Expert Says WHO’s New Meat Recommendations Are ‘Political’

There’s ‘an ideological bent that drives a substantial amount of that,’ one researcher said.

The sign of the World Health Organization (WHO) at its headquarters in Geneva on March 5, 2021. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendation that people eat a diet low in animal-based foods containing saturated fats and high in grains and carbohydrates is based more on politics than nutrition science, according to an expert.

Kevin Bass, a researcher and doctoral student in medicine, told The Epoch Times that it appears the nutritional needs of the people it is supposed to be serving aren’t the only criteria shaping the WHO’s guidelines.

“I think there is a general push, a general move, to reduce red meat intake and make recommendations along those lines for overall planetary health,“ said Mr. Bass, adding that there’s ”an ideological bent that drives a substantial amount of that.”

“The WHO is very outdated with respect to its nutrition guidelines. ... It still advocates for low-fat diets,” he added. “No one takes that seriously anymore.”

In its most recent guidelines, the WHO stated that “consuming 10% or less of daily calories as saturated fatty acids reduces LDL cholesterol, is associated with reduced risk of all-cause mortality, and may be associated with reduced risk of coronary heart disease.”

The WHO’s push to get people to consume less meat in favor of carbs continued on July 17 when the organization put out a message on social media that people should avoid trans fats found in “meat and dairy foods from animals such as cows and sheep.”

Heart disease continues to be a serious problem and “the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency reported that “one person dies every 33 seconds from cardiovascular disease in the United States”; about 695,000 Americans died from heart disease in 2021, accounting for about one in every five deaths. Further, nearly half of Americans aged 20 years and above, around 122 million adults, are diagnosed with high blood pressure, according to the American Heart Association’s 2023 report.

However, much of the evidence linking the saturated fat found in animal products to heart disease has been found to be weak or, in some cases, debunked. Contrarily, some health experts pointed to sugar and carbohydrates as the culprits to heart disease and a range of metabolic health problems.

Meat Consumption Supposedly Linked to Rising Carbon Emissions

The WHO claimed in an Oct. 12 release that the consumption of meat has led to increased carbon emissions, causing a change in the weather that “is directly contributing to humanitarian emergencies from heatwaves, wildfires, floods, tropical storms, and hurricanes and they are increasing in scale, frequency, and intensity.”

The release continued that research “shows that 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly susceptible to climate change. Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress alone.”

Further, there appear to be several conflicts of interest between the WHO and at least one industry leader. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2019 alone provided 9.8 percent of the WHO’s total revenue, according to the organization’s website. Mr. Gates, who co-founded the startup of the imitation meat company Impossible Foods, insists synthetic beef is a necessary strategy to address climate change.

In February 2021, Mr. Gates told Technology Review: “I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time. Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.”

Mr. Bass says that while some science does exist that high consumption of red meat might lead to negative health outcomes, the WHO appears to have overstated the case against meat, creating a perfect storm of climate change politics that could have had the effect of distorting the science.

“The clincher ends up being the environmental and political perspective of trying to reduce red meat intake. Overall, those stars align,” said Mr. Bass. “And then people are like, well, we should definitely strongly state these recommendations even though the science on which they are based is not particularly strong and even though the clinical benefit of reducing red meat intake isn’t going to be particularly robust.”

Mr. Bass believes the results might be more bad than good for those following the WHO nutritional guidelines on meat.

“If you replace red meat with refined carbs and low-quality forms of other kinds of foods, then you are probably going to produce worse outcomes than if you just eat red meat,” he said.