Red Meat vs. White Meat and the Cholesterol Debate

Red Meat vs. White Meat and the Cholesterol Debate

Researchers have found that consuming a significant amount of red meat or chicken (or other poultry) raises cholesterol levels in the same way that this dreaded molecule increases in the bloodstream, especially if the same amount of vegetables, especially soy protein, is consumed.

Just over a year ago, the American Heart Association, the world’s leading cardiovascular health organization, released its new “Dietary Guidelines” to recommend to the American public (and to a large extent, to the public of all developed countries) how they should eat to be healthy. So far, so good. The controversy arose because in this version of the aforementioned guidelines, the AHA removed the cholesterol restrictions (which were there before and were very strict).

The idea behind this policy change is that the molecule has stopped being feared in recent times, at least as much as it used to be. The “new wave” about cholesterol was based on the maxim that “high cholesterol is not a bad thing, as long as the different types of cholesterol levels are balanced.” Of course, a few months later, in March of this year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the AHA themselves published a study that clearly showed that cholesterol is dangerous… And most of the time.

To illustrate the seriousness of the problem, this scientific paper states that “consumption of 3 to 4 eggs per week is associated with a 6% increased risk of cardiovascular events (such as heart attack or stroke) and an 8% increased risk of death from other causes. This is all related to cholesterol.”

“When we saw that chicken raised cholesterol in the same way, our surprise was instant.”

However, until now, we knew more or less which foods were good for maintaining the risk levels of this molecule and which ones were not good for achieving the same goal. Fish? Great. Vegetables? Perfect bacon? Not so much. So, thanks in part to science and in part to popular nutritional culture, we know what’s good for controlling our LDL (bad) and HDL (good) cholesterol levels.

Of course, since this is an article about a revealing study, the news isn’t particularly good. This is all because of work published by researchers at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI) and the University of California, San Francisco, who say that the white meat we’ve been pushing to improve our health (like chicken) isn’t as good as we all thought.

The researchers found that eating a fair amount of red meat or chicken (or other poultry) raises cholesterol levels in the same way, especially if the same amount of blood is eaten with the protein found in vegetables, especially soy, the levels of this dreaded molecule increase.

“When we thought about doing this study, we expected red meat to have a greater negative impact on blood cholesterol levels than white meat. We were surprised when we saw for ourselves that this was not the case,” he explained. One of the study’s lead authors, Ronald Krauss, Ph.

To keep the results consistent, instead of using the dreaded bacon, sausage or other processed products, the researchers used pure veal as the red meat and excluded fish from the white meat classification. Technically speaking, one could say they orchestrated a “chicken vs. veal” war.

How do you control cholesterol?

Researchers have made a few discoveries (both good and bad) in the course of their work. First, it turns out that the best way to lower blood cholesterol levels is to use vegetable proteins such as tofu. The second is that eating large amounts of saturated fat increases the concentration of “large LDL cholesterol molecules” in our blood, which is less associated with cardiovascular disease than smaller LDL molecules. These are the (most) dangerous.

Because they knew that these results (which, as they warned, were “completely unanticipated”) would be widely reported by the media, the scientific community and the public, they were more cautious in what they said and meant. For example, they warned that eating poultry meat does raise cholesterol levels in those who consume it, but that cholesterol is composed primarily of large molecules that are much less dangerous than small molecules, and therefore the results are less significant than total levels would indicate.

So how do you control cholesterol?

Researchers have made a few discoveries (both good and bad) in the course of their work. First, it turns out that the best way to lower blood cholesterol levels is to use vegetable proteins such as tofu. The second is that eating large amounts of saturated fat increases the concentration of “large LDL cholesterol molecules” in our blood, which is less associated with cardiovascular disease than smaller LDL molecules. These are the (most) dangerous.

Because they knew that these results (which, as they warned, were “completely unanticipated”) would be widely reported by the media, the scientific community and the public, they were more cautious in what they said and meant. For example, they warned that eating poultry meat does raise cholesterol levels in those who consume it, but that cholesterol is composed primarily of large molecules that are much less dangerous than small molecules, and therefore the results are less significant than total levels would indicate.