These days, you never read social media posts or hear cocktail-party chatter in which people rave about their balanced, omnivorous diet. Instead, everyone seems to be following some sort of restrictive diet, whether low-carb, intermittent fasting or vegan/vegetarian. Red meat is about as popular as sugar. But that need not be the case, according to a recent, randomized, controlled trial.
The earliest studies finding health benefits in the Mediterranean-style diet — which is predominantly plant-based and uses olive oil as the main source of fat — had been conducted with coastal Greeks, who eat little red meat. Later positive Mediterranean diet studies from Spain, where red meat consumption is higher, intrigued researchers at Purdue University and the University of Texas. They decided to focus on heart-risk outcomes of subjects consuming different amounts of lean, unprocessed red meat while otherwise following a healthy Mediterranean diet.
The paper was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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