The National Cancer Institute study examining the tenuous connection between meat consumption and mortality is officially last week’s news. This week, those fear-inducing headlines about meat eating and death are being replaced by a little down-to-earth common sense. And we’re happy to report that much of it came from our very own research team.
Since we weighed in on Friday about the relationship between meat and climate change on the New York Times blog, two more major newspapers have published our take on the latest meat panic. Here’s what we had to say to readers of the Los Angeles Times and USA Today:
The way some reporters are exaggerating the latest National Cancer Institute (NCI) study on meat and mortality, you’d think a sirloin apocalypse is just around the corner.
The National Cancer Institute researchers have been careful to caution that they could only tease out a modest link between eating meat and kicking the bucket. And they admit that people in their study who died early could have succumbed to other factors that had nothing to do with their diets.
Unfortunately, some health-conscious Americans will be scrambling to empty out their meat lockers instead of doing the simple things that are guaranteed to make them healthier. Eat everything in moderation. Don’t smoke. Get some exercise.
It’s too bad this time-tested advice can’t seem to compete with gloomy, flavor-of-the-month health scares.
