Eye Health related to General Overall Health
Too Much Beef Puts Eyes “At Steak” for Age Related Macular Degeneration
A study¹ published in The American Journal of Epidemiology in April 2009 reported that choosing chicken over steak is healthy for the eyes! It may actually lower the risk for developing Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD – a degenerative eye disease that may lead to severe loss of central vision in aging adults) by 50%. The study examined 6,734 subjects between the ages of 58 and 69 who lived in Melbourne, Australia. The study was conducted over a 13 year period.
The researchers concluded that individuals who ate red meat 10 times per week or more were 50% more likely to develop AMD in later years. Subjects who ate chicken 3 times per week, however, cut their risk for this potentially site-threatening eye disease by nearly 50%.
There are still many variables that the study did not take into account, such as the type or quality of the red meat eaten during the study and what other types of food the subjects ate or didn’t eat. But, according to Dr. E. Michael Geiger, the industry relations chairman of the Optometric Nutrition Society, “One of the factors associated with AMD is that there is less nutrition flowing to the macula and less cellular waste being removed…causing a lowering of central visual acuity. Some nutraceuticals that we advise for AMD are intended to increase blood circulation.”²
According to Dr. Geiger, this and other studies recommend that red meat intake be limited to once a week.³
