In Paying A Price For Loving Red Meat (New York Times by Jane Brody, April 27, 2009), a new report published in the March 23 issue of  The Archives of Internal Medicine examined the results of the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study, Directed by Rashmi Sinha, a nutritional epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute.

The study finds that “men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods . . . the increase in mortality risk tied to the higher levels of meat consumption was described as “modest,” ranging from about 20 percent to nearly 40 percent.”

The problem with this study is that it seems there is no clear distinction made between red, processed and organic meats. Was the red meat that was studied organically grown, free of pesticides and antiobotics? Would this have made a difference in the outcome of the study?

Isn’t there an important distinction to be made between fresh, organically grown* beef free of artificial coloring and chemical preservatives and meats that have been [...]