Niki Bezzant: Red meat red herring

A predominantly plant-based diet is still the most healthy one. Photo / 123RF

COMMENT:

Sometimes nutrition research does nothing more than confuse us. It makes me relate to people who say "Even the experts can't agree!", then throw up their hands and keep on doing what they're doing, healthy or not.

So it was with last week's piece of "sensational" research about red and processed meat. The review was headlined "No need to reduce red or processed meat consumption for good health". It found there were few health benefits to cutting your meat consumption, and recommended most adults should continue to eat their current levels of red and processed meat.

This seems to go against every established guideline worldwide.

The reactions were swift. And not unexpectedly, they tended to depend on the particular interests of the commenters.

Beef + Lamb New Zealand were fans; a spokesperson telling Newshub that advice to reduce red meat intake was "scaremongering" and that Kiwis deserve the right to choose red meat.

Dietitian Caryn Zinn, who promotes the type of low-carb, high-fat diets whose followers tend to enthusiastically embrace red and processed meat, praised the research on her Facebook page, calling it "the most rigorous review I have ever seen" on the subject.

On the other hand, there was widespread criticism from scientists globally, including nutrition experts in New Zealand, who slammed the review. The methodology was criticised: the researchers didn't follow the appropriate methods in evaluating the research and even they stated their own conclusions were weak. The recommendations were criticised for being based on that "low certainty" evidence, and described as misleading. What's more, critics said, there was no consideration of planetary health. And there was criticism of the study's lead author, Bradley Johnston, who also led a study funded by the food industry a few years back which attacked recommendations for people to eat less sugar.

So far, so confusing, right?

Like most of you, I'm not an expert in research methodology. So what are we to take from this? Should we throw caution to the wind and tuck into a bacon sarnie?

It may taste good, but a bacon sandwich is not the best thing for your health. Photo / 123RF

Maybe not. At times like these it's worth remembering how science works. It almost never happens - despite what you may see on social media – that "everything we thought we knew about x is wrong!". The body of scientific evidence rarely gets upended by one single piece of research. Rather, individual studies add to the body of evidence, building an overall picture. It's also very, very rare that anything to do with nutrition is finally settled, to the point that everyone agrees on a final answer to a question. That's a good thing: we can know, with a high degree of likelihood, that something is true, but scientists have to always be open to new evidence.

In the case of meat, it seems this new review doesn't really say much different from overall general advice, despite the spin. There are definitely some people who eat too much red and processed meat, and who could benefit from cutting down. And there are some who could probably benefit from a little more, if they chose. And in general, as Professor Nick Wilson from Otago University commented, "Overall the evidence for predominantly plant-based diets being healthy is overwhelming."

• Niki Bezzant is editor-at-large for Healthy Food Guide www.healthyfood.com