to reduce inflammation, just because I said I felt some discomfort when eating large amounts of weetbix cereal. Thanks so much for the replies. I genuinely wish more doctors were like you. You're not run of the mill, copy paste.
I found your channel a couple weeks ago and I have been watching so many of your videos and learning so much. Thank you for the unbiased information which is so hard to find. I was wondering if you could do a video about chicken? Few people talk about this meat and I am a little confused on if that has been shown to be harmful in studies or if it’s fine. Thank you so much.
A bit late Gil, but brilliant presentation, very well done mate. Would love to see an investigation into the many carnivores on youtube. As they eat pretty much only meat I would think any problems caused by meat would show up much, much sooner in them than the average meat eater. It would still not be definitive maybe but, with the lack of other confounding inputs it would absolutely fascinating. cheers.
Without discussing the main topic (red meat), this is just one of the best videos about how science works, about scientific knowledge, and evidence-based science. Amazing examples, and the step by step move is fantastic. I had to stand up and applaud when the video ended. Thank so much for this, Gil. Abraços!!
obrigado!
I agree 👍
We shouldn't need scientists to tell us what to eat. Obesity and Diabetes epidemics of recent times were driven by the intervention of scientists on our diet. And not by meat consumption which if anything has dropped significantly. Studies show that people generally follow recommended eating guidelines.
@@TheCompleteGuitarist Meat consumption hasn't dropped significantly. It's actually slightly increased (depending on when you start the comparison from). From the 60s it's slightly increased in the West and worldwide has massively increased. And I don't know how you're working out that people generally follow recomended eating guidelines? I'm seeing things like "12.3 percent of Americans met their recommended intake of fruit, and 10 percent met their recommended intake of vegetables." which is laughably low. This is similar in the UK and other developed countries. In no way are people generally following recommended eating guidelines unless you're being extremely generous with the term 'generally'. The guidelines themselves are usually sandbagged too so people are actually able to achieve it - they say at least 5 fruit and veg per day but that should probably be 10, but about 0% of the population would achieve that.
Science is the best way of reducing doubt from decisions around diet. There is simply no other way to reduce that doubt without performing studies and analyses. Did you even watch the video?
@@TheCompleteGuitarist Obesity and diabetes were not driven by the 'intervention of scientists on our diet'. They were driven by big business, and big agricultural business especially, which peddled sugar as a miracle food to make vast sums of money. Blaming scientists for this is akin to confusing a tree for an entire forest. One thing is bigger than the other.
After having watched content of hundreds of different channels for years, I can confidently say this is the best health/nutrition channel on UA-cam. I can recommend this to anyone I know without any issues. You're doing a service to the whole humanity brother !
I think not only for health/nutrition, but also for the scientific process in general
Problem is most people don’t have the intelligence or attention span to comprehend what he says.
I agree his teaching us how to think critically and detect baloney.
That's because he's one of the very few PhD MD most are chiropractors or nutritionists.
We need actual scientists and Doctors to help us understand better.
An absolutely brilliant video. Should be compulsory viewing. As a researcher myself ( in a different area) his discussion is SO good.
We get so much anecdotal " evidence" ( my grandfather smoked all his life and lived to be 187, etc) that it's great to have someone to explain the scientific method and nutritional research so thoroughly. Many congratulations.
It bothers me that the increased or decreased risks are seldom given in a manner that is clearly understandable. I read a population study with a p value of 0.001 for correlation between the test material and the clinical outcome. Unfortunately, when you ran the numbers, the difference was 8 fewer cases in 100,000 population. As a physician, I cannot in good conscience recommend any significant lifestyle change based on such a clinically insignificant likelihood of a change in outcome for my patient. We need to state all results in terms of number needed to treat to change the outcome in one individual. In this case, you would need to treat about 12,000 people to change the outcome in one person. Unfortunately, even many physicians do not understand the difference between statistical and clinical significance.
I certainly agree with you. Just because you find a statistically significant difference, doesn't mean you have a high practical significance; it's not just medicine this occurs in. This is also true when you provide a harm ratio as it even a seemingly large HR can mean little if you are comparing it against a small number. I've seen papers where the HR indicated a large increase of over 20%, but as the outcome measured was ~3%, the actual difference wasn't that big.
That's always an issue when trying to reconcile research with real life.
Unfortunately, researchers are incentivised to "sell" their results as meaningful.
Always a pet peeve of mine in stats. Not finding a difference at 95%CI,does not mean they proved no difference, only that they could not find a difference. Would you not be OK with making a change at 70% odds ?
