Gut microbes may explain red meat's link to heart disease, study finds

For generations, the heart's quarrel with red meat was blamed on saturated fat and cholesterol — a tidy story that science has now complicated. A study tracking nearly 4,000 adults over three decades suggests the more consequential actors may be invisible ones: the microbes living in the human gut, whose metabolic byproducts when digesting red meat appear to drive cardiovascular risk more powerfully than blood cholesterol or pressure ever did. The finding does not absolve red meat so much as deepen the indictment, redirecting attention from the fat on the plate to the ecosystem within us that