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Eating Food Will Kill You It is now a proven fact that eating food—any kind of food—will kill you. No one who has eaten food in the past is alive today and everyone currently eating food will die. Therefore, those noble people who seek to save us from eating every kind of food that the earth provides should be hailed and saluted for their efforts to keep us alive. I say this as the son of a woman who taught the art of haute cuisine for over three decades and authored several cookbooks. That poor woman died at age 98 and I am convinced it was all that fabulous food that killed her. Ridiculous? YES! These thoughts were occasioned by word that two groups, the World Cancer Research Fund International, based in the United Kingdom, and the American Institute for Cancer Research, will likely announce that eating meat will give you some form of cancer at a press conference scheduled the same day as Halloween. Boo!
Bear in mind that at least 10,000 Americans on the average die every day from something, not infrequently just old age and the infirmities associated with it. If you live beyond age 85 or into your 90s, the odds of dying from something are pretty good. So why is it that meat is so often singled out as lethal? Well, for one thing, there are any number of vegetarian groups that, like some weird religious cult, flood the Internet and other media with fulminations against eating meat of any kind. A Google search for "Meat + Health" will turn up links to literally thousands of studies that proclaim that eating meat will cause breast, prostrate, colon, and other forms of cancers. That said, if you search all the studies, you will also find those that confirm that meat is as healthy a part of diet as anything else. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USDA) 2005 Food Guide and its Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension Eating Plan recommend two to three servings a week of lean meat. What so many of the anti-meat studies do not tell you is that the subjects of their studies were, as often as not, also exposed to other risk factors that might have contributed to whatever form of cancer is being cited. The correlation between eating meat and the cancer risk cited is a statistical conclusion, but not necessarily the actual cause. As often as not, if you read the abstract of these studies you will find mitigating phrases such as meat as a "suspected" cause and that those who have a diet high in meat "may" be "particularly" exposed. Now, I admire people who devote their lives to unraveling the mysteries of medical science, but I also know that when you do this for a living, you also have to keep finding correlations or find another job. I also know there are organizations whose funding and support is dependent on periodically announcing that just about anything you eat, from popcorn to fish, will kill you. My friend, Frank Murray, the author of dozens of books on nutrition and longtime contributing editor of Let’s Live magazine, once co-wrote an entire book, "You Must Eat Meat" with Max Ernest Jutte, MD. The other day I asked him what he thought of all the anti-meat efforts, and he replied that, "It stands to reason that if you eat a lot of highly-cooked meat, bacon, and meats full of nitrosamines, you need to take counter measures, for example, lots of vitamin C and vitamin E." You can either get these vitamins from the foods you eat or, like myself, take them as dietary supplements. According to Wikipedia, "Nitrosamines are found in many foodstuffs especially beer, fish, fish byproducts, and in meat and cheese products preserved with nitrite pickling salt. The US government established limits on the amount of nitrites used in meat products to decrease cancer risk in the population. There are also rules about adding ascorbic acid or related compounds to meat, because they inhibit nitrosamine formation." (Emphasis added) Let’s have a show of hands to see how many of you are going to stop drinking beer or eating either meat, fish, or cheese? The oldest rule of pharmacology regarding the level of threat from anything you injest is that the amount—the dose—is what determines the hazard. Potatos, for example, contain trace elements of arsenic, but not enough to kill you even you ate a truckload at one time. What people are rarely told these days is that meat is a great source of high quality proteins that a vegetarian diet is not able to provide. It also contains all the essential amino acids the body requires. This is true as well for phosphorous which is more easily absorbed than that present in cereals and legumes. Meat is rich in vitamin B12. Nutritionists will also tell you that, in general, preserved meats such as ham, bacon, salami, et cetera, should be avoided because they are contain large amounts of fats, salts, nitrites and nitrates that have been associated with increased rates of cancer. Common sense must be applied to the latest assault on meat and it is common sense that suggests that vegetables are good for you, too. So, keep on eating, but not too much, okay? Have you visited our blog yet? If you enjoy our weekly commentaries, you will enjoy our "Warning Signs" blog for its insights to daily events, issues, and personalities. Greens Tell Banks to Back Off Coal As always with the environmental movement, the very thing that keeps any modern nation going, energy and its sources, is under incessant attack. Coal is responsible for more than half of all the electricity generated in America, so naturally the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has announced a campaign directed "against two of the financial sector’s biggest funders of coal expansion in the United States." Oblivious of the nation’s growing need for electrical power to serve its more than 300 million citizens, RAN held a teleconference on October 2nd and released "a briefing paper detailing these bank’s contributions to the coal industry." One would almost think that these banks were funding concentration camps when, instead, what they are doing is insuring a steady supply of one of America’s greatest and cheapest reserves of energy, coal. "People across the country are waking up to the threats posed by coal", said the RAN news release. "The world’s dirtiest, most carbon-intensive and most heavily used energy source—and demanding that it be replaced by energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy sources like solar and wind." This is so idiotic and false as to almost defy comment. One would have to cover the whole of the land surface of America with wind farms and solar radiation facilities to even begin to generate a small portion of the amount of electricity Americans use every day. Both wind and solar are so inefficient and costly they depend on government subsidies and grants to even exist. Wind farms only function when the wind is blowing and solar when the sun is shining. The rest of the time, when not drawing down on their stored energy, both require conventional energy generation facilities to fill in when they cease to provide electrical power. These latter facilities, sourced by coal, hydroelectric, or nuclear power, must be kept running anyway, so where’s the savings? Answer: None! And Americans are surely not "demanding" more wind farms or solar energy. The cost of installing solar panels on an average home in New Jersey runs about $60,000. "Coal power is the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and a top contributor to air pollution, asthma and ecological destruction," says RAN. Rubbish! The U.S. has had air quality standards overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency since the 1970s and there is no evidence to support these claims. Moreover, new coal burning plants have technology available to trap carbon dioxide (CO2) before it hits the atmosphere. The next time you see anything that RAN announces, I suggest you run to find the truth. It’s out there. You just won’t hear it from the Rainforest Action Network. Get both the microanalysis and macro-analysis that helps explain the complex world in which we live. It’s here every week and can be found on our daily blog. However, in order to perform this service, we need your donation to keep the Center going. Give what you can, but please give something. Thanks.
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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In mid-October The New York Times ran an article, "U.S. Cancer Death Rates Are Found to Be Falling." It cited a decline "by an average of 2.1 percent a year…a near doubling of decreases that began in 1993, researchers (from the American Cancer Institute) are reporting." Now this is, of course, good news. The bad news is that smoking appears to be a significant cause of cancer. In the U.S. cancer remains the second leading cause of death after heart disease, with 559,650 deaths expected every year.