Is red meat bad for your heart? This may depend on who funded the study.

In a journal published last week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, scientists arrived at a worrying conclusion. Red meat seemed healthier in studies funded by the red meat industry.

Of course, this is not surprising for anyone who knows nutrition research, which often has conflicts of interest due to a lack of federal funding. But this is yet another example of how industry studies could shape the way people understand, and potentially misunderstanding the health consequences of what they eat.

Previous research funded by the sugar industry, for example, has minimized the relationship between sugar and health problems such as obesity and heart disease. And studies funded by the alcohol industry have suggested that moderate consumption could be part of a healthy diet.

Miguel López Moreno, a researcher at the University of Francisco de Vitoria in Spain who led the new analysis, said in an email that he wanted to know if similar problems occurred with research on unprocessed red meat. The transformed meats such as bacon and sausage have always been linked to the risk of heart disease, he said, but evidence of unprocessed red meats such as steaks and pork chops have been “much more mixed”.

The question is appropriate because influential people like the Secretary in the United States of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and podcasters like Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman have favored favorably for meat food regimes and minimized the risks for the health of saturated fat – to public health experts.

We have long known that consumption of saturated fats, which are abundant in red meat, have been associated with cardiovascular disease. So, what is this new observation tells us about how financial interests can shape how people understand what is good for them?