When it comes to protein, it’s generally unquestioned that eating fish is good for your heart health. Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, fish such as salmon or herring are believed to lower your risk of developing heart disease as well as lower the risk of dying from heart-related disease. Fish is considered so important to heart health that the American Heart Association recommend eating fish at least twice a week.
When you consider the AHA guidelines in terms of how much food we consume each week, two servings of fish a week is really only a very small amount –- two out of 21 or so meals -- of our weekly diet. That leaves us with approximately 19 meals a week to eat "real" protein -- red meat!
Before you fire up the grill and thaw out the steaks, you we may want to proceed with caution. According to the Harvard School of Public Health or HSPH, red meat may not be the protein of choice if you're really interested in heart health.
According to a new HSPH study, eating as little as one serving of red meat a day can increase your risk of death from cancer and heart disease. Led by lead author An Pan, researchers found that eating as little as one serving of unprocessed meat each day increased your overall risk of death by 13 percent.
For those consuming processed meats such as a hot dog, the risk of death jumped to a 20 percent increase. Researchers also found that consuming one serving of unprocessed or processed red meat daily increased the risk of death from heart disease by 18 and 21 percent respectively.
Study findings also reported an increase risk of cancer death of 10 and 16 percent. In addition, researchers found that replacing one serving of red meat daily with other sources of protein lowered the risk of death between 7 and 19 percent depending on the protein alternative.
Study findings were based on a review of patient data from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and the Nurses’ Health Study. Both the Health Professionals and Nurses’ Health studies were long term studies with patient data from 22 to 28 years. In all, researchers examined data from 37,698 men from the Health Professionals study and 83,644 women from the Nurses’ Health study.
In a finding that’s sure to invoke a response from beef producers, researchers recommend replacing red meat with proteins such as fish, nuts, legumes, or poultry. In fairness to the beef industry, one item that that isn’t mentioned in the HSPH study is the type of unprocessed meat that was consumed and whether or not the type of unprocessed beef consumed was considered as a basis of the study findings.
Much commercial beef is fed in a feedlot. Here, cattle are typically fed a diet designed to fatten them up and get them ready to go to market and ultimately, to your outdoor grill. Feedlot diets typically consist of grains, oats, and other types of nutritional supplements.
On the other hand, there is a growing movement among beef producers to avoid traditional feedlots and return to return to a more natural, or typical range diet where cattle forage or eat a natural grass-fed diet. Proponents of grass-fed beef believe the cattle are healthier, require fewer antibiotics, produce leaner meat, are lower in total and saturated fat, calories, and cholesterol. In addition, grass-fed only beef are reported to have higher levels of the coveted omega-3 fatty acids than beef which are not grass-fed.
Even with those higher levels of omega-3 in beef, fish is still probably your best source of omega-3. However, if grass-fed meat is leaner and healthier, then it may be a good choice for those who still want to keep red meat in their diet while remaining heart-conscious. It would be interesting to know if the studies looked at the beef type consumed -- grass-fed versus typical feed lot -- and whether or not that had any impact on the increased risk of death.
Sources:
Harvard School of Public Health (2012, March 12). Red meat consumption linked to increased risk of total, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 18, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120312162746.htm
Diet and Lifestyle Recommendations. American Heart Associaton. 21 May 2010. http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/Diet-and-Lifestyle-
Recommendations_UCM_305855_Article.jsp#.T2apvPXNqSq
Jo Robinson. Grass-Fed Basics. Eat Wild. 2012. http://www.eatwild.com/basics.html
Reviewed March 21, 2012
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith