"WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR HEART DISEASE?"

This is quite a damning development for animal protein in this month's American Journal of Epidemiology: "Older women who eat a relatively large amount of protein from red meat or dairy products may have an elevated risk of dying from heart disease, the results of a large study suggest." Yep, pretty large - almost 30,000 postmenopausal women, and note that the difference wasn't in the amount of protein but where it comes from. "Those who reported the highest intake of protein from red meat and dairy products had a roughly 40 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease over the next 15 years compared with women with the lowest intake of these foods." It's spelled out even more clearly after the article suggests minimizing red meat and dairy and opting for, say, chicken or fish: "Better still, perhaps, would be vegetable protein sources, such as beans, nuts, tofu and peanut butter; the study found that women with the highest intakes of these foods had a 30 percent lower risk of heart disease death than women with the lowest intakes." And in case you didn't get the "low-carb" connection, they spell that out too: "The findings, say researchers, call into question the long-term safety of high-protein diets -- at least the ones that don't distinguish the protein in steak and cream from that in tofu and nuts." The article also notes that "a woman who opts for two servings of red meat every day instead of a similar number of calories from carbs would have a 44 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease over the next 15 years. A similar pattern emerged when the researchers looked at dairy foods, including milk, cream, ice cream, yogurt and cheese."

Meat and Milk: Heart disease central. Could it be any clearer?