[TaylorAlexander]

Isn’t that the point? Your body needs calories! Nuts are a great way to get filling healthy calories so you don’t go around eating junk.

M&M’s are 492 calories per 100g, so slightly less than your figure for walnuts, but I can’t imagine that eating candy is healthier. And similarly, steak has many negative health effects.

[hollywood_court]

What are the many negative health effects of steak?

I eat a ~1lb pan fried strip steak with steamed broccoli for breakfast 7 days per week.

It’s the easiest and most consistent way to help me meet my protein and fiber goals.

My GP does my bloodwork twice per year and the only thing he has ever told me is that I need to take a Vitamin D supplement. But he also said that he tells all of his patients that.

[TaylorAlexander]

This guy seems to think there’s a lot of research showing a variety of risks with any level of meat consumption: https://youtu.be/frVy1Sj8f0A

[giantg2]

"steak has many negative health effects."

Many? There are some, but I wouldn't say many if consumed in moderation, and maybe depending on what animal (elk, deer, vs cow) and how it was raised (grass fed). Most of the negatives are associated with red meat are focusing on saturated fat or on processed red meat. The other type of study is usually looking at groups who have other potential lifestyle factors that might affect the other issues (like diabetes).

[TaylorAlexander]

It seems like there’s notable cancer, heart disease, and diabetes risks which vary linearly with the amount of meat consumed.

https://youtu.be/6t4tBmbPko8

[giantg2]

Do you have the links to the studies?

The heart disease part is basically what I said about the saturated fat.

The diabetes and cancer risks are generally tougher to track. There are other factors at play that are had to control for. For example, you could grill your red meat and increase cancer risk from that (just like other grilled meats). Processed red meat is also usually included in these studies and that has known cancer and diabetes risks (just like other processed foods).

Many of these are high level observational studies which are unable to fully account for all the factors (because we still don't know all the factors). We can show correlation, but there are things like consumption varying by age group, people earing red meat are more likely to be eating other saturated fats as well. People choosing healthy diets are also making other changes than just not eating red meat.

There have been some smaller studies about stuff related to this. Things like plant based diets reducing high risk interorgan fat. So it may not be the red meat itself, but rather the impact of the red meat on things like that interorgan fat. Or how more red meat in a diet can impact gut bacteria, which we are just learning about how important these gut bacteria are. So it's one factor that can influence that.

At this point, I'm not convinced that we know enough of the factors and mechanisms to say the risk is fully linear at the low end of consumption. I do believe it increases as consumption increases, but only beyond a certain point and likely in some logarithmic way.

[TaylorAlexander]

Yes actually I was able to locate a list of sources for this video here: see the “sources” accordion section below the video:

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/why-is-meat-a-risk-factor-f...

See also the sources under this one:

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-health-risks-vs-benefit...

I’m vegan, but for animal welfare reasons, so this discussion is mostly academic for me. I follow this guy for suggestions on what food I should eat as a vegan, but I’ve noticed he has a lot to say about the risks of meat consumption and he seems to be qualified and have relatively straightforward motivations (I think he lost his mother to cancer or something and says he just wants to find the truth). Everyone is flawed and as you say science is still investigating a lot, and we can’t do double blind or placebo trials with much of this stuff. But I’d be curious what you think of the studies!

[giantg2]

Lots of studies there. I had access to a few of them, others I did not. Some I read the abstract, others I read the whole thing. They seem to be the type of stuff I was already talking about. For example, many of the articles looked at various categories that crossed over (unprocessed with processed, red meat with all meat, etc). Many of the studies are pointing more heavily towards the processed meat being the bigger problem. The other thing is how the food is prepared. For example, there are mitigation strategies such as reducing the formation of AGEs in some studies that focus on that part, but no mention of that in some of the other studies.

Based on the evidence available, my opinion for my own life is that moderate intake appears to have little to no risk if other mitigations are in place (cooking practices for lower AGEs, other healthy diet like saturated fat and sugar intake regulation, etc). I also believe that there are a number of non-diet related factors that influence if a diet is "healthy" for a specific individual, including activity level, genetics, family/cultural histories, etc. To me, the data doesn't support either of the extreme statements - that red meat is bad, or that red meat is good. There are so many factors at play that the best we can do is say that here are some potential positives, and here are some potential negatives.