The growing trend towards a vegetarian diet around the world has led multidisciplinary researchers from around the world to conduct a study looking at the relationship of eating meat to human health.
Many studies have called for replacing red meat with fruits and vegetables in order to maintain health and prevent many serious diseases.
And the "demonization" of unusually eating meat in the past few years as harmful to health prompted an international, multidisciplinary team of researchers, led by the University of Adelaide, to study meat consumption and its impact on health.
The study found unexpected results saying that meat supports a longer lifespan.
Study author, University of Adelaide Biomedical Researcher Dr Wenping Yu says that humans have evolved and thrived over millions of years due to their high consumption of meat.
Dr Yu explained: "We wanted to look more closely at research that has shed a negative light on meat consumption in the human diet... looking only at the associations between meat consumption and people's health or life expectancy within a particular group, and/or region or country, can lead to complex and misleading conclusions."
"Our team extensively analyzed the associations between meat intake and life expectancy, and infant mortality, at the global and regional levels, reducing study bias and making our conclusions more representative of the overall health effects of meat eating."
The results of the study were published in the International Journal of General Medicine and examined the public health effects of total meat consumption in more than 170 countries around the world.
They found that energy consumption from carbohydrate crops (cereals and tubers) did not increase life expectancy, and that total meat consumption was associated with increased life expectancy, independent of the competitive effects of total caloric intake, economic affluence, urban advantages and obesity.
"While adverse effects of meat consumption on human health have been found in some studies in the past, the methods and results in these studies are controversial and circumstantial," says Dr. Yu.
The study's lead author, University of Adelaide Professor Emeritus, Maciej Heinberg, says that humans have adapted to eating meat from the perspective of their evolution over two million years ago.
"Meat from young and large animals provided optimal nutrition for our ancestors who developed genetic, physiological and morphological adaptations to eating meat products and we have inherited those adaptations," explained Professor Heinberg.
But with the strong development of nutritional sciences and economic affluence, studies in some populations in developed countries have linked meat-free (vegetarian) diets to improved health.
“I think we need to understand that this may not conflict with the beneficial effect of meat consumption,” says Yanvi Jie, a nutrition expert involved in the study. “Studies looking at the diets of affluent and highly educated societies look at people with the purchasing power and knowledge to choose vegetarian diets. They reach the full nutrients that meat normally contains. Basically replace meat with all the nutrients that meat provides."
🥩Meat-eating has extended human life expectancy worldwide, say @UniofAdelaide and @UNSW
— Au Science Media Ctr (@AusSMC) February 22, 2022
🍗They say the consumption of energy from carb crops does not lead to greater life expectancy, and that total meat consumption correlates to greater life expectancyhttps://t.co/IKjUR5jan8 pic.twitter.com/78v0Cf2WzL
Dr Renata Heinberg, co-author and a biologist at the University of Adelaide, explains that meat today remains a major component of the diets of many people around the world.
"Before the introduction of agriculture, 10,000 years ago, meat was a staple food in the human diet," she says.
She added: "Depending on the small groups of people you study and the types of meat you choose to consider, the scale of the role of meat in human health management may vary. However, when considering all types of meat for the entire population, as in this study, the relationship The positivity between meat consumption and general health at the population level is not discontinuous."
Co-author and anthropologist at the University of Adelaide and biologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Dr. Arthur Saniotis, says the findings are in line with other studies showing that grain-based foods have less nutritional value than meat.
Dr Saniotis continued: "While this is not surprising to many of us, it still needs to be pointed out. It highlights that meat has its own components that contribute to our overall health beyond just the number of calories consumed, and that without meat in Our diet, we may not thrive. Our message is that eating meat is good for human health provided it is consumed in moderation and that the meat industry is done in an ethical way."
Source: Medical Express