It is of huge importance that the evidence supporting the negative health impacts around red-meat consumption is made available: Say researchers
An international team of experts, including Professor Chris Elliott of the Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS) at Queen’s University Belfast, has called on the influential Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors Study (GBD) to publish the evidence behind its most recent report linking the consumption of unprocessed red meat to certain diseases.
In a letter published in The Lancet, six leading academics raise concerns about the dramatic differences in estimates of disease burden attributable to unprocessed red meat cited in GBD 2019 compared to the GBD 2017 study.
In writing the letter, the researchers are seeking to emphasise the importance of making research data publicly available so that guidelines and policies can be developed, based on a full understanding of the evidence.
The letter states: “The 2019 estimates of deaths attributable to unprocessed red-meat intake have increased 36-fold and estimates of DALYs attributable to unprocessed red meat intake have increased 18-fold.”
DALYs are an internationally recognised measure of the impact of diseases on populations. Based on these findings, the GBD 2019 reported that red-meat intake contributes to the causation of a range of diseases including heart disease, breast cancer and stroke, in addition to diabetes and colon cancer.
It appears that the marked increase in the 2019 estimates is dependent on two assumptions: that the optimal intake of red meat is zero; and that risk rises sharply even with moderate consumption of red meat.
Prof Elliott of IGFS said: “It is of huge importance that the evidence supporting the negative health impacts around red-meat consumption is made available. It is hard to understand how such conclusions could have been published without a strong evidence base that can be subjected to scientific scrutiny.”