Beef

It's the healthy choice for dinner:

New guidelines certain to be celebrated by enthusiasts of the carnivore diet and denounced by others as nutritional heresy recommend most adults shouldn’t worry about eating less red or processed meat.

The recommendations — which conflict with virtually every other in existence, including the latest iteration of Canada’s food guide — are based on studies involving millions of people. The authors found lowering red or processed meat consumption had little, and often-trivial effects in reducing the absolute risk for cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart attack, cancer, diabetes or death from any cause.

Researchers at Dalhousie and McMaster universities led the panel of international scientists. On the basis of four systematic reviews assessing the risks of red and processed meat, “we suggest that individuals continue their current consumption,” the authors write in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

“We cannot say with any certainty that eating red or processed meat causes cancer, diabetes or heart disease,” said Dr. Bradley Johnston, an associate professor of community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie, and lead author of the recommendations.

“This is not just another study of red and processed meat,” he said in a statement, “but a series of high quality systematic reviews resulting in recommendations we think are far more transparent, robust and reliable.”