Weight Loss Central

Just ran across this article on newsday.com. They based the whole article on a study released on Dec. 2007. Quoting the study details such as this: “…men who ate more than 5 ounces of red meat each day and women who ate more than 3 ounces had a 51% greater risk of esophageal cancer, 61% of liver cancer and 24% of colorectal cancer than those who ate less than an ounce of red meat daily.”

Very ominous stuff, with results like that why had this study not made a bigger splash. The links in the do not take you to the study so I had to google it. It still took some creative searching to find the study.(Maybe I am just search engine challenged!) Now I know why it was not a bigger splash. This is a study on 50 to 71 year olds completeing a 124 item food frequency questionnaire. Thus to me would seem to be problem one. How accruate is the survey reponce? I am 42 an can’t tell you what I ate last week!!

The results of the survey are as you would expect. The highest meat eatters had the highest cancer rates. They supost to correct for other enviromental factors such as smoking. But How accurate is this? If smoking was the only varible they problibly could use stats to correct for it. There are a number of factors and each could have an added effect on the other. Here is what I am talking about:

The ones that at the most red meat also: Smoked more, ate more, ate fewer fruit and vegitbles, were more overweight, exercised less and were older. So what is the combined effect of all those things on a persons chances of getting cancer? Here is the data:

No study is perfect. But before we demonize a food that has sustained people forever maybe we should look at data that is based on a study population were there are not so many varibles.

Now I know why they waited a year to write the story, so the study and its flaws would be hard to find.