Choose Chicken Over Beef To Cut Stroke Risk - Study
Posted by Unknown in Beef, Chicken, Health Issues, Meat, Research and Studies on Sunday 27 January 2013
(Reuters)
- While a high-protein diet may have health benefits, not all protein
is equal -- eating lots of red meat raises the risk of having a stroke
while poultry lowers it, according to a U.S. study.
"The
main message from this paper is that the type of protein or the protein
package is really important for the risk of stroke," Frank Hu at the
Harvard School of Public Health said of the study, which was published
in the journal Stroke.
"We have to consider protein in the context of the foods."
Hu
and a team of researchers collected data from two massive health
surveys that tracked nearly 130,000 men and women from roughly middle
age to their senior and elderly years.
Over the 20-some years of the study, nearly 1,400 men and more than 2,600 women had a stroke.
To
see what influence different types of dietary protein had on the risk
of stroke, the researchers divided up the people in the study based on
how much red meat, poultry, fish, dairy and other sources of protein
they typically ate each day.
Men
who ate more than two servings of red meat each day, which was at the
high end of the meat eaters, had a 28 percent increased risk of stroke
compared to men who on average had a third of a serving of red meat each
day, the low end of the meat eaters.
Women
who ate nearly two servings of red meat a day had a 19 percent higher
risk of stroke than women who ate less than half a serving each day.
Swapping
in one serving of poultry lowered stroke risk by 27 percent, a serving
of nuts or fish was linked to a 17 percent drop, and a serving of dairy
dropped the risk by 10 to 11 percent.
A
serving of red meat was considered to be 113 to 170 grams (4 to 6 oz)
of beef, or a hamburger patty. A serving of poultry was considered to be
113 grams.
People
who ate the most chicken or turkey each day, about a half serving for
women and three-quarters of a serving for men, had a 13 percent reduced
risk of stroke compared with those who ate barely more than a serving a
day.
Researchers
did not prove that beef is to blame for the increased number of
strokes, but Adam Bernstein, lead author of the study, said it could be
that the fat and iron in red meat play a role.
An
earlier study led by Susanna Larsson at the Karolinska Institute in
Stockholm, Sweden, also found that eating red meat had a link to the
risk of stroke.
"I
do not think that poultry has been considered as a protein source that
might lower the risk of stroke. This is new," Larsson told Reuters
Health in an email.
One
surprise was that fish seemed to offer no protection against stroke,
although Bernstein said it was possible that the benefits of fish depend
on how it's served.
This entry was posted on Sunday 27 January 2013 at 10:54 and is filed under Beef, Chicken, Health Issues, Meat, Research and Studies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response.
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