@@Nicholas-m8f the proper role of a physician is to provide a risk benefit analysis, suggest appropriate treatments and manage the treatment regimen. Whether or not I would personally be willing to make a change at 70% odds, by which I assume you mean that 7 of 10 people would see a benefit if the change were made, is not really relevant. What is a patient willing to give up in return for a theoretical but uncertain benefit? How important is that benefit to that patient? Some people want to do absolutely everything possible to extend their life span. Personally, no amount of life span gain would be worth giving up the first two cups of morning coffee. The key to making research relevant is to express the results in a manner that the average person without special training can understand. In my experience, if I offer a drug that will only benefit 1 in 40 people taking the drug and that drug is expensive and must be taken for life, most of my patients would reject the use of that drug. Of all potential treatments, life style changes are the hardest treatments to convince patients to undertake. Most patients would make the attempt if they were told that 7 in 10 people would benefit from a specific life style change. Their success in making that change would vary widely. To get them to change, I need a benefit that is important to them. That the change with treatment X is statistically significantly does not matter. Of course, it would matter if it isn’t significantly better or it is actually worse, since I would have no reason to suggest the treatment. Will it make a clinical difference of significance to the patient in most cases? Like it or not, that is the proper standard. In my opinion, antibiotics for pneumonia meet this standard and statins for primary prevention of heart disease do not meet this standard. But it is not currently considered ethical for physicians to make decisions for a conscious patient with the mental capacity to make their own decisions. My job is to discuss benefits and risks and let the patient decide on their own treatment. With this in mind, I advise any scientist publishing a study about any treatment to state the conclusions in the manner a physician will need to state the conclusion in order to get a patient to accept the treatment.
@@jamestimmons6838I would love you to be my doctor. ❤
I have watched many, many doctors and nutritionists “gurus” on UA-cam through the years. But I have to say, you have to be, hands-down, the very best channel on UA-cam. You are so methodical and balanced and I never feel like you come in with any kind of an agenda. Your only agenda seems to be to follow the science wherever it leads, but then also staying on top of new data and all of the appropriate factors to consider. I discovered your channel a few years ago, and I am so glad that I did! Thank you for the great work you do!!
Love it, very well done. You inspire me to do some objective breakdowns of eyecare studies. Such as blue light for example. Keep up the fantastic work.
That sounds very interesting.
Would love to see some of your videos on Blue light. I wear blue light glasses but don't know how effective they actually are
@@waynegolding14 😩/😮/😵🦠🥩 Fat is a heart attack !!!! You can see it !!!!! Clogging your arteries !!!!!! Actual pictures !!!!! Dr. Greger. Clog your arteries and your brain and your heart and down there 👇😩, Alzheimer’s is meat clogging up !!!!! Scientific fact. You’ve got flat teeth 🦷. Little flat teeth 😬. Moving left and right |-_| . Long long guts. We are herbivores. Peer review science 🧬.
It really bugs me that the large studies essentially never control for food preparation - in what kind of oil meat is prepared at what temperature and for how long it is heated. We have so much knowledge that preparation greatly affects health effects of almost any food, and meat is no exception.
Pre, f***ing, cisely. Don't be too smart here though, you might trigger some people 😉
True, we should know, but if something continues to look worse as more and more common factors are controlled for, like red meat does, I doubt controlling for additional factors like food preparation will make a difference. At some point, the body of evidence speaks for itself.
@@leizee1224 The controlling factor is through survey studies not through actual controls.
Irrelevant. Red meat is a carcinogen and raises diabetes risk by 62%.
Doc i freaking loved this video. I almost didn't care about the topic or the outcome, its the whole thought process that became the highlight of your presentation. Thanks so much for putting stuff like this out there for us
How many studies AREN'T published because they have uninteresting results? How much does this matter to us?
A lot of the studies are either funded by the meat industry or industries that want their products to sell better let's say grain industry, so one says red meat is good the other says it's bad. Personal bias also comes into effect depending what the researchers want to publish.
But if you look over let's say 100 studies you'll see the pattern that red meat eaten too much and too often and too fat and fried is unhealthy, and eaten in moderation and rarely it has close to no bad effects.
Terrific video. It's amazing how I, as a self-proclaimed science faithful and also a red meat lover, have let my biases cloud my judgment of the science around red meat, each time finding a caveat to a study explaining the negative effects of red meat. In this video you addressed all those caveats - like controlling for healthy user bias, processed vs unprocessed were my main ones. I will probably continue eating red meat (I don't consume it on most weeks, but can eat up to 1000g/week on some weeks) but in full knowledge of the risk it poses. Thanks for quenching my scientific curiousity around the subject. This video must have taken huge effort. Big thumbs up!!
just wanted to say this is also my evolution, but ultimately it doesn't change the fact that bacon is delicious. so are pastries. neither are 'healthy' past a certain point.
even though I'm healthy now (although not a spring chicken anymore, to the point that I now acknowledge I am no longer invulnerable and going to live forever- ie where good health is taken for granted), I have absolutely adjusted my eating habits (including with information from this and many other sources), and while I do not want to be disordered about what I choose to eat, I now have the privilege of eating with my "eyes wide open" about what the longer-term consequences might be. 'worth the calories' or 'worth the CVD risks' are thoughts that cross my mind before I satisfy a craving.
between an active exercise regime and this mindset, I've markedly improved all my bloodwork and overall health. Hoping to keep it that way for a long time with good habits.
gil's content is exceptional in the space, despite it being unsexy and non-viral.
