red meat | Zoe Harcombe

Why hasn’t my healthy diet cut my cholesterol?

Written by Zoë on June 30, 2012 - 29 Comments
Categories: Conflict, Gov. Policy, Media comments

Tuesday’s Daily Mail has a section called “Good Health” and the resident GP answering questions is Dr Martin Scurr. On Tuesday 26th June 2012, Susan Bence emailed in to say: “Twelve months ago, I had a cholesterol test that indicated a higher than acceptable cholesterol level of 5.5. I took immediate action, lost one-and-a-half stone [...]

29 Comments

An apple a day does (not) keep the doctor away – more bad science

Written by Zoë on April 29, 2012 - 5 Comments
Categories: Media comments, Research

I love the Mail! I would have a fraction of the diet and obesity stories to comment on that I do without it. This blog post comes from today’s Mail on Sunday – from the health section in Review (29/4/2012). Described as “Why should we eat five a day? And is butter bad? A food [...]

5 Comments

Red meat & mortality & the usual bad science – Part 2

Written by Zoë on April 9, 2012 - 10 Comments
Categories: Media comments, Research

I blogged on March 12 2012 about this press release about an article in the Articles of Internal Medicine published on the same day. The article now appears to be unavailable on free view. On March 20, I emailed the author listed for personal correspondence (frank.hu@channing.harvard.edu) with the following query: Dear Dr Hu Please can [...]

10 Comments

Red meat & mortality & the usual bad science

Written by Zoë on March 13, 2012 - 112 Comments
Categories: Media comments, Research

The media lit up on the evening of Monday March 12th as a press release was issued about an article in the Archives of Internal Medicine published that day. The BBC were among the first to pick up the story and the story was featured extensively on BBC Breakfast TV and Radio 4 on Tuesday [...]

112 Comments

Red meat & diabetes?

Written by Zoë on August 12, 2011 - 6 Comments
Categories: Research

There is an article widely reported in the media today (11 August 2011). The original research was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. You can see the abstract for free and the article then costs $12. I bought the article, so that I can comment on the full picture and not the abstract [...]

6 Comments

Red meat & cancer & very bad journalism

Written by Zoë on February 25, 2011 - 10 Comments
Categories: Gov. Policy, Media comments

I am struggling to think of a diet & health story, which has been reported worse than the one dominating the press this week – and there tends to be at least one in the press every day. The newspapers seem to think that “artery-clogging” is an adjective to precede either, or both, of the [...]

10 Comments