The Inflammatory Question: Red Meat Might Not Be So Bad for You After All
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Research from the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center has revealed that red meat consumption may not be directly linked to inflammation, contrary to some prior studies. The team used cross-sectional data from older adults and found that after adjusting for BMI, there was no connection between red meat and inflammation markers. Dr. Alexis Wood emphasizes that any dietary recommendations about red meat should be based on solid scientific evidence.
Inflammation is a risk factor for many chronic diseases, including “The role of diet, including red meat, on inflammation and disease risk has not been adequately studied, which can lead to public health recommendations that are not based on strong evidence,” said Dr. Alexis Wood, associate professor of pediatrics – nutrition at the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. “Our team sought to take a closer look by using metabolite data in the blood, which can provide a more direct link between diet and health.”
Methodology and Findings
Wood and her team analyzed cross-sectional data captured from approximately 4,000 older adults participating in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), and recently published their findings in The In addition to assessing participants’ self-reported food intake and several biomarkers, researchers also measured an array of dietary intake metabolites in blood. Plasma metabolites can help capture the effects of dietary intake as food is processed, digested, and absorbed.
Researchers found that when adjusted for body mass index (BMI), intake of unprocessed and processed red meat (beef, pork, or lamb) was not directly associated with any markers of inflammation, suggesting that body weight, not red meat, may be the driver of increased systemic inflammation. Of particular interest was the lack of a link between red meat intake and C-reactive protein (CRP), the major inflammatory risk marker of chronic disease.
“Our analysis adds to the growing body of evidence that indicates the importance of measuring
Reference: “Untargeted metabolomic analysis investigating links between unprocessed red meat intake and markers of inflammation” by Alexis C. Wood, Goncalo Graca, Meghana Gadgil, Mackenzie K. Senn, Matthew A. Allison, Ioanna Tzoulaki, Philip Greenland, Timothy Ebbels, Paul Elliott, Mark O. Goodarzi, Russell Tracy, Jerome I. Rotter and David Herrington, 1 September 2023, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
DOI: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2023.08.018
Other contributors to this work include Goncalo Graca, Meghana Gadgil, Mackenzie K. Senn, Matthew A. Allison, Ioanna Tzoulaki, Philip Greenland, Timothy Ebbels, Paul Elliott, Mark O. Goodarzi, Russell Tracy, Jerome I. Rotter and David Herrington.
The study was supported by the Beef Checkoff. Wood was supported, in part, by the USDA/ARS (Cooperative Agreement 58-3092-5-001). Mark Goodarzi was supported by the Eris M. Field Chair in Diabetes Research. Jerome Rotter was supported, in part, by the (function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(d.getElementById(id))return;js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.6";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}(document,'script','facebook-jssdk'));
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