150g of Beef in my beef and black bean sauce tonight .

[Richard260]

Hi , I’m trying to cut red meat intake in my low carb diet after reading too much about it causing heart disease and cancer . Added plenty of veg to my meal . I prefer white meat now and fish with veg . Seems to be working lost 2 stone so far but still obese . I’ll keep at it .

[Hb2003]

Very yummy 😋

[TheAwfulToad]

Red meat causes neither heart disease nor cancer. I would encourage anyone to look up the original papers on which the WHO assertion about cancer was based, most of which show no statistically-significant correlation between red meat consumption and disease, and there has certainly been no demonstrated cause-and-effect. In fact most authorities acknowledge that there is no demonstrated cause-and-effect, but the WHO put red meat into the "probably carcinogenic" category regardless.

Processed meat was labelled "carcinogenic" despite the fact that (a) the phrase "processed meat" describes a whole bunch of unrelated products (b) the correlation between processed-meat consumption and cancer was very modest at RR=1.2 or thereabouts and (c) there was no attempt to tease out confounding factors - eg., the observation that people who eat a lot of processed meats invariably eat poor diets. An observed RR below 2.0 is usually considered (as a rule of thumb) to have little clinical importance even if it meets the threshold for statistical significance. The absolute numbers illustrate why: the lifetime incidence of colorectal cancer in the general population is about 60 per thousand, whereas the lifetime incidence associated with high processed meat consumption is around 65-70, and the incidence associated with minimal processed meat consumption is about 55. The elephant in the room is those 55 people who get colorectal cancer despite "doing everything right", not the additional 5-10 people who are unrepentant bacon- and sausage-eaters.

If you took this sort of thing seriously you'd end up coming to all sorts of daft conclusions. For example, the RR for eating peanuts and colorectal cancer is 0.7-0.8. So if you like eating red meat, just eat lots of peanuts and your risk goes down again. Woohoo! But it's all just statistical flimflam. For comparison, the RR of smoking->cancer is 20-25. That's clinically significant.

This sort of thing really winds me up; when political motives are accepted as a valid reason to undermine science, people become confused about how science is supposed to work. Eventually they lose interest in science as a tool for accumulating knowledge.

Having said all that, if you're doing low-carb, plenty of veg is definitely what you want. More veg than meat (in fact I suggest you lose the rice noodles from your meal and just add more veg). Far too many people think that low-carb means "lots of meat", largely because that's the stereotype propagated by the media. This is completely incorrect - the average low-carb diet contains no more meat (of any kind) than the typical European or American diet.

[Richard260 in reply to TheAwfulToad]

Thanks for your reply , I’ve taken everything in what you’ve said . You seem to know the score !

Your are right about the noodles but I know I can continue losing weight with one serving of them.

A little meat in moderation but I do enjoy chicken and pork more . I like doing vegetarian dishes now to break things up from having meat .

[Hidden]

Your meal looks great and well done for losing 2 stone we will cheer you on. I think that lots of us are changing our diets away from red meat. So good for you. 👍

[Zest]

Hi Richard260

Welcome to the Healthy eating forum. I really like the look of your tasty meal - it looks scrumptious.

Many Congratulations on losing 2 stone so far, that is wonderful. Keep going, we'll cheer you on!

Zest