Red meat causing cancer?
 

A friend of mine has decided to "stay away from red meat" because "it can cause cancer". I call bullshit on this. He'll only eat pork, chicken or any other meat that isn't beef. He says that a "scientific study" confirmed that red meat causes cancer. Now he's trying to shove his bullshit down my throat, re-iterating the shit he's heard, and making it as if hes 100% right. He won't accept any other benefits of red meat, he only looks at the cancer part.

I've been eating beef daily for as long as I can remember, and do I have cancer? No, I'm 17 and a 6'2 Asian because my diet has been mostly red meat and rice offset with some vegetables. I know my diet is bad, but I've been starting to use dietary supplements to get any missing nutrients.

It's his choice, but to suddenly go off red meat because of ONE thing he's heard is ignorant on his part. does anyone want to help me get some sense into how red meat can possible cause cancer?
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On another note, he has also said that combining dairy products actually TAKES calcium from the body and leads to osteoporosis. So all those Kraft Singles commercials for grilled cheese sandwiches with milk have all been an unhealthy lie? Anyone have insight on this as well?

Your friend is an idiot, sorry.

I'm not sure how you could convince him... But as long as he's not doing something drastically stupid like becoming a vegetarian, I guess you could let him be. He'll come along eventually :)

The way I see him thinking now, he's gonna become a vegetarian upon hearing that ALL meat causes cancer from some unknown news source.

Well hopefully he comes across all the studies that DO prove without doubt that high carb diets cause all sorts of problems. Everything from diabetes, to heart disease, to ADD, is caused by too much sugar. Then there is the issue of the #1 "meat replacement" used by these idiots is soy, which wasn't even considered a food 50 years ago, and causes even more problems with even more parts of your body, including hormones (it can actually increase estrogen), etc.

Yeah, your friend may be able to avoid cancer, but he'll be a fat diabetic slob with bitch tits and heart disease.

True, I might fall under that high carb diet since I eat a lot of rice, however, I know to be careful about eating too much (and I can burn it off quick since I play sports) and since my father has diabetes, I might be at-risk(had my last test for it when I was in 7th grade).

The only soy I use is soy milk whenever I make fruit smoothies, or the odd box of Vitasoy that I drink at school.

Don't read too much in to these studies. You'll find that there is a link from the most mundane activity/stuff to some horrible disease. Follow the Canada food guide and you should be okay.

Asian people tend to handle sugar better, since they HAVE been eating grains for a long time. But even though they don't get fat as easily, insulin is still insulin. Even though you're not fat, and never have been, you can still eventually develop diabetes. That's why your dad (and probably a lot of aunts, uncles, and grandmothers) will likely have some form of diabetes. My wife's grandma and grandpa - on both sides of her parents' families, both had diabetes. Neither of them were fat at all, but still had health problems related to their huge amount of starch intake over the decades.

You will want to drop that soy milk ASAP, especially if you are athletic and care about performance. That shit increases your estrogen, which decreases testosterone, and that basically makes you "more like a woman" (sorry ladies, no offense meant). Switch to full fat milk (not skim milk, which replaces the fat with sugar) and you will be stronger, have more energy, more protein, and good fat which will help your body create hormones that you WANT to have in to - cholesterol and testosterone. Drop the Vitasoy too, unless you're a 10 year old ;)

And whatever you do, for the love of all that is important, do not follow the fucking Canada food guide! Unless it has been changed in the past year (I'll check) all it will do is limit your intake of fat (good) and protein (really good) and force you to eat excess grains and starches (really, really bad). It's the last thing you should be doing!

I just looked at the food guide, and yup, it's still based on old bullshit sham science from the 50's.

They tell you to eat 3 "units" of meat (and "alternatives" whatever the fuck that means), 2 units of milk (and alternatives.. wtf kind of guide is this?) 8-10 of fruits and veggies, and 8 grain products... Yup, they say you should be eating 4 times as much grains as meat products. Canada Food Guide, more like Canada Sugar Guide.

It should probably be more like 8-10 units of meat (with no alternatives allowed), 2-3 units of milk (with no alternatives allowed), 10-20 units of fruit and veggies, and 1-2 of grains (for breakfast, insulin can do its job when taken with protein) supplemented by 1 extra unit after heavy work.

Not only that, they still tell you to avoid saturated fats, and specifically suggest consuming chemically extracted vegetable fats that haven't existed in the world until the last few decades!

I would have to disagree. There is nothing in the Canada food guide that states you need to consume grains and starch in excess. Frankly, you SHOULDN'T anything in excess.

I can see where you're coming from though. If you're in to more the body building thing that's up to you. More the Atkins concept of diet where you consume protein and have minimal to no carb intake. Going in to this diet puts your body in to a ketoacidotic state. Which is potentially very harmful to your liver and endocrine system. My biology prof went and took the high protein diet concept to the extreme. He lost almost a hundred pounds in weight but suffered health consequences in the process. He developed gallbladder stones and his pancreatic duct became clogged.