@@grumpyoldman6503did you try vegan meat substitutes... they're better than the real thing...i only eat em every once in a while...
But then I'm vegan for animals.. so that might be different in your case..
But thanks to this channel (the only channel I can trust as a premed and a science enthusiast), I've started to take care of myself..
I now recreate cakes and pastries from whole foods and they're delicious...
Amazing content as always Gil! I’m finishing my nutrition science course here at University of Porto and you’re such an inspiration for me!
As a fellow scientist, I very much appreciate you taking the time on your platform to explain how science works. Good job.
AMAZING work. You just summed up 2 years of grad school and 4 years of PhD work. SPOT ON. Bravo!
This is not just a red meat video but packed with whole philosophy approach to on how to approach different "researches". Thank you Dr. Gil!
Amazing channel. Reactions I've had throughout a superficial investigation of the matter over a long time compiled concisely and eloquently. You are not just providing quality content but also inspiring respect for the science. Thanks :)
And by the time I finish analyzing all these studies, I will have died due to malnutrition and hunger.
Always, and more and more, one of the best -if not -*-the-*- best- scientific nutrition channel in the UA-cam game; and I've been around for years now. The level of your interventions, from an intellectual, epistemological and heuristical standpoint is just first tier. Keep up the good work sir. It's good to have you back.
The reason you don't see any adverse affect of red meat consumption below 500g per week, is because the benefits from the high nutrient content, balances the adverse effects. When the body has enough of those nutrients, the bad effects begin to show, but they are most likely there from the first bite. So for, for instance a vegan, a little red meat could actually be a good thing, health wise.
This is one of the best videos of this type I have ever listened to. It lays out the scientific method and the step-by-step structure is excellent. In fact, you should use it for every topic you address. So many other nutrition videos jump into describing a piece of the elephant, without context, without a structured approach and leave me more confused than I was before.
Brilliant video! You do a fantastic job at showing both us regular folk and nutrition bookworm warriors how the world of nutritional science really works. Every video is like a master class in nutrition and the mechanisms behind interpreting data so that we can come to our own understanding of the subject with the least biased approach possible. Good job 👍.
It's rare that you find such an inflammatory topic so well done (couldn't resist the puns}. As usual your logical and insightful commentary has drawn a line under the controversy. Cheers Alan
so meat is inflammatory ?
@@franciscomacedo5670Apparently, we really don't know. However, If its very lean and you eat in moderate to scant amounts it is okay. If you have nutritional deficiencies, red meat can be very beneficial.
I like how this channel is called nutrition made simple yet the videos are always 15 min +, with a looot more information than other so called nutrition channels. Yet this is what it takes to actually explain nutrition.
This isn't really the practical advice most people are looking for though. Pretty sure most people are looking for tips to deal with cravings for pizza and cake.
@@frankiegoestothecircus and that may be a short term nutrition tip, but to be actually informed about nutrition thats not enough
@@lukasa6374 do you need to be a mechanic to know which fuel to put in your car?
@@frankiegoestothecircus nope but ideally you need to know why your car needs a certain fuel and how to find out which you need and how much. Because you might not always be in the same situation with car x and gas station y.
@@lukasa6374 that's not exactly technical mechanical knowledge. It's like finding a video about how a dizzy works and how the design changed over time across different manufacturers, then saying that this is the sort of video that is going to make people better drivers.
Dr. Gil,
This segment is excellent. Such high quality content, your regular non science viewers are going to become budding scientists over time.
Thanks for the unbelievably free content.
Hey been binge watching your videos for a week now, thanks for the content. I wanted to know what your opinion was on hemp seeds? Or they better or worse then chia seeds, and is consuming hemp protein bad because of methionine?
This is how you know when someone is honest with their assessment. Using and respecting the scientific method to produce levels of certainties
Your factual approach is priceless!!!! Thank you; I love it.
Veeeery nice view and summary on how science operates. Neutral standpoint, humor, critical thinking. Really loved this video👍
Also another factor which should be talked about more: cooking method. Meat is often grilled/charred... which we know produces carcinogenic compounds... (similar for carbs and starch, but it is fat less common to grill those)
Fantastic video, you explained every point very clearly, thanks. I particularly like the part where you say that not knowing everything on a given subject does not mean that we know nothing about it.
As simple as it is, it is surprisingly rare to find people who really understand that.
Stellar content, as always. Your treatment of uncertainty gave me chills. Good chills.
