Sunday, March 29, 2009

To be or not to be... the inner battle over red meat v. longevity

For all the items I was sorry I didn't have time to blog more about earlier this week, the most important had to be the latest study showing the link between eating red meat and dying sooner. It spawned, as you undoubtedly read elsewhere, a tremendous amount of response. I won't even try to mention, never mind post, all the links; just do a Google search.

But one commentary that I particularly enjoyed was a little editorial in the Baltimore Sun this weekend. It captures the sentiment that so many Americans are really starting to have to come to grips with, the way the nation finally had to come to grips with its smoking habit after the Surgeon General's warning came out in 1964: no matter how much you may enjoy eating red meat... and no matter what excuses you can come up with to justify your cravings... it is just plain bad for you and if you want to live longer you just have to stop.

1 comment:

Ana said...

I recently blogged about the ex-vegetarians I know. These are people who went back to eating meat, I believe, for "health reasons."

I think that there is a propaganda campaign out there by physicians to convince people that they can only get certain vitamins and minerals from meat. I don't mean it's a conspiracy, but I think it a mindset produced by medical schools (the same that promote the idea that any kind of animal research is justified to protect the almighty human). When your doctor tells you something, it takes a committed, independent individual to research the issue for themselves. One naturally assumes that the doctor is right.

This kind of thinking needs to stop at the medical level if we are to get people off their overdependence on meat.