Why Is This Prestigious Medical Journal Encouraging People to Eat as Much Meat as They Want?

Alternate guidelines are a reversal of the findings of the global public health community

Mark Bittman
Heated

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Tom McCorkle for The Washington Post via Getty Images

On Monday afternoon, the journal Annals of Internal Medicine lifted an embargo on a controversial series of reviews that encourages adults to continue to eat current average consumption levels of red and processed meat — three to four times a week.

Conducted by researchers from Dalhousie University and McMaster University in Canada, along with the Spanish and Polish Cochrane Centers, the reviews and nutrition guidelines comprise a series of articles that the journal revealed to select members of the medical community and journalists under embargo last week.

While the information was embargoed, many heads of research institutes, chief physicians, professors, and others in the field have been trying to intervene regarding the publication of the material: They are alarmed that a self-appointed group can issue dietary “guidelines” to the public in a prominent medical journal. And they are concerned that the so-called guidelines are at odds not only with those of the global public health community and the Eat Lancet Commission Report — but with the researchers’ own data.

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