But there’s one crucial dimension of analysis missing in this discussion on meat: signal strength. Your closing analogy, when compared critically, makes this clear. We know that smoking causes lung cancer not simply because all the studies show it, but because they all show an unmistakably powerful signal. Hazard ratios consistently reach double digits, like in the 15-30 range, if I recall. This is an order of magnitude greater than any effect seen from meat, where confidence intervals often cross unity and HR’s top out around 1.5 (again, my recollection may be imprecise - please correct me).
The comparison of meat to cigarettes is therefore flawed. Is smoking bad for you? Yes. How bad? Very. Bad enough to yield an undeniable correlation in every study, no matter how the data is sliced.
Is meat bad for you? Probably, kind of, depending on a bunch of things. How bad? Barely. Barely harmful enough to be barely discerned through decades of painstaking research and careful statistical analysis - and still debatable enough to be questioned by some of the smartest minds in medicine and nutritional science.
Consistent with your thoughtful, anti-dogmatic approach - which thrills me every time I listen - you suggested several real-life situations in which animal consumption might offer more good than harm. If the actual risk from meat were appropriately quantified and contextualized, we might find that balance tipped toward it even more often. Indeed, many intelligent, informed, health-conscious people have done that. They weigh the real benefits they derive from meat against the small potential for harm and decide, rationally, in favor of it.
The same cannot be said of cigarettes.
And if one factors in the ease with which toxic eating disorders seem to be overcome with keto/carnivore diets, and the subsequent life transformations, it is reasonable to conclude that for a subset of the population, not eating meat in "large" quantities can carry incredible risks.
very insightful and careful comment. magnitude of effect will depend entirely on contrast and time of exposure and comparator (replacement). an average of 50g/d shows a small signal in meta-analyses. 100+ shows a stronger signal. on the other end of the spectrum, a very large amount of fatty meat consumed over the long-run (e.g. lifetime) sufficient to result in a substantial elevation in LDL-c could increase risk by several fold (approx 2X per 38mg/dL increase in LDL-c for lifetime exposure)
this is of course contingent on quality of replacement
a similar argument could be made for cigarettes by reducing the dose of exposure and considering the positive associations (e.g. lower risk of Parkinson's)
@@NutritionMadeSimple hi Gil! Do you have a video that has TMAO content in it. Thanks
What is the reference group in the studies of meat? For cigarettes it’s never smokers, not current non-smokers, which includes never smokers and former smokers. I don’t see such contrasts in diet studies. So the comparisons of relative risks is flawed.
@@garygiovino3776 Your point is a reiteration of Gil's "duration of exposure" point, and it's a good one. A trial in which one group eats red meat for decades but then abstains for 3 years would show minimal improvement, much like abstaining from smoking for 3 years would show small benefits compared to never smoking. To truly compare, we'd have to look at populations who "never" consumed red meat -- like Indians and Adventists, as I mentioned above. Yet studies on those 2 populations don't show risk reductions anywhere near those seen among never-smokers. Granted, the typical never-smoker has probably smoked less than 10 cigarettes in their life, a truly negligible amount, while the lifelong abstinence from red meat among Indians and Adventists may not be as absolute. Perhaps their occasional dabbling in carnivory is enough to alter their hazard ratios by an order of magnitude or two. If so, that would truly be worth knowing.
This is why I was highly annoyed when a government scientist declared, "I am the science."
This was an exceptional summary of how science works. My professors in graduate school taught me the principal of "weight of evidence" in my first year. They also taught me to double-check the results to make sure statistical significance was also biological significance. In addition to that, I learned to look at the criteria used for subject selection (demographic limitations), what uncontrolled variables may exist, and what assumptions the authors made. To this day, I take the time to look at all these things and more when I read a study.
Ive worked in the elder care. When You get people in that are in a bad general shape, You give them red meat. Even raw minced meat and liver. Old elder people often get deficient. Raw minced meat and liver adjust this really quickly.
Now that's scary
Why?
I worked on long-term care. Raw meat is an absolute no-no. It's never, ever done, not here in Canada. Far too dangerous, especially for frail, elderly people. When you say "they often get deficient" you need to be specific. Deficient in what? If it's B12, we give them B12. It's not rocket science.
Liver is one of the most nutrition dense food You can eat. Other organ meat and red meat is also good. When old people get into the elder care they are usually deficient in most vitamins and minerals. In most cases its due to them not taking care of themselves and eating properly.@@rebekahhobbs9605
Why raw meat?? Body obsorbs the protein easier if it's cooked? And the risk of food poisoning is almost zero.
Seems like most people are looking for diet advice but 12 years ago I started getting full blood work every 6 months and reviewing it with a local doctor to get guidance as to what is most optimal. Since then I've done a bunch of different diets (for fun) and currently do eat a fair amount of steak but am careful to make sure lipids, iron, waist/weight, insulin, glucose, fitness, etc continue to stay in optimal ranges and of course don't smoke or drink. My thinking is that if you keep fit *and* watch your markers closely and adjust as needed, you'll be fine. I would love to see a video that discusses this way of marker-watching way of monitoring one's health. Seems like all these people in studies who are higher risk are distinguishable not just by what they eat but by their resulting blood markers, and if they watched their markers more closely they would have way more flexibility as to how they eat cuz they can actually see the results.
