Confused by the Red Meat Headlines? Read This

Recent headlines blanketing news outlets, such as "Red and Processed Meat are OK" and "There's No Need to Eat Less Meat," surprised most Americans and infuriated most doctors and nutritionists.

These headlines were based on a highly controversial dietary guideline published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. That guideline gave a stamp of approval for continuing to eat red and processed meats without restrictions, despite major health organizations' advice to cut down on burgers and bologna. Their reasoning? The authors say the connection between eating less red meat and improved health is weak, and at best small. And, they say, people like their bacon cheeseburgers, so it's going to be hard to get them to give those up.

[SEE: Plant-Based Diet Ideas.]

As if people aren't confused enough by contradictory diet advice! But these scientists seem to take it all one step further -- abandoning patients altogether by explicitly giving up on their ability to make better dietary choices.

Here's why the new guideline is wrong:

Scientists behind the current analysis claim that prior attempts to look at meat consumption were flawed because those studies didn't establish a direct cause-and-effect between eating more red and processed meat and poor health outcomes. Perhaps meat was the innocent bystander, they say, and the true culprit was the French fries or soda meat-eaters were consuming along with their hot dogs or hamburgers.

But the new analysis relies on data that could be equally flawed. For example, these researchers leaned heavily on data from one large study, the Women's Health Initiative Dietary Modification trial. That study wasn't even designed to test the effects of meat intake. It was designed to evaluate the long-term health effects of reducing fat intake. Yes, the women who consumed less fat also consumed approximately 1.4 fewer servings of red meat per week, but this represented a mere 20% reduction -- and what was substituted was not analyzed, meaning it could have been candy. Plus, the women in the WHIDM trial were only studied for an average of eight years. That's like studying the effects of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day instead of one and a half packs for eight years, seeing little difference in health effects and concluding that everyone might as well smoke two packs.

And the idea that we should just recommend staying the course because it's too hard to change habits? Putting aside the ethical component, physicians who use food as medicine know that dietary change is possible. People are willing to change what they eat when presented with options that meet taste benchmarks and can be easily incorporated into their lives. This is why plant-based burgers are flying off the shelves: Not only are they plant-based, but they also taste like the burgers people grew up with, and they're just as easy to buy and cook.

[See: How to Avoid a Second Heart Attack.]

Belittling the potential health effects of small dietary changes is a disservice to patients as well. A randomized controlled clinical trial recently presented at American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions demonstrated that just substituting a couple of snacks per day with versions of the same items made with higher quality ingredients can yield significant, at times medication-level, health improvements. Overall LDL ( bad cholesterol) reduction was 9%, which, if it were realized across the whole U.S. population would drop heart disease from the #1 killer to the #2 killer.

And given the cumulative effects of eating food multiple times per day every day, what might not even appear significant in the short term could turn out to be highly impactful over the long haul. Yet in this case, while relying heavily on outcomes from one trial that did not follow its subjects for a lifetime, these scientists made sweeping recommendations about lifetime meat consumption. This belies common sense.

It's worth noting that a multitude of scientific bodies -- from the American College of Cardiology to the World Health Organization -- have concluded that eating red and processed meat does in fact cause health problems, and a growing body of evidence points to current dietary patterns as being major contributors to premature death and the worldwide epidemic of chronic disease. But what's most concerning is that the recent guidelines fly in the face of what we can all readily observe.

[TIPS: How to Lower Cholesterol Naturally]

There are communities of people around the globe who enjoy exceptional healthy longevity, where reaching 100 years of age is not unusual and where people experience 80% less heart disease, 75% less cancer and two-thirds less dementia. Guess what these people eat? A whole food, plant-based diet. That means beans, greens, nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables and grains -- all in their most whole and unprocessed forms. Meat consumption is saved for celebrations and processed meat is almost unknown. Doesn't it make sense to follow their example?

Especially since the overwhelming body of published science favors this type of dietary approach. For example, diets rich in fiber from whole grains, alpha-linolenic acid ( omega-3 fatty acid that comes from seeds such as walnuts, chia and flax) and fruits and vegetables in general have been consistently associated with lower rates of heart attack, stroke and dying from heart disease. None of these nutrients are found in meat -- red, processed or otherwise.

Questionable science like the red meat study have made complex and confusing what is actually straightforward and simple. Indeed, the best dietary advice that summarizes everything we know to be true about optimal nutrition comes from food writer Michael Pollan and is only seven words long: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

This means eating foods that your great-great-grandmother would recognize (no sugary cereals, soda or hot dogs), avoiding stuffing yourself and favoring whole plant-based items because that's where the most important nutrients are.

The guideline that gives us the green light to eat as much red and processed meat as we want because it assumes we're unable to change what we do may have garnered some headlines. But it abandons patients. And, as with any piece of advice, if it sounds just plain wrong, it probably is.

Disclosure: Dr. Elizabeth Klodas is the founder of Step One Foods, a simple, non-pharmaceutical food-based option to help reduce cholesterol and positively impact cardiovascular health.

Elizabeth Klodas, MD, FACC is a preventive cardiologist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She completed her cardiology fellowships with both the Mayo Graduate School and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and has been in clinical practice for over 20 years. She is the author of a book for patients, "Slay the Giant: The Power of Prevention in Treating Heart Disease," and served as the founding editor of Cardiosmart.org, the patient education website of the American College of Cardiology. Having authored dozens of scientific articles, she remains involved in clinical research, is an active member of the Nutrition and Lifestyle Workgroup of the ACC and is a highly sought out national speaker. She is also the founder of Step One Foods, dedicated to facilitating the use of "food as medicine" in the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease.