Cool! Hopefully people will give up red meat so there will be more available for me!!!
Seriously though, thanks for trying to save my life with your vegetarian/vegan diet advice....not. Since when has this forum become the "vegetarianism will save the world" forum?
I am a meat eater so yes, I disagree with the study. There are way too many variables they didn't account for to make a blanket statement that red meat increases your risk of dying. All humans have a 100% risk of dying. The lead researcher said, "We should move to a more plant-based diet," said lead researcher Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Did he have this opinion before he began his study? Most of the studies you see in the news every few days are complete BS. If you read into how they conduct these studies you will see for yourself.
It sounds like the researchers didn't investigate other variables such as the quality of the meat (grassfed vs. grainfed), the level of exercise of the participants, lifestyle of the participants, or other foods in their diets.
The standard American diet (SAD) is terribly unhealthy. If you remove the meat from the SAD you are still left with an absolutely terrible way of eating, so to simply point the blame at meat is irresponsible and misleading. The SAD, without meat, is still full of GMO's, terrible vegetable oils, gluten, grains, sugar, HFCS, hydrogenated oils, soy, and salt. Out of all of the things I just listed they are going to simply blame red meat?
I'm going to agree with you vegetarians that most meat in the supermarket is of poor quality, full of antibiotics and hormones, and the animals weren't raised in ideal conditions. That's why I don't eat common supermarket meat. 90% of the meat I eat was either raised on a ranch where I work, purchased from friends that raised it on their ranch, or I shot it myself with my rifle, shotgun, or bow. The meat I eat is the highest quality meat available and the animals are raised in the absolute best conditions possible (the cattle and lamb are practically wild).
If you don't agree with factory farming and want to put a stop to it the best thing you can do is NOT stop buying and eating meat, but rather to buy meat from the ranchers that raise their animals the right way. You should support the ranchers that are raising animals on pasture, free from antibiotics and hormones. This will produce more positive change in the meat industry than to simply stop buying meat.
Most vegetarians probably eat more vegetables and are more concerned with their health than those eating the SAD. So if the average vegetarian appears healthier than the average American eating the SAD, does that mean meat is the problem? Vegetarians all say "yes" but someone looking it objectively would say "not so fast." The reality is there are way too many variables to account for that you can't even make a comparison, and you definitely can't say meat is the problem.
It would be nearly impossible to conduct a real study that took all of the variables into account.
Please don't try to point me towards the China Study, and quinoa can suck it in my opinion.
Full disclosure: I eat paleo and work on an organic farm and a cattle ranch.