Would the blood work indicate cancer risks? CVD is just one concern about red meat, cancer is another for various reasons.
There is a meta analysis that rates previous studies based on their quality and bias and only uses the studies that received the highest ratings.
"Association between intake of red and processed meat and the risk of heart failure: a meta-analysis"
Based on that meta analysis there's was an association with processed red meat and none was found with unprocessed read meat.
In essence we have one study that apparently adjusts for smoking, BMI and exercise whilst the vast majority do not.
You shouldn't be using the other low quality studies to increase your confidence meter especially when you know that these factors are of high importance.
you're probably referring to the Cui study? it looked specifically at heart failure which can happen for a number of reasons not necessarily related to atherosclerosis. most of the analyses shown here look at CVD in general or IHD in particular since that is what red meat/saturated fat are thought to affect
PS. all epi studies shown adjust for the obvious confounders like smoking, BMI or alcohol. nowadays I don't think a study can be published without those adjustments (not in any reputable journal anyway), it's standard
@@NutritionMadeSimple Only one of the studies that you mentioned was it seems.
@@Crazycorn2 check the adjustment model, it was identical for the others, we even had more than 1 in that section of the vid then edited out to avoid unnecessary repetition
Has there been any studies on people who ONLY eat grass fed red meat with risk of CHD?
He literally says no about 3/4 into the video, and then goes on about possibility of any hypothesis vs making decisions informed by plausibility based on evidence we do have
I.e. "it's very possible that grass-fed, grass-finished, nose to tail, regeneratively planned carnivore dieting is completely exempt from all the issues that plague every other outcome on the topic.... But currently all we can say is 'we don't know, but all available evidence suggests for the majority of people in first world, western nations suggests otherwise'*
Do you have a video on the breakdown on CHD risk? I would like to see what the hierarchy of risk is? I think there is a lot of confusion among the risk factors themselves. Thanks for this amazing video and all your others. I am a dedicated listener.
The risk factors may be personal as well - what may be a risk factor for you, may not be a risk factor for someone else- or may be counterbalanced by something else. It’s a more complex issue than we realise.
Great video. Not only on the topic, but on the way scientific research works overall. Finally a channel that confuses you less. Scientific uncertainty is far way better than fake or doubtful confidence.
You’re so right! Some people look for certainty presented in a very confident way and lap up any propaganda that matches their preferences. The rest of us (the silent majority) are left in the middle trying to find the middle ground amidst conflicting narratives.
Ha I worked on some of those AARP meat studies, although I didn't run the models for the particular paper you mentioned. I am named in the references though :). It's great to see familiar studies placed in their larger scientific context - another great video.
interesting! any insider stories?
@@NutritionMadeSimple I do remember the paper "Meat intake and mortality: a prospective study of over half a million people", which I ran the models for, making news in the mainstream media, and it was a bit illustrative as to how the media tends to "both sides" everything, as I remember some of the articles on the paper including quotes from special interest meat groups downplaying the study. And of course some of the things they said weren't necessarily wrong - as you pointed out in this video, there is a lot of uncertainty in the scientific process, the problem is just when people confuse uncertainty with total worthlessness haha. And I think the mainstream media, which is not very scientifically literate as a general rule, sometimes unwittingly reinforces this. You did a fantastic job explaining the difference though.
@@adamrisch thanks for weighing in!
Please do a video about the nightshade famiy. This is a really confusing one for me, because event doctors tells to avoid the nightshades when you have an autoimmune disease, despite not much actual research on the topic is present
I love how your lane is essentially conducting a meta analysis on all the nutritional podcasts and theories out there!
Just watched video on another channel that is carnivore oriented and they were discussing the possible cardiovascular harm caused by oxylates found in plants. Some people wrote how badly spinach affects them and how the carnivore diet cured virtually all their ills. Some said veganism ruined their health. This does get confusing.
I can't tolerate oxalates. My kidneys start to hurt and i get bad heel pain.
@@casper862 Thanks Casper. The main reason this is important is that spinach is often referred to as a 'super food' for various reasons. So one would like to eat it as long as it is not doing damage to the vascular cells.
I don't eat spinach, i get these promblems mainly from sweet potatoes, i used to consume 500g a day
@@hervedelnorte7928 I never probably can go vegan because of these issues, so now i mainly cosume rice, oats, skinned white potatoes, squash, chicken, turkey, eggs, beef liver, avocado, olive oil other lower oxalate veggies and fruits + berries.
