Big news, red and processed meats are now OK. Another example of how the news and the drive of researchers to publish is making us crazy. We all remember the butter bad, margarine good mess or eggs bad, no eggs ok. Health news is designed to be something for everyone. You can find support for anything you think you might like to try. Entertaining I suppose and lots of jobs are created but if you are a patient, particularly a liver patient, this is all dangerous.
Here is the latest bombshell that all the talking heads are exploding over.
Red and processed meat are OK to eat, controversial new guidelines claim.
Since you are here you must be interested in liver disease so keep that in mind. One of the irritating aspects of so much research is they speak about heart, diabetes, and cancer then generalize the comments as though the information is good for everyone.
A major issue here is saturated fat and the claim it is not an issue. Well, for what they studied that is true. The heart, for example burns almost nothing but fat and does pretty well with any of them. Diabetes is a sugar issue and cancer is vastly complex but liver cancer is kind of in a class by itself and they don't address that.
When you think about the workload of the liver this kind of study should come to mind.
It gets pretty complicated but the reason we recommend limiting red meat is because the fat in beef tallow leans toward stearic and palmitic acids which are more inflammatory than chicken fat which has more linoleic acid, an omega 6 oil, and is easier on your liver. With regard to dietary fat our goal is to have more oleic acid found, principally in olive oil, An interesting summary of fats is found in Wikipedia under saturated fats.
As you think about the breathless reporting, keep in mind that managing liver disease has no magic answer. It is countless small decisions every day with the goal of putting as little burden on the laboring organ as possible. As you think about your protein source, for example, there is a difference for you between red meat and chicken. Do we have absolute proof of these relationships? Perhaps not, but health is a whole body experience so when the reporters come along with the next BIG NEWS, remember that they are selling advertising not trying to find the best information for you.
We can't give you any medical advice so you have to sort these things out with your care team, but so far too many of them will just say go lose weight and do not explore the small details that can be important to you. Some of these links will at least give you questions to ask. We have quite a few links to research here
https://www.fattyliverfoundation.org/science
In the meantime we hope you are as well as you can be.
