Prominent German nutritionist Udo Pollmer (photo right), a frequent guest of the media on issues concerning food, recently commented on and dismissed here the UN’s latest claim that especially processed meats cause colon cancer and red meats show a strong link.
Background here.
In the deutschlandradiokultur.de segment Pollmer first says that the science in the report is difficult to judge because the study has not been yet made open to the public. He adds, however, that the old playbook seems to be at work: create a lot of publicity and later should it turned out to be wrong, all will be forgotten. “This alone shows that it has little to do with scientific truth.”
Based on a mere 27 studies, not 800!
First the meta-analysis did not involve 800 studies, as the media all trumpeted. Pollmer says:
As by coincidence along with the WHO, also US epidemiologists assessed the global database: and they found only 38 studies that fulfilled the minimum criteria. From that after excluding parallel publications only 27 remained.”
As a result Pollmer writes that the UN meta-analysis is fundamentally inconclusive. Pollmer adds that the collection of the data based on questionnaires from many different countries is unreliable because the subjects themselves did not even know what was in the meat products.
Another problem Pollmer sees with the WHO study is that the study focused only on colon cancer rates, and not the overall rate of all cancers.
How can we know if sausage is cancer-causing, or perhaps even reduces the overall cancer rate?”
Pollmer says the correct way to conduct the study would be to put a group on a high meat diet and another on a very low meat diet. Such a study does not exist for meat, but does so with plant fiber. He writes:
By the administration of wheat bran, the number of adenomas (non-cancerous tumors] (the precursors for cancer) in the colon increased.”
Pollmer feels that the WHO is singling out processed meats in an attempt to label them the villain and that the organization is using the word “cancer” to “intimidate the public”.
At the end Pollmer asks: if meat were bad for humans, over the past 4 million years of evolution would it not have long since removed those who had eaten it?
Of course the meat eaters are here today, and instead it appears that the vegans were the ones who were naturally selected. Today they are making a comeback, but only thanks to modern food production technology and mass availability.
As for the rest of us who are concerned about remaining healthy, eat fatty meat, and especially food products made from the organs!
Photo credit: EULE.
I’m sure WHO and WMO coordinate activities. This probably is set to convince/make folks stop eating meat, thus reducing methane from livestock. All the corn could then be made into biofuel (ethanol) and further reduce CO2. This is one heck of push by the UN. Just had some bacon for lunch!
Me, a bunch of eggs.
Egg yolk is a nutritional source of Vit D.
http://www.jameda.de/naehrstoffe/vitamin-d/
At least HALF the risk for colorectal cancer (and several other cancers) is due to vitamin D deficiency, looking at a range of serum vitamin D levels between 6 ng/ml (very low) and 37 ng/ml (healthy, but higher may be better).
Optimal vitamin D status for colorectal cancer prevention: a quantitative meta analysis.
Gorham ED1, Garland CF, Garland FC, Grant WB, Mohr SB, Lipkin M, Newmark HL, Giovannucci E, Wei M, Holick MF.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17296473
The vegetarian lobby is gaining ground with the anti drink miserablist lobby .
The damage is done, whatever Udo Pollmer says there are now millions of the less well educated who will have swallowed this nonsense hook line and sinker.
Hey don’t worry. Isn’t it rather fortunate that the enemy starves himself to death? Especially his brain (Vegans, B12 deficiency. Important visible symptom: cracks in the corner of the mouth.)
And they will be the latest poster-children for the inexorable effects of natural selection. Perhaps in this century we will begin to weed out the genes that give some people a proclivity for fond beliefs.
” … put a group on a high meat diet … ”
All one would have to do would be to obtain the client list of places such as The Kansas City Steak Company
This is one of many such places (I have no financial interest) and there are many eat-in steak houses, also. Nice photos, though.
If it wasn’t for bacon I’d be a vegan. Not!
This WHO scare has been about really about pork … ridding the world of pork because with the islamisation of Europe well under way the Council of Islamic Organisation believes muslims will be offended by exposure to pork everywhere, hence the best thing would be to get rid of it.
So the WHO uses the excuse of meat, including pork. But this science pseudo is as bad as the fraudulent science used in the 1960s that convinced the western world to switch from a high saturated fat/low carbohydrate diet to a high carbohydrate/low saturated fat diet, which has been responsible ever since for many illnesses since the 1960s like obesity.
The WHO likely believes that eliminating red meat is good way to protect the planet because the feed conversion ratio (FCR) of such meat is typically higher than poultry, fish or insects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio
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