Again, do not eat/consume anything in excess.

One could argue, if looking at modern studies (and even some dating back as far as the 60's), anything over 2-3 servings a day of grains should be considered an excess. Humans have been around for oh, about 200,000 years. During that time, we didn't start eating grains and starches until, oh about a few hundred years ago. We were never meant to eat a lot of grains and starches, and never will be. Our bodies can't handle it, as it causes an excess amount of insulin.

And the Atkins diet, while is proven to help lose weight and raise good cholesterol, is also an excessive diet. As you say, staying in a keto state is bad. But in my opinion, it's no worse than giving your body huge insulin spikes several times a day.

So I still think the Canada Food Guide gives the wrong impression. You should not eat 8-10 servings a day of grains. That is excessive. 1-3 should be plenty - you won't get unhealthy insulin spikes, and you won't be in an unhealthy ketogenic state. Everything else you don't need to worry about so much, as long as you stay active and don't eat a huge amount of food overall.

And the part telling you to avoid butter and lard, and buy margarine and corn oil is just fucking insulting to the human race.

Well, me and my brother are actually built for being 6'2 280 lbs and 6'1 205 respectively (which is why we take up rugby and football). I know I'm a bit on that big side, but I'm managing.

I've been drinking skim as daily milk for the last 9 years, but maybe I should consider 2% or 1% as a new alternative. Which would be better?

Oh, and I guess rather than Vitasoy, I'll turn to the Vita Mango juice; that's soy-free, or get some kind of fruit juice box.

I would go with homogenized milk, but 2% should be OK. Remember, you're not trying to keep the calories down, so don't worry about low fat "alternative" food! All those do is replace useful fat with useless fattening insulin-spiking sugar! And instead of a fruit juice box, drink water or a diet drink (diet iced tea, diet coke). Although some say that diet drinks still cause an insulin spike, I'm not totally convinced. If you really crave a sweet drink, try to find a fruit drink that doesn't add sugar. At the very very least, if you really do want to drink a sweetened drink, find one that uses sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

Sounds good. I'll shoot for 2%. I'll try the diet iced tea (if I can find it in Tetra boxes), but I'm always carrying a water bottle with me to class.

I also heard chocolate milk is really really good for you...

Well the milk part is good, the chocolate part is good, but the shitload of sugar they put into it is not so good.

Keep in mind that an insulin spike IS good for you right after a damaging workout. So after a super hard training situation, like weights, then yeah - protein and sugar are what you need. But from what I've read, you do not want fat at this time, and milk of course contains fat.

The best post-workout nutrition you could have is a pure whey shake with a handful of raisins. Or a post workout shake, like Universal Torrent or Biotest Surge.

Studies have shown that South-East Asians are more prone to Diabetes due to the agrarian lifestyles of their ancestors having an evolutionary impact

So basically, they were the first people to start eating grains, so were the first to encounter major issues with diabetes. Interesting.

Tell your friend that the Sun's UV rays cause cancer as well.

He might as well just live in a cave and come outside at night to gather food. If not, the cancer is going to get him. I'm SCCCAAARRRRRRED.

actually, I saw that one the CBC news too...I'm avoiding red meat since then

Is pork red meat?

:facepalm:

I heard vegetables causes cancer too.

hey skinnypupp: have you heard of metabolic typing? and do you believe it?
if you're carbo type, then they say the majority of your food consumption should be carbs....
?
or do you believe that everyone should avoid a high carb diet?

I think people definitely have different metabolic types. It's pretty obvious that when I eat a huge bowl of rice, my body stores the fat more readily than when my wife does. But that doesn't mean you should eat so many carbs just because you don't get fat from them. Excess insulin is still an issue, whether you get fat or not. So I still think that even though you can 'handle' carbs well, you should still avoid eating so much of them.

can, may, up-to, as much as - words meant to deceive or exaggerate. your friend isn't by chance, a smoker are they? few things are known to be definite carcinogens, yet cancer is prevalent in our society. i think that there are many things that we are exposed to on a daily basis that can/may cause cancer and red meat could very possibly be one of them, but so could the chlorine in the water you drink and toxins in the air you breathe.

Only meant to deceive those that do not know the meaning/reasoning behind it. What is true for some may not be true for others. This is why we use those particular words. Because everyone is different, we can't expect what happens to one person happen to the next (this has to do with thresholds but I won't get into that).

Ex. A 24 year old marathon running who never smoked a cigarette in his life dies of cancer.

A 94 year old man who smoked chronically since he was 14 who has a clean bill of health.

This is why those words are used. Because they are not a certainty but more of a probability.