Can We Trust Studies That Exonerate Red Meat? | Game Changers Debate

I feel like I'm an attorney trying to interrogate you, but I feel like I spent a lot of time digging into research. I had the research checked and checked and checked again. I had the research checked to make sure that it was not cherry picking, that it was reflective of the preponderance of evidence. But who was checking it? Were they people who were not advocates of a whole food plant-based diet exclusively? Or were they people like... Because all of the experts in the film are people who are clearly aligned with that perspective. They're aligned... I interview them because they're aligned with the consensus. And no. And over half of the people in the film... No, I thought you just agreed that there is not a consensus that a 100% plant-based diet is better than a diet that includes a lot of plants and some animal products. Correct. Correct. So where were the experts that would represent that point of view? That it doesn't have to be 100% plant-based diet? I agree. It doesn't have to be 100%. The film said plant-based diets. Now, I'll tell you why we only interviewed vegans for the athletes, right? The ones that actually spoke on screen, in Arnold is not vegan. He doesn't drink dairy. He thinks it's for babies. And he's cut down meat by 80%. But all the people... I mean, Nate is not 100% vegan. He's on a largely plant-based diet. He eats a bit of seafood and a bit of stuff like that. But all the people interviewed... Yeah, eggs as well. So the reason that we only put... And by the way, we did interview Lauren Cordain and Rob Wolf, and I can get to that as well if you want, because the anthropologists laughed in their faces when they're not... I'm talking about scientists who published these... Who are on the teams and published the papers that I've shared in the previous episode. Yeah, like Nutri-Rex, who are funded by the industry, and we can get to that. No, not Nutri... It's disingenuous to claim that all of the research that I've shared here is industry-funded, and so we can't acknowledge it. So claim that the recent study that just came out, and we're getting off track, but the recent study that just came out that said that red meat and processed meat is totally fine. Right. Like, you really want to go with that? To me, it feels like you don't have your finger on the pulse, honestly. I'm not trying to be rude. I think you probably know a lot about your field. Well, what do you think about that study? Well, the Nutri-Rex study? The study that said that red meat... Yeah, it's a Nutri-Rex study. Okay. So in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the day before the film came out, six studies exonerating red meat and processed meat, all from the same company that are apparently giving recommendations. Well, guess what? Exponent and Nutri-Rex and companies like that are not the ones that give public recommendations on what people should be eating, number one. Okay. And we talked about this in the film with Exponent. Nutri-Rex is like another Exponent. So if you look at their recommendations, first of all, Frank Hu... Frank Hu, who is now the chair of nutrition at Harvard, he took Walt Willett's place, said, the panel's blanket recommendations that adults should continue to... their red meat consumption habits is highly irresponsible. Walter Willett said, it's the most egregious abuse of data he's ever seen. And if you want to follow their recommendations, if you could put up slide 92. So they did the same thing in 2017 for the sugar industry. So there was a meta-analysis in the Annals of Internal... When you say they, you mean the exact same company that Nutri-Rex... So it was... So Bradley Johnston is the director and co-founder of Nutri-Rex and the first author of the paper that we're talking about for red meat. Okay? Just exonerated red meat, apparently, and processed meat. So this is the same company says at present, there seems to be no reliable evidence indicating that any of the recommended daily caloric thresholds for sugar intake are strongly associated with negative health effects. So they did a meta-analysis saying that don't worry about your intake of sugar at all. That was what their meta-analysis conclusion came to. And then two years later, the day before the films came out, and do you really think that's a coincidence? Do you think that the... So let me tell you something. Okay? The... Of our email subscribers, do you know the email address of the person that opens and views our emails the most? It's from the Beef Checkoff program. And they've been doing that since we started. So they sign up for our mailing list, they look at when the film is coming out, and you don't... You think it's a coincidence that the day before us, the film comes out, they release a paper exonerating red meat and cancer. And the same... So if you're going to buy into the Nutri-Rek study about red meat and cancer, then to be fair, you've also got to buy into their conclusions about sugar, because they were paid. I'll tell you who they were paid by. Okay? So the financial support for that paper was funded by the technical... Now listen to this, sounds great. The technical committee on dietary carbohydrates of ILSI North America, and ILSI is the International Life Sciences Institute. Sounds pretty legit, right? So its members include Coca-Cola, Hershey Company, Pepsi Company, and Red Bull, and a bunch of others. Folks looking out for your best interest. There you go. Okay? Yeah. It would be a problem if that was the only... So do you... You just... You claimed this recent study, and I honestly... Again, no disrespect. You're busy with lots of other things. You run a successful business. Consulting people, selling stuff. I get it. You don't have the time. You weren't able to read a basic forest plot to look at statistical significance and confidence intervals. Okay? I just don't think that you're the one to interpret the data. So the reason you don't have... You haven't seen the hundreds of really respected scientists that have come out saying that this Nutri-Rek study... And by the way, there's an investigation into the alz of internal medicine because of this for accepting this stuff from Nutri-Rek's. But if you're going to accept the meta-analysis on red meat and on processed meat for cancer, then you've also got to accept the 2017 study meta-analysis. If you accept the source. If you accept the source... They're both the same... It's the same Nutri-Rek. Okay, so are you saying... If the only meta-analysis that showed no association between red meat and heart disease or cancer, that would be highly problematic. No, I'm talking about the one... First, I'm talking about the one that you cited. You made out that this is like... Okay. Second of all, I have pointed out that industry-funded research is four to eight times more likely, right? Yeah, I agree. And going back to that dairy one, by the way, do you know that when they did their meta-analysis, they doubled and tripled and quadrupled up? Because when they looked... When the meta-analysis that analyzed the meta-analysis, the multi-analysis, included the studies multiple times. