Scientist to shine a light on the importance of red meat in diets

Headlines warning that red meat is damaging to health tell only half the story, delegates to next week’s Oxford Farming Conference (OFC) will hear.

Professor Alice Stanton, a clinician-scientist in Cardiovascularpharmacology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, is set to get behind the sound-bites and outline the real science underlyingtheimportance of meat in human nutrition when she gives the conference’s prestigious Science Lecture.

“Red meat has been linked to a higher incidence of cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure, and to certain cancers; what should be communicated is that red meat is good, in moderation,” she will tell the conference which runs from 7-9 January.

Professor Stanton will centre her speech around diet and human health, however, with her strong understanding of meat production and farming practices, she will also touch on the importance of methane reduction as a crucial part of farming’s red meat future.

“I don’t believe that we are going to tackle climate change mitigation by adopting the Lancet Commission’s Planetary Health Diet guidance,” she says.

In the ‘Lancet Report’, the 37-scientists who authored the document stated that vegetarian and vegan diets were two healthy options within their proposed guidance of ‘half a plate of fruits, vegetables and nuts, and half of plant proteins, unsaturated plant oils and modest quantities of meat and dairy.

She says that these changes are not feasible as solutions to climate change, adding that, from a health perspective, “those eating vegan and vegetarian diets are likely to be eating highly processed, high salt and high chemical inclusion foods, so it is highly likely that these people will suffer from the same implications as from eating other processed foods.”