Research
Macro partitioning
Red meat consumption does not significantly differ from various comparison diets combined in its effect on total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, apolipoproteins, or blood pressure.
Eating red meat does not inherently worsen your cholesterol or blood pressure if you replace it with a variety of other foods. The key is not just removing meat, but understanding what you put in its place. If you swap meat for plants, you may see better cholesterol results.
GoodRefutesHIGH confidence
There were no significant differences between red meat and all comparison diets combined for changes in blood concentrations of total, low-density lipoprotein, or high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, apolipoproteins A1 and B, or blood pressure.
Why this rating
Meta-analysis of 36 RCTs.
Source
Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials of Red Meat Consumption in Comparison With Various Comparison Diets on Cardiovascular Risk Factors
Marta Guasch‐Ferré et al. · Circulation · 2019
DOI 10.1161/circulationaha.118.035225
Meta-analysis · 36 studiesCited 297×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Substituting red meat with high-quality plant protein sources (legumes, soy, nuts) leads to more favorable changes in total and LDL cholesterol compared to red meat consumption.Good
- Substituting red meat with fish or low-quality carbohydrates results in less favorable lipid changes compared to substituting with high-quality plant proteins.Good
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