"Switching from Beef to Chicken & Fish May Not Lower Cholesterol"
In light of recommendations for heart healthy eating
from national professional organizations encouraging Americans
to limit their intake of meat,
the beef industry commissioned and co-wrote this review
of randomized controlled trials comparing the effects
of beef versus chicken and fish on cholesterol levels
published over the last 60 years.
They found that the impact of beef consumption on the cholesterol profile of humans
is similar to that of fish and/or poultry,
meaning that switching from red meat to white meat
likely wouldn’t make any difference.
And that’s really no surprise,
given how fat we’ve genetically manipulated chickens to be these days,
up to ten times more fat than they had a century ago.
So there’s a number of cuts of beef that have
less cholesterol-raising saturated fat than chicken, (there at the bottom).
So no surprise that white meat was found to be no better than red,
but their conclusion was: "Therefore you can eat beef"
"as part of a balanced diet to manage your cholesterol".
That’s just like the coke versus Pepsi thing.
Even though coke has less sugar than Pepsi,
16 spoonfuls of sugar per bottle instead of just 15.
If studies on blood sugar found no difference between drinking coke and drinking Pepsi,
you wouldn’t conclude that Pepsi may be considered
when recommending diets for the management of blood sugars.
You’d say they're both just as bad
so we should ideally consume neither.
That’s a standard drug industry trick
to compare their fancy new drug not to the best out there,
but to some miserable drug to make yours look better.
Note they didn’t compare beef to plant proteins, like in this study.
But I was surprised as I started reading this
that they found no benefit to switching to a plant protein diet either.
What were they eating?
Plant protein diet on the left, animal protein diet on the right.
Breakfast looks ok.
Instead of a burger for lunch the plant group got
a kidney bean and tomato casserole and a salad - nice.
And dinner, instead of another burger just some boring vegetables.
Why was the cholesterol of the plant group
as bad as the animal group?
Oh, because they had the plant protein group
eating 3 tablespoon of beef tallow every day,
three tablespoons of beef fat margarine—well, no wonder.
This was part of a series of studies that tried to figure out
what it was about meat that was so cholesterol-raising—
was it the animal protein, or was it the animal fat?
So they created these fake meat products
made to have the same amount of saturated fat and cholesterol
by adding extracted animal fats and cholesterol.
Who could they get to make such strange concoctions?
The Ralston Purina dog food company.
But what’s crazy is that even if you
keep the saturated animal fat and cholesterol the same,
by adding meat fats to the veggie burgers,
and making the plant group swallow cholesterol pills to equal it out,
sometimes you still see an advantage in the plant protein group.
See how they had them switch diets half way through
and their cholesterol levels kind of switched as well?
You switch people from meat to tofu,
their cholesterol goes down,
but what if you switch them from meat to tofu plus lard?
Then their cholesterol may stay the same,
though tofu and lard may indeed actually be better than the meat,
since it may result in less oxidized cholesterol.
So even just swapping plant protein for animal protein may have advantages.
But if you really want to maximize the power of diet to lower cholesterol,
we may want to move entirely towards plants.
The standard dietary advice to cut down on fatty meat, dairy, and eggs
may lower cholesterol 5-10%,
but flexitarian or vegetarian diets may drop our levels 10 to 15%,
vegan diets 15 to 25, and healthier vegan diets up to 35%,
like this study showing a 61- point drop in LDL cholesterol
within a matter of weeks.