Another installment in a series: Red Pill Reality Dispelling Blue Pill Delusions
Right?
Are you sure?
Doesn't everyone know that too much red meat in the Standard American Diet is the reason why Americans are at record levels of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer?
Right?!?!?
Do you feel guilty every time you take exceptional satisfaction in an artery clogging T-bone, or bite into a thick juicy burger or slurp up the fatty liquid from real-bone beef broth stew? Do you ever make concessions with yourself, in which you make a mental note to exercise a little harder later on to "make up" for your red meat indulgence?
Set your mind at ease...the idea that red meat is bad for you is nothing more than a big, fat lie.
Red meat is actually good for you.
Yes, not only is it not bad for you...it's downright good for you.
If that idea sounds crazy, you need to understand the source for this mistaken belief that red meat is the boogeyman causing so many health problems in the American diet....and. as I've pointed out before, the genesis of this mistaken belief starts with the favorite tool of diet propagandists: observational studies.
You know..the one where they hand out questionnaires to a bunch of senior citizens asking them what they ate in the last 12 months...and then they check back in 10 years and see which senior citizens kicked the bucket, and than blame their rate of red meat consumption as the cause of mortality.
Dr. Michael Eades, author of Protein Power, drives home the point that refutes all of the media reports about the health hazards of red meat:
Correlation does not equal causation!
The news is abuzz with reports of the latest study to come out showing that eating meat, especially red meat, kills us off before our time. (You can read some of the reporting here, here, here and here.) Google shows 547 new articles about this study.And the majority of the journalists, editors and publishers of today's corporate mass media, most certainly buy into this notion that meat is bad. And the entire media is saturated with articles with such catchword phrases like "the latest studies reveal: red meat shortens your life span!"
Although this study is totally worthless from a causality perspective because it is an observational study, it does serve to confirm the biases of those non-critical thinkers who have already bought into the idea that meat is bad.
But if you look at the actual science on the topic, the evidence paints quite a different picture. Read Dr. Eades entire post on how the studies being touted by the media don't actually indicate what the media says it does.
The point of this post is that you shouldn’t get wound up about a study that gets reported throughout the media because there are more than likely other studies that are just as well done and just as important showing exactly the opposite findings that the press chooses to ignore. You’re not seeing the science as it is, you’re seeing the science as the press wants you to see it, which, typically, is the way that confirms the bias of members of the press.So this demonstrates how red meat has been unfairly demonized....but where does this idea that red meat is actually GOOD for you, come from? Here's one good source:
It's the Beef!
What a shame we have demonized red meat because this is one modern food, enjoyed by almost everybody, that is rich in nutrients. Red meat provides complete protein, including sulphur-containing proteins like cysteine. Beef is a wonderful source of taurine and carnitine, needed for healthy eyes and a healthy heart. Beef also provides another key nutrient for the cardiovascular system—coenzyme Q10.
Beef is an excellent source of minerals like magnesium and zinc—you need zinc for clear thinking and a healthy sex life. The fuzzy-headedness that vegetarians mistake for heightened consciousness is really the fog of zinc deficiency. Vitamin B6 is abundant in meat, especially rare meat. Red meat is one of the best sources of vitamin B12, which is vital to a healthy nervous system and healthy blood. Vegetarians are especially prone to vitamin B12 deficiency. One of the first signs of vitamin B12 deficiency is a tendency to irrational anger-—so much for vegetarian claims that we will have a more peaceful, harmonious world if we all just stop eating meat.
Despite all those nutrients...what about the fat?
Beef producers need to recognize that the fat is the most important part of the beef, rich in components that promote good health and that help you utilize the nutrients in all the other parts of the beef. In addition to vitamins A and D, fat contributes many important fatty acids, including palmitoleic acid, an antimicrobial fat that protects us against pathogens in the gut. If you want to be sure that you don't get foodborne illness from your hamburger, use full fat ground beef.So...if you can find yourself a good source of grass-fed beef...or buffalo, or kangaroo...or any other ruminant animal eating it's natural diet of grass...eat up to your hearts content. Literally.
Fat also provides a substance called conjugated linoleic acid or CLA, at least it does if the animals have been on green grass.31 CLA is a substance that protects us against cancer and that promotes weight loss—that's right, fat can make you thin, if it's the right kind of fat.
And the right kind of fat is also saturated fat which, in spite of what we've been told, plays many important roles in the body chemistry. The scientific literature delineates a number of vital roles for dietary saturated fats—they enhance the immune system,32 are necessary for healthy bones,33 provide energy and structural integrity to the cells,34 protect the liver35 and enhance the body's use of essential fatty acids.36 Stearic acid and palmitic acid, found in beef tallow and butter, are the preferred foods for the heart.37 As saturated fats are stable, they do not become rancid easily, do not call upon the body's reserves of antioxidants, do not initiate cancer, do not irritate the artery walls.
In fact saturated beef fat is one of the most useful fats in the culinary repertoire. As it is very stable and doesn't go rancid when heated to high temperatures, it's perfect for frying. While we don't recommend a lot of fried foods, we know that our children and grandchildren are going to eat them. Fast food outlets used to fry their potatoes in healthy stable beef tallow. They were crisp, tasted delicious and provided many important nutrients. But the phony cholesterol issue has forced these outlets to switch to partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is known to cause a host of chronic diseases including cancer, heart disease, bone problems, infertility and autoimmune disease.38
And even if grass fed meat is too expensive or too hard to find in your area...even grain fed beef is nowhere near as bad for your health as the corporate-owned, mainstream media would have you think.
I personally think the demonization of red meat is a diversionary tactic promoted by BIG AGRICULTURE.
By getting people to focus on the red meat, they will ignore all of the products of Big Ag that are actual health detriments.
It's not the red meat that's making you sick...it's all of the Big Ag byproducts that are mass produced and sold at a high profit margin because of it's extensive shelf life that is included with your serving of red meat that's ruining your health! Things like the white flour with high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil to bake the bun, the MSG additives, the High Fructose Corn Syrup soda and the potatoes fried in rancid, hydrogenated vegetable oil that's making you fat and your arteries clogged.