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Because they took it into account each time. And so when the industry floods the scientific research with their funded studies, again, if they fund a study, it doesn't turn out... They're studying other studies and coming to the same conclusion and adding those on as if it's an additional study. Is that what you're saying? No. So look, if your industry funds studies and only decide... If you're in a beef industry or dairy industry, are you going to put out studies that aren't in your favor? No, right? And you also... And they don't have to. You spin it. And so what you do is you want to make beef look... If you want to make saturated fat look okay, or if you want to make cholesterol okay, you can switch things around the study to make it look good. If you want to look at eggs, and for example, and I don't want to get... It continues with three-hour debate about cholesterol and saturated fat. But if you go from 10 eggs a week to 12 eggs a week, it doesn't raise your serum cholesterol. So that's how they did the study. But if you go from no eggs a week to one egg a week, it does increase your... Because there's something called the cholesterol plateau. So what the industry does is it tricks you. It does... But then when you look at eggs and outcomes like cardiovascular disease, you don't see... Well, you do. But we're getting off track. I was just making a point that industry funded studies sway the results of the meta-analysis. Right. And I think that's fair. And it's done with the sugar industry. And it's done with... It was done with tobacco. And again, I'm not comparing the amount of increased risk of cancer from... That was never a claim that was made. It was the playbook that is used by the drug industry, by the meat industry, by the sugar industry, by the dairy industry. So even though your film came out and these studies came out right before your film, it's kind of proving your point that this same company that tried to exonerate the sugar industry is also... Yeah. If you're going to accept that, if you're going to cite that as evidence... Right. And then the fact... If you're going to cite that... The reason I think, because like you said, you're so busy on many other things, is I just don't think that your fingers on the pulse... That was not the only study that I said. I know it's not. I know it's not. There's many other meta-analyses, 2010, 15, we can look at them. Well, let's do that. Let's look at those studies. But again, they're funding... They're including studies that are funded by industry. And so, unless you can pass those out and see, is that really... So you're saying we can't rely on any study... No, I didn't say that. That's the straw man. I said that you would really need to look at the way in which a study is designed to see if it was viable. And you also have to replicate the studies. Studies have to be replicated. And so, what I'm saying is... Can I just finish the last point, and then I'll let you do as many studies as you want. Because again, you can show as many studies as you want. You can't prove that you're not handpicking them to suit your bias. You are the one that quoted this study. It shows that your fingers are not on the pulse, because hundreds of top scientists have written letters or joined in the same letter to the Owls of Internal Medicine asking for those studies to be retracted. And there's now an investigation into the Owls of Internal Medicine, yet you are cycling that study. An investigation doesn't prove... Nothing has been proven yet. It doesn't prove anything, but it shows... And I was aware of that controversy. And... And you can't even read forest plots. You're telling people what to eat. The controversy is not surprising if red meat has been demonized for as long as it has been. And then a study comes out, which exonerates it. It would be entirely expected that there would be controversy. And do you know who that study was funded by? Can you just put up slide 93? Just to show that... Anyway, it's not just me saying this. I mean, the scientist who discredited the meat guidelines didn't report past food industry ties. So that... So, because remember, most people are listening, scientists who discredited meat guidelines didn't report past food industry ties. The lead researcher, Bradley C. Johnston, said he was not required to report his past relationship with a powerful industry trade group. I don't know what that trade group is, but if you scroll down... Well, you can't scroll around. Is it Jimmy? Oh, it's slide. So, I can tell you, in the first one, the sugar one, it was that Pepsi and all this stuff, although they make a non-profit with a fancy sounding name, and then they back it all with industry funding. Same with the meat study. That's why I don't understand why he'd use it. If you were being objective, like you're saying, oh, there's other studies, but why name this one as though it's got validity? Because... So, you feel like they concocted this study and released it right before your film, specifically... I don't know the film. I think it's likely that it was tied into the film. But it doesn't matter whether it is. I'm showing that to present that study as evidence, when the consensus of the scientific researchers is against that study, that it's calling for an investigation that has asked for it to be retracted, the co-author of the paper, who's part of the leadership team at NutriRex, he's the advanced chancellor of Dean and Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M. Texas A&M is partnered with the Beef Checkoff Program, and is part of... And this is also discussed in the New York Times, slide 94. And there's actually... It goes a lot deeper than that. It actually goes back to Brazilian