Can anyone shed some light on this topic or know where it even came from as there are zero references.
Those on high protein diets, were they just average Joes doing little exercise and not looking after what they eat who just happen to have “high” protein consumption or were they people exercising regularly and eating quality meats as part of a balanced diet consisting of fruit and vegetables? It doesn’t differentiate and there are significantly more people in the first category than the second.
[quote]tsantos wrote:
Those on high protein diets, were they just average Joes doing little exercise and not looking after what they eat who just happen to have “high” protein consumption or were they people exercising regularly and eating quality meats as part of a balanced diet consisting of fruit and vegetables? It doesn’t differentiate and there are significantly more people in the first category than the second.
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Good points. I’m picturing middle-aged guys who are putting down 3 or 4 brats or a big steak with chips, washed down with a beer, thereby consuming a “high protein” diet
First off if you start with Americans who get 5 times the ideal limit for omega 6s, and high sugar foods, then who knows how anything else is going to interact. I don’t know the details of the study but meat eaters as a group smoke more and drink more. Studies have been finding for 50 years that high polyunsaturated fatty acid plant oils INCREASE cancer compared to high animal fat diets and that high SUGAR diets are the only dietary factor that correlates to heart attacks (the other main factors being smoking and endurance running beyond 30 km per week by the way).
So it looks like they are going after the meat eating which we know tends to include more smokers, and to those who drink alcohol and soft drinks, and that vegetarians rarely smoke.
Also the article even admits that it is not “protein” and fish has no negative effect. So it may be more a sign of the quality and what we do with animal meat in America with nitrates, and smoking, and breaded and fried or between two slices of bread with fries and a coke.
So its crap. It basically shows that over a 20 year span, those who ate a high protein diet had a higher rate of cancer.
The free radical damage that causes cancer is caused by smoking, excessive oxygen burning activity, and excessive polyunsaturated fatty acids (mainly Omega 6). Now I admit that with these 3 “causes” that the effect of animal protein on growth hormone could accelerate the growth rate of cancer if it gets started. If you smoke, run over 20 miles a week all the time, or eat a high omega 6 diet then you are so messed up that you are probably better off not eating protein or doing anything else that promotes anabolism.
How about “running a marathon is as bad for you as smoking 20 packs of cigarettes” There is a federal agenda to push omega 6 fats now because they know that added sugar is about the only thing worse, and companies can still get people to eat processed food by adding oils and calling them healthy fats in place of adding sugar. They are telling us to eat 3x too much of one bad thing so we wont eat 3x too much of something that is even worse.
I’ve found the original article and downloaded the pdf. Don’t know how to upload that though.
Seems to be done by good institutions with a good sample size of over six thousand BUT only looks at over fifties and actually found that over the age of sixty five a high protein diet is beneficial for mortality. So it really only found negatives in the fifty to sixty five age group.
Also there is no mention of controlling for the type of food eaten. As others have said there is a huge difference between grilled chicken and processed burger meat.
Interesting topic though.
Good, more meat for me.
The high protein diet works at ages where all the fatties are already dead, which supports the idea that the lean protein eaters were fine all along and the fatties are jacking up the data.
The press this story has got is crazy. Front page of all the newspapers I read.
Here is a nice rebuttal from the NHS no less:
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/03March/Pages/high-protein-diet-may-be-harmful-for-middle-aged.aspx
It also fails to mention what these people are NOT eating, especially fruits and vegetables. So of course if all you ate was fatty meat and fatty cheese, you are going to be at higher risk. Balance everything out with exercise, fruits, and vegetables and all of a sudden you have no problems.
As always with things of this nature (articles that make for controversial soundbites), I ignored all of the mass media reports and went straight to the original article. In the discussion, the authors point out the following drawback to their study:
“There are some limitations to our study, which should be acknowledged. First, the use of a single 24 hr dietary recall fol lowed by up to 18 years of mortality assessment has the potential of misclassifying dietary practice if the 24 hr period was not representative of a participant’s normal day. However, 93% of our sample reported that the 24 hr period represented a normal day. We also include this variable as a control in our analysis. Furthermore, the 24 hr dietary recall has been shown to be a valid approach to identify the “usual diet” of subjects [citations omitted for clarity]. While we must admit that the lack of longitudinal data on dietary consumption is a potential limitation of our study, study of dietary consistency over six years among older people revealed little change over time in dietary habits (Garry et al.,1989).”
Here’s a link to the study: Low Protein Intake Is Associated with a Major Reduction in IGF-1, Cancer, and Overall Mortality in the 65 and Younger but Not Older Population: Cell Metabolism
To summarize, this was NOT a longitudinal study; they asked for a 24-hour recall of all foods eaten exactly ONCE, and then looked up who died after 18 years. So, there’s a major assumption that what people ate was consistent over those 18 years. Plus, as others have mentioned, they do not factor in exercise at all. Academically, it’s probably an interesting result, but I highly doubt it’s applicability to heavy lifters (or any kind of regular exerciser, for that matter).
[quote]Kvetchy wrote:
The press this story has got is crazy. Front page of all the newspapers I read.
Here is a nice rebuttal from the NHS no less:
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/03March/Pages/high-protein-diet-may-be-harmful-for-middle-aged.aspx
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Thank god for that. I actually subscribe to the RSS feed, it helps me calm down after I see some stupid research paper in the news headlines.
I’ve done a bit of stats in my time in economics field but when I read research papers to do with medicine I’m always shocked at how bad they are.
I think that is mainly because these badly thought out pieces of research hit the headlines more often.
It’s completely ridiculous. The study that started this path to Nonsense-land is located here, published last August…Deficiency of insulin-like growth factor 1 attenuates aging-induced changes in hepatic function: role of autophagy - PubMed
The three things you need to know about these studies:
- Mice that are genetically altered to have IGF-1 deficiency tend to live longer.
- Animal-based protein causes IGF-1 expression.
- IGF-1 expression MIGHT increase your likelihood of cancer, but it’s impossible to say without more info.
Sooo…would you rather be IGF-1 deficient from not eating meat, thereby making it harder to lose fat and gain muscle? Or would you rather suppress IGF-1 by getting protein only from tofu and legumes and be a weak, skinny, pathetic person who has a distant chance of living a little longer if nothing else kills you first?
The red meat studies that showed you were more likely to get colon cancer are flawed as well. It’s been shown that if you control for processed meat and charred/BBQ’d meat there is no significant difference.
[quote]Juggs wrote:
It’s completely ridiculous. The study that started this path to Nonsense-land is located here, published last August…Deficiency of insulin-like growth factor 1 attenuates aging-induced changes in hepatic function: role of autophagy - PubMed
The three things you need to know about these studies:
- Mice that are genetically altered to have IGF-1 deficiency tend to live longer.
- Animal-based protein causes IGF-1 expression.
- IGF-1 expression MIGHT increase your likelihood of cancer, but it’s impossible to say without more info.
Sooo…would you rather be IGF-1 deficient from not eating meat, thereby making it harder to lose fat and gain muscle? Or would you rather suppress IGF-1 by getting protein only from tofu and legumes and be a weak, skinny, pathetic person who has a distant chance of living a little longer if nothing else kills you first?
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And again I will reiterate that while IGF-1 (as well as eating a maintenance level of calories for that matter) may speed up the growth of tumors, the initial tumor activation has been shown to be linked to peroxidation damage (ie high omega-6s, high PUFAs in general, smoking, SUGAR, and a high amount of oxidative exercise, starting at about 25+ miles run a week as an example). If you don’t do those things, you pretty much stomp out cancer before it starts to be affected by “growth factors”.
I smell an association with a Vegan or Animal Rights group.