Thursday, March 05, 2015

An Apology to Carolyn Kallio

In the earlier days of this blog I once wrote a piece that was highly critical of the very pro-beef messages being put forward by then Beef Information Centre registered dietitian Carolyn Kallio.

My view on beef at the time was that it carried with it more risk than I now think the evidence actually supported. I don't think I took enough time to read the red meat studies with sufficiently critical glasses and instead trusted others' opinions without doing my own truly due diligence. At the time I was concerned about increased cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease risks with red meat consumption, and while there may well be some slight risks to red meat not shared by other protein sources (especially with processed red meats), my take was overblown.

I've written more positive pieces on red meat since then (including this one on how it's almost certainly not going to kill you if consumed moderately), and I think too for the most part my writing style has softened over the years, and while I can't change the past, I can correct it.

Carolyn, I'm sorry. I was wrong both in how I interpreted the literature, and also in how I wrote about your work, and I have deleted that post from my blog.