14 DAY TRIAL // A new study focused on the link between red meat and heart disease and concluded that people that replace red meat with healthier protein-rich foods like chicken or fish have fewer chances of having heart problems.
This study is published in the current issue of the journal Circulation and its main idea is that individuals that eat more fresh-cooked red meat, processed red meat and high-fat diary products expose themselves to bigger risks of heart disease.
84,136 women, mostly Caucasian, aged 30 to 55 years old, were given questionnaires they had to fill in for a period of 26 years, as part of the Nurses' Health Study, that lasted from 1980 to 2006.
The women recorded the frequency of which they had consumed a unit or a portion of each food on average during the previous year, with nine possible answers going from “never” to “more than six times daily”.
The survey concluded that women that had two servings of red meat a day had a 30 percent higher risk of suffering from heart disease than women that had an average of half a serving of red meat a day.
Along with restraining red meat portions, the study showed that eating more poultry, nuts and fish also contributed to a decrease in coronary heart disease risk, LiveScience reports.
Study researcher Dr. Adam M. Bernstein, post-doctoral researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, stated: “Our study shows that making substitutes for red meat or minimizing the amount of red meat in the diet has important health benefits.
He added that there is no need of consuming “hot dogs, hamburgers, bologna or pastrami, which are all fresh or processed meats” as “there are good protein-rich sources that do not involve red meat” that are much safer for the heart.
After analyzing all study data, researchers estimated that women who replaced one serving of red meat with a healthier substitute reduced their risk of coronary disease by: 30 percent - for serving each day of nuts, 24 - percent for serving each day of fish, 19 - percent for serving each day of poultry and 13 percent lower risk for those that had low-fat diary products.
Bernstein concluded that even if this study was carried out on women only, “our overall knowledge of risk factors for heart disease suggests that” its results might as well apply to men.
Everyone that is concerned and wants to reduce their risk of coronary heart disease need to replace red meat with other protein-rich foods like fish, poultry, nuts and low-fat diary products.