government. But... Let's see the slide 94. The slide 94 is just talking about... Research group that discounted risks of red meat has ties to program partly backed by beef industry. So, anyway... So, this doesn't necessarily mean what they're saying is incorrect. And this is where it gets slippery, right? Because if they found things that happen to be correct, and they release it, but they release it from a shitty company that has said things in the past... It's a shitty company that chose... It handpicked which studies are included in that analysis. Because you've had plenty of time to explain this. Yeah. To get to your point, Chris, you agree with the conclusion of that study, and you think that the evidence points that there's many studies that point to the idea that red meat is not in fact the culprit. And the culprit is when you're looking at these epidemiology studies that you're looking at the overall diet of these people and asking them, do they eat meat? You're not asking them what is the quality of the food they eat. Yeah. So, I agree that conflicts of interests are a problem. And I... And the editorial that was published in Annals alongside of this study said, this is sure to be controversial, but it's based on the most comprehensive review of the evidence to date. Because that review is inclusive, those who seek to dispute it will be hard pressed to find appropriate evidence. So... And who wrote that? The meta-analyses had studies covering millions of participants over 34 years. There are several other meta-analyses that have been done over the past few years. So, I don't know the best way to show these because I've got them in a Google Doc. So, 2017... Let's see if I can give you the title. Jamie, maybe you can Google it or something. Contemporary review of the relationship between red meat consumption and cardiovascular risk. Quote from that study, the review concluded, quote, recent findings demonstrated that despite the presence of heme iron and carnitine, red meat does not significantly increase cardiovascular risk when it is assumed in recommended doses. You have 2014 meta-analysis of 13 studies. Again, these are... This one, Jamie, is called association between total processed red and white meat consumption, all cause cardiovascular disease, heart disease mortality. And this is a good example of what you were just saying, Joe. There was a slight increased association between red meat consumption and cardiovascular mortality. And then at the end, no significant associations observed between any type of meat and heart disease mortality. Results of the present meta-analysis indicate that processed meat consumption could increase mortality. These results should be interpreted with caution due to high heterogeneity observed in most of the analyses as well as the possibility of residual confounding, meaning healthy user bias. LIPI, meta-analysis of 11 studies of red meat consumption and heart disease concluded that, quote, the current literature data does not support the existence of a clear relationship between a large intake of red meat and increased risk of myocardial ischemia. And then this is one of the largest that was done. Let me give you the title of this, Jamie. Red and processed meat consumption and risk of incident coronary heart disease. That should bring it up. That's by Misha et al. Conclusion. Consumption of processed meat but not red meat is associated with higher incidence of heart disease and diabetes. So there's a bunch of meta-analyses that have been done over the years that reached the same conclusion. And we could you know look at the same, this is for heart disease but there are also some for cancer. So it's not just that study. There are many others as well. There are many others. And meta-analyses. And there are meta-analyses on the other side. So you can present studies here so the people listening. That's true. There are meta-analyses on the other side. Right. And you can present the data for the people listening and it appears like the preponderance evidence is that. But your guidelines for diet, they're not in alignment for saturated fat. They're not in diet for cholesterol. They're not in diet for the amount of carbohydrates for normal people. They're not in line with the consensus for carbohydrates for athletes. I've said a range of carbohydrates could be appropriate for people. But basically what I'm saying is you are not in alignment with the scientific consensus. And you claim that we cherry picked in the film. Right. But you hand pick studies to back up your bias. Not to mention that we've pointed out that the studies in those meta-analyses, some of them are heavily funded by industry. Not saying that you should throw all those out. But you don't have the wherewithal to assess the studies in the meta-analysis because you point out yourself, you can't even read a forest plot. So he reads conclusions. Right. He reads conclusions in writing but has not looked at the actual data. So you haven't been able to establish. When I was like spent the first thousand hours, I would look at the whole paper and then I would look at each author and I would dig into each author to see where their funding was from. And I'm telling you that the industry is funding studies to sway things in their favor. And you point it shows that you don't have your thing on the post. There's no doubt about that. Why didn't you point to those last time you were, why did you point to an industry funded study? I have to point to those before. In the last one, why point out in the NutriRec study, you know, when it was clearly invalid, the scientists... Wait, wait, wait. Not clearly invalid. It wasn't representative of the scientific evidence. They handpicked the studies they were including. They used the grade method. Do you know what the grade method is? I do. Okay. And it was... And do you think that's appropriate for assessing food rather than pharmaceuticals? According to some nutrition organizations it is. Right. Including, well, very few. It's not a sign of consensus. So what is the... National Academy of... Do you want... It just basically they used the methodology that wasn't appropriate for looking at what they were looking at. It's just the same with the Seri Toreno and the Choudry studies. The what they were looking for could never have been found. The association between saturated fat and cholesterol levels. It could never have been found based on the methodology that they used.