The Doctor's Kitchen Podcast2 Jul 2025

#304 Is Red Meat Actually That Unhealthy? with Dr Kevin Maki PhD

If you ordered a steak at a restaurant are you essentially ordering a heart attack or a nutrient-rich whole food?

Few foods spark more debate than red meat. It’s been blamed for heart disease, cancer and diabetes, but some people praise it for being high in iron, zinc, vitamin B12 and quality protein. So, if you add red meat to your plate is it helpful or harmful?

Whether you eat meat or avoid it, I think you’ll find today’s conversation cuts through the noise of social media and clears up a lot of confusion in the nutrition space. I wanted to disentangle the obvious issues surrounding environmental concerns of eating animal products from today's discussion, and simply talk through the data as we have it. It’s given me a lot to think about when it comes to recommendations for people, as well as how concerned I would be about red meat consumption overall.

Today we’re chatting with researcher and academic Dr. Kevin Maki, PhD, who specialises in clinical studies on nutrition, metabolism, and chronic disease risk factors. He's also an Adjunct Professor at Indiana University School of Public Health, a Master and Past President of the National Lipid Association, and a Fellow of the American Heart Association and The Obesity Society. Dr. Maki has participated in over 300 clinical trials and published more than 250 scientific papers, books and book chapters.

You’re going to learn about:

Whether red meat is actually unhealthier than poultry
What red meat really does to your cholesterol, your blood pressure and your long-term health risk
Whether red meat is a source of unhealthy fats
Types of red meat and which ones are less healthy than others
How much red meat you can safely consume

We also talk about seed oils, plus high protein diets and their relationship to kidney disease, longevity and diabetes risk.

The 4 big takeaways I got from this episode were:

Moderate amounts (50g per day) of unprocessed lean red meat in the diet is fine
Diet quality and the addition of whole unprocessed foods is more important
High Protein is very important in middle aged and older adults
Beware of the 4 white poisons: Sugar, Salt, Saturated Fat and refined Starches

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