Monday, April 08, 2013

Good News For Lent

Well if your like me that early enthusiasm for the Great Fast has begone to wane and it's starting to get old. This however should cheer you up and add new vigor to your fast.

Red meat is a killer. Seriously. That cheeseburger you are craving will shorten your life. So says a new study which concluded that red meat IN ANY QUANTITY is dangerous to your health. It's getting so bad I'm starting to think that no matter what I do I might die one day.

Read about it here and please pass the rice and beans.

5 comments:

Ingemar said...

I have my suspicions, but I will read it. Will get back to you afterwards.

Ingemar said...

~~~Carol Koprowski, a professor of preventive medicine at USC's Keck School of Medicine who wasn't involved in the research, cautioned that it can be hard to draw specific conclusions from a study like this because there can be a lot of error in the way diet information is recorded in food frequency questionnaires, which ask subjects to remember past meals in sometimes grueling detail.

But Pan said the bottom line was that there was no amount of red meat that's good for you.

"If you want to eat red meat, eat the unprocessed products, and reduce it to two or three servings a week," he said. "That would have a huge impact on public health."~~~

I suspected that it was modern agriculture, rather than red meat qua red meat, that was the biggest factor.

You can limit the risks posed by red meat in general by picking leaner cuts. Also, fish and chicken are more "efficient" sources of animal protein.

At any rate, I expect the CrossFitters and Mark's Daily Apple crowd to get on this article like flies on a freshly made cow pie.

LV said...

Who can afford red meat these days? Steak is $10 a pound, hamburger meat is $4 a pound. In any case, whenever I read "good for the planet" and "meatless Monday" in the same article, I pretty much tune out.

August said...

I tried following Greek Orthodox lent rules probably two years ago. Thankfully, when the massive depression hit, I knew it was because of the food. Otherwise I might have shot myself. The almost vegan thing is obviously more dangerous to me than red meat.
These studies are a joke. The associations tend to occur because the prevailing health advice is to avoid red meat, so a red meat avoider is likely to be more health conscious than red meat eaters. The paleo-ancestral health type movement is still too small to change these numbers, so they a basically coming up with the variation between the impulsive versus the people who are actually trying. I firmly believe the stuff that is killing the impulsive, in terms of food, are the Omega-6 industrial oils, wheat, soy, and possibly milk proteins found in everything else the impulsive are likely to cram into their mouths. An entire industry is devoted to manipulating our senses of taste and smell, yet red meat- something that has been food since we've been in existence- is the culprit? Bull.

CJ said...

Just wait a few months. There will be another study that says the exact opposite. I still haven't found any dietary advice better than "moderation in all things . . ."