As long as you eat a well balanced omnivore diet without eating too much processed food and exercise a lot you're fine. No need to overcomplicate it too much
So the best way to know if red meat is good for me is by figuring out where I currently stand, running a healthy lifestyle (exercising regularly, eating a good amount of fruits and vegetables, etc.) THEN adjusting my red meat intake based on that and FINALLY testing everything like ApoB levels, cholesterol levels and blood work in general. If the test goes well, I'm doing a good job.
Is this the best way to figure out individually if red meat is doing more harm than good?
Sounds good yeah
I wish every YT channel and media outlet was that intellectually fair and thorough.
The problem with the RCTs on red meat is that they focused almost exclusively on lipids.
Michael Lustgarten, PhD, who measures every gram that he eats and checks for correlations with his blood tests, saw a detrimental impact of unprocessed beef on his ALT (a liver enzyme), RDW% (the variance red in blood cells size ) and Creatinine (kidneys)
And UA-cam makes it more difficult - credible champions of carnivore, and others plant based. As a 79 YO I eat what I like except sugar and processed products. Lots of meat, and lots of veges. It is interesting that most of the proponents of any approach are in their early years.
I always enjoy your videos. Thanks for this one! A lot of information to digest, but very helpful for someone like me who has heart disease. I stopped eating red meat several years ago. Might be fine for some people, but with my family history of heart disease, I decided to cut it out of my diet.
Best nutrition channel on UA-cam great stuff no passion just made as simple as it gets (which is still very complex) congrats Doc
I love how you describe this sciencey stuff in terms that we can all understand. Thanks a lot and I really appreciate it, it's helped with a lot of questions I had in regards to nutrition.
😭😭😭 Great video, very well done. REALLY not what I want to hear though, but I'm listening...
I would really love to hear a breakdown just like this for fish, also fruits. As many studies as you can find! There's sooo much uncertainty about whether these are more harmful than healthful.
we touched on fish in the Seaspiracy commentary (in the end)
Funny how he picks on red meat. 🤔
@@plummetplum Because it's the most controversial. People want him to address the controversy.
And thank you for bringing up context - so very important and something I don't hear discussed much. It's much different to be in a modern Western nation than being in a third-world nation where food is hard to come by. People love to fudge statistics to suit their thesis! (Or desires.) 🙏🏼
Great content. By highlighting all the variables that can influence study outcomes you help us appreciate just how many building blocks and iterations are required to reach accurate conclusions with any level of confidence.
That's why factorial experiments are really not easy to execute.
THIS.... is the kind of scientific rigor and objectivity is what we need. Thank you!
What's the opinion regarding Hong Kong population with highest meat consumption in the world with less health issues in the world regarding what's attributed to meat? Japan for instance and Korea? How about those countries compared to Western world? There's a whole generation of "rat" labs and they're among the healthiest in the world?
hi, we touched on the Hong Kong question in the second half of this video: ua-cam.com/video/Go5JUuhkTFw/v-deo.html
11:30 did not expect him to start teaching us a life lesson in the middle of an experiment analysis😅
Thank you for taking the time in making this very informative video 👍
What did you find with regards to Omega 6 to 3 ratio in Grass fed vs. grain fed red meat?
Im at my third re-run. So much informations on many current arguments taken by proponents of XYZ diets. Great Video!
I find myself curious to know if the monetary/funding sources of studies (mentioned in this video) that show a disadvantage to eating red meat are from the food industry and LDS church. That has been very revealing in terms of bias in other studies that show that red meat is harmful.
@Dookie Bookie Except that red meat, fish has been a part of our ancestral diet without causing increased disease before industrialized food, plant based food and sedentarism came around.
You’re doing great work, a sincere thanks for that!
I always have a good variety of veggies, legumes, meats, cereals, fats and carbs so in case a food can cause certain health issue but my body has several nutrients to counter that and I am increasing my physical activity so I usually have a 45 minutes cardio session and 1 hour lifting session at the gym. I also add supplements such as creatine, a good relax tea and make sleep a priority too.
I love your content and the balanced way you present it, particularly around this subject. Could you address the so-called antinutrients contained in certain plant foods in a future video?
I just want to explain, in classical logic it refers to the type of argumentation, induction, as giving us a probability as opposed to certainty and this type of argumentation, induction, is what science uses. So if you accept classical logic of course we don’t have 100 certainty of anything in inductive inferences because that’s not a defining characteristic of induction. In opposition deduction is said to provide use with certainty. It is ‘conclusive’ supposedly. I recommend you read critical reasoning for beginners by marianne talbot director of studies at Oxford university just to learn this stuff, or if you don’t want to pay you can view her lectures on logic on UA-cam for a generally similar if not a bit more flawed presentation of the concepts.
Just wanted to mention that for folks like me who tend to listen to your videos while walking/hiking, the siren sound clip is not pleasant at all. Kept making me jump lol. But great video content!
