The Casual Vegan

Red meat kills you. It’s all over the Internet today, thanks to Barry Popkin’s nutritional epidemiologic study. The study is available for free, and you can read and answer the questionnaire for yourself. Be warned, it’s 144 questions long and full of things you don’t really know the answers to such as: “how many bananas have you eaten in the past 12 months?” I can’t even tell you how many bananas I ate this week, let alone in the past year!

Here is a quote from the study you won’t get from the AP.

Subjects who consumed more red meat tended to be married, more likely of non-Hispanic white ethnicity, more likely a current smoker, have a higher body mass index, and have a higher daily intake of energy, total fat, and saturated fat, and they tended to have lower education and physical activity levels and lower fruit, vegetable, fiber, and vitamin supplement intakes.

Now the quote you will read:

In contrast, higher white meat consumption was associated with a small decrease in total and cancer mortality in men and women.

red meat is bad, but white meat is not?

T. Colin Campbell, author of the China Study, has some remarkable insights about how to understand studies which have stunning results like this. Higher consumption of chicken does not reduce your risk of heart disease. This study was done exclusively on a population of heavy meat eaters. In 600,000+ surveys there was no attempt to include vegans, and the vegans had no way to identify their diet differences to the researchers.  The same study performed on a sample that included people with whole food plant based diets would come to drastic conclusions about the health of all meat.

Anytime a new study says something like “decrease in total and cancer mortality” you have to ask yourself a decrease compared to whom? Yes, chicken eaters were better off than beef eaters, but both died from cancer and heart disease at alarming rates.

It’s time to consider another way to eat: Eat meat weekly instead of daily. If your eating meat everyday, you simply can’t eat enough fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and whole grains.

Related posts:

1. Preventing Heart Disease
2. The Cancer Project
3. George Laroque Vegan
4. The Friendly Vegan
5. Is Milk Bad for You?

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