Would love to see you mention and differentiate for the group between Relative Risk and Actual Risk as these are used many times to make findings appear more significant than they really are.
covered in some detail here (2nd part): ua-cam.com/video/vRRD8nXEyGM/v-deo.html
Hi,
what do you think about nutritionally complete meal like Huel or YFood?
What should we eat 😮
I appreciate your channel because it helps me break down my personal walls of bias and dogma. Your videos aren't easy to watch because I don't agree with all of what you say, but Ii also try to have a critical mind when it comes to nutrition. I like what Dr. Robert Lustig says in his book, Metabolical "It's not what's in the food, it's what's been done to the food"
I believe red meat has a place in a healthy diet, but with all things, you need a balanced diet. It's not just meat, it's also clean water, vegetables, meditation and exercise, and good sleep.
the big variable i think needs more examination:what is the impact of omega 3/omega 6 ratio over time? that has changed markedly in biospies of american's body fat since 1960.
Hey doc! Can you please do a video about The Carnivore Diet? What is the evidence? Is there any?
How can legums reduce glucose vs zero-carb red meat?
good question. sometimes science is counter intuitive. fasting glucose is determined by liver insulin resistance, not by amount of glucose eaten per se. see the interview with diabetologist Dr. Roy Taylor (a 2 part video) for more details
Phenomenal video Dr Carvalho. Beautifully broken down and explained in a really unbiased way. Beautifully pragmatic description of the scientific process too
The most responsible video I’ve watched from @NutritionMadeSimple good job!
I think this one video is your very best, and should be required viewing for everyone. It's important to remember that tobacco has never undergone a proper long-term randomly controlled trial, and therefore we know only by observation that smoking causes cancer and emphysema. My biggest complaint around cardiovascular disease is that doctors focus mainly on the numbers: getting LDL-c lower for example, without paying much attention to death from all causes, the only thing patients really care about. For this reason, statins are heralded as miracle drugs while CVD incidence continues to climb.
We should also, not look just from the perspective of longevity? Im very curious, if on average people who eat more red meat have more muscle, stronger bones etc. Yes, it would be correlational and probably a modest effect, but thats the case too with the longevity aspect
Your content always inspires me to consider other possibilities. Thank you again.
Gil, around the 8 minute mark you say you're not a fan of large trials looking at entire dietary pattern because they're inconclusive when it comes to red meat because they change 1000 times; so you cant tell what is or isn't caused by red meat. But earlier in the video you discuss studies that are able to control for other factors like smoking, being less active, to be able to arrive at red meats effect on people. Well, can't you control factors in studies looking at dietary patterns too? If you can control for a variety of lifestyle factors, why can't you control for a variety of foods being eaten?
this is a great and original question. in practice you can get at this in RCTs using some statistical devices like meta-regressions for example. it's an analysis where you ask which factor(s) were responsible for the change. some RCTs report those, but most don't
Please do a video on cooking oils.
Great video as always. This is exactly what people need to need to know about the research. Would love to send this to all those "Health" journalists out there who write headlines like "Red meat is back on the menu" because one study funded by the beef industry "proves" that it's harmless.
It dosen't matter wether it's funded or not, study quality is what matters.
I really enjoyed this video! Thought it was very unbiased and really respect the research brought into it. I noticed on your channel you didn’t have anything on Creatine. What are your thoughts on the safety of it and what the science indicates about it? Could you possibly make a video about it in the near future?
Creatine is one of the most studied sports supplement, it's safe and helps in your physical conditioning.
As a psychology major I really appreciate your explanation on studies and their certainties. And the frequent use of studies is very helpful! Overall love the video!
One huge thing you didn’t mention is seed oils, which are very often used to cook meat. Seed oils also have been shown to have a big correlation with heart problems.
covered here: ua-cam.com/video/_VwDZVbfrKo/v-deo.html
You've missed the entire point of the video.
I'm limiting red meat to once a week (100g portion). I've been eating a lot more vegetarian and vegan food and it's just so good!
Fantastic. I'm going to show this to my 14 yr old who I'm trying to get interested in science. Thank you for taking the time to put together this video.
bacon/sausage/pork is considered "red meat"? I have never heard that. It was always referred to as white meat. The pork commercials on TV years ago called it "the other white meat."
yeah from mammals it´s red meat, from birds it's white. pork and sausage (assuming it's from pork) would be processed red meat. unprocessed pork=unprocessed red meat
@@NutritionMadeSimple Great to know-- thank you!
i hear ALOT of people who espouse the carnivore diet talk about how it's impossible to control for the healthy user bias, but the studies you talked about that did, showed an increase in risk factors. That's alarming.
My go to source for all things Nutrition !! Unbiased, Not overly dramatic. 5 Stars !!!!!
Happy Monday, everyone!
Great video, Gil! Really nicely done.
Gil, it's high time someone with your expertise fact checked Ken Berry. You've done Ekberg and Berg - you should complete the trio! There's a video from about 3 months ago on red meat and inflammation. (Good scope for a joke there, and he doesn't disappoint.) Unlike most of his adoring commentators, I read the study referenced, and then pointed out in a comment how he was cherry picking the data, and how the study fell far short of supporting his recommended cure-all keto-diet - high in saturated fat, nitrites and salt. Of course he ignored the comment.
What's the deal with the hokey sound effect?
I just saw another video by another scientist saying that none of these studies even matter as it’s practically impossible to isolate red meat with other variables. It’s a long video and I suggest everyone to watch it. Now, I’m no carnivore or vegan or anything tbh. I eat clean, meat, veges (quite a lot tbh) so I don’t bias any sides. However I do have a question. How does the researchers isolate (or at least tried to) isolate red meat? How do they not include the buns with the meat on a hamburger, (for example), especially on n=millions like these studies? isn’t it practically impossible mathematically? I really hope you could make a video on how these studies are conducted especially the epidemiological ones. thanks doc ❤️
depends how detailed the questionnaire is. in one of the studies shown on screen for example they did the mutual adjustment for red meat and ultraprocessed foods. plus you have the trials with much tighter isolation
skepticism is good as long as it's consistently applied. all foods must clear the same bar. if I claim the evidence for food X isn't good enough I must explain what evidence I´ve seen for ultraprocessed junk that isn't available for food X
@@NutritionMadeSimple didn’t even expect a reply doc so it is very much appreciated❤️✌🏽
@@NutritionMadeSimple the longest living people , Hong Kong, consume the most beef
@@slee2695 covered here (towards the end): ua-cam.com/video/Go5JUuhkTFw/v-deo.html
@@NutritionMadeSimple ok i'll check it out
I needed a video like this. Thank you so much! Great content, keep the good job doc :)
Why has obesity and other health factors increased dramatically in people on SAD in the past several decades? Why does the food pyramid look toxic?
Because of all the excess fat and fried foods, and high fructose corn syrup, that's why. Not because of grains and fruit and plain potatoes
The SAD diet is the food pyramid upside down
Are there any randomized trials on what jumpscares like 15:06 does to the heart?
Amazing video and articulation 🥩✨
I absolutely love this video. Subject matter (red meat) aside, it has boosted my confidence in living in such uncertainty and just makes the challenges of exploring nutrition and learning more that much more exciting. Thanks again Gil!
Why does everything seem to make one of the simplest things(eating) so difficult?
You previously replied to one of my comments on another video about my blood pressure and the carnivore diet. I've been strict carnivore for 3 months now. All blood work is perfect with the exception and expectation of LDL. I've consumed almost 0 carbs every day, with the odd day having some berries etc.
My blood pressure is stable 122 75 at rest. I'm now going to go back to normal eating for no other reason than my general concern with long term 3x a day of meat only(red, white, fish or organs).
What do you believe to be the overall most accepted diet for general health and well being? I don't experience bloating anymore. I pass stool once a day, perfectly and on time every time. Apart from my LDL number playing on my mind, I've never felt better, ever.
I did have some onions with my steak about two weeks ago and suffered some extreme cramping and gas.
I just don't know what to do. I feel so good now but it's not sustainable and there is no long term study for what I do. The vast majority of my meals are not processed. Occasionally I have bacon or home made sausages.
I'm from Australia. I'll pay you for some time via email. Happy to chat and send you blood work.
hi, I don't do paid consults but maybe I can refer you to qualified RDs if it helps (I dont make a commission). sounds like you had some GI issues beforehand? ideally those would be diagnosed, at least in some cases they can be addressed so food tolerance is restored. may be best not to do any drastic shifts but rather work from where you are and try some targeted changes heading toward a pattern that is sustainable and maximizes long term health
working with a good GI specialist/RD team in Australia would be great too
@@NutritionMadeSimple who would you recommend down here? I've seen a GI specialist and I honestly had no confidence from him. His first suggestion was to take steroids to reduce inflammation, just because I said I felt some discomfort when eating large amounts of weetbix cereal.
Thanks so much for the replies. I genuinely wish more doctors were like you. You're not run of the mill, copy paste.
@@leetpg can you msg me on the fb page? easier to kp track. I´ll ask some contacts if they know anyone in AUS
@@NutritionMadeSimple done and done! Sent you a PM over there.
I found your channel a couple weeks ago and I have been watching so many of your videos and learning so much. Thank you for the unbiased information which is so hard to find. I was wondering if you could do a video about chicken? Few people talk about this meat and I am a little confused on if that has been shown to be harmful in studies or if it’s fine. Thank you so much.
A bit late Gil, but brilliant presentation, very well done mate. Would love to see an investigation into the many carnivores on youtube. As they eat pretty much only meat I would think any problems caused by meat would show up much, much sooner in them than the average meat eater. It would still not be definitive maybe but, with the lack of other confounding inputs it would absolutely fascinating. cheers.