In answer to the tide of veganism sweeping the globe
Why we should still eat red meat… and enjoy it
A fierce debate rages between people who have chosen to follow a plant-based diet and those who continue to sink their teeth into flesh. Environment, health, ethics — the debate can get vicious with both sides sticking to their guns. But, Sarah Juggins argues, it is not a simple binary divide between soya or steak, it comes down to an eating philosophy and wider life choices.
I know, I know, it is an unfashionable stance to take among today’s fierce debates and discussions around carbon footprints, environmental impact and healthy diets. But I truly believe that red meat should be part of a healthy diet.
That said, I must immediately qualify that statement with two conditions: consumption of red meat should be limited to once or twice a week; and it should be top quality produce, reared under certain conditions.
Two sides to the story
But first, what are the counter arguments that are proving so compelling to the growing number of vegetarians and vegans across the Western world. The first, and most hotly debated discussion surrounds the environmental impact of producing meat for human consumption. The finger of shame is pointing directly at the world’s beef farmers.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, meat eating is the second-biggest environmental hazard after fossil-fuel vehicles. And, the organisation adds, globally, agricultural practices involving animals are responsible for more greenhouse gases than all the world’s transport systems combined.
The Union of Concerned Scientists cites evidence such as: “Producing one hamburger uses enough fossil fuel to drive a small car 20 miles.”
Or: “Cows consume 16 pounds of vegetation in order to convert them into one pound of flesh. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat.”
Meanwhile The Worldwatch Institute declares: “Roughly 2 of every 5 tons of grain produced in the world is fed to livestock, poultry or fish; decreasing consumption of these products, especially beef, could free up massive quantities of grain and reduce pressure on land.”
Plant power
Then we have the health benefits to humans of following a plant-based diet.
Medical News Today reported that a large scale meta-analysis carried out in 2016 reported on the significant protective effect of a vegetarian diet upon the incidence and/or mortality from ischemic heart disease (25 per cent) and incidence from total cancer (8 per cent). The data suggested a vegan diet conferred a significant reduced risk (15 percent) of incidence from total cancer.
There is no doubt some compelling evidence that a host of potentially carcinogenic compounds are introduced into our bodies when we eat cooked meat — including: N-nitroso compounds, heterocyclic amines, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These compounds are most linked to colon cancer and stomach cancer.
Besides the risk of cancer, there is also strong evidence that a vegetarian diet is linked to a lower risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and childhood obesity.
The dietary moral code
And finally, there is the ethical consideration. This presents a strong and emotive argument for following a plant-based diet, based on an animal’s rights.
If you accept that animals have rights, then raising and killing animals for food shows no respect for the animal and is therefore morally wrong. No matter how humanely the animal is being raised, it is being reared as a means to human ends and not as an end in itself.
Even the most humane forms of rearing and killing animals for food always violates the animal’s most basic interest — to continue living.
And many people argue that modern agricultural methods violate animals rights in other ways too. Rearing animals in the cramped conditions of a shed, barn or pen means the animals do not live under natural conditions. The widespread use of antibiotics removes their right to live healthy lives without medical intervention. Feeding high energy food stuff and hormones to speed growth means the animals do not eat a natural diet, and the processes involved in stock management — de-horning, castration for example — mean the animals live in a state of fear and pain.
This is all strong stuff and, even as I write, I feel the strength of my own argument fading away. But, I resolved to put forward the case for eating meat, so here goes.
A philosophy for the gut
In what is soothing manna to my brain, I have been reading new research published by the Human Nutrition Unit at the University of Parma that suggests being a meat eater might not be impacting the environment as much as we omnivores are being shamed into thinking. The difference — and this is crucial to my argument — is our overall behaviour, not just as meat eaters but as human beings.
For some meat eaters, it doesn’t matter if the protein they are shoving in their mouth is a hot dog filled with ground-up gristle and bone or an organic, grass fed, slow grown piece of prime beef. It all comes down to an eating philosophy. There are meat eaters who eat consciously and there are those who eat whatever they want with no concern for either the environment or their health. The two groups will not end up having the same impact on the environmental… or have the same health status. Someone who eats a balanced diet of meat, vegetables and fruit, sourcing it as locally as possible is far removed from the person who eats large quantities of cheap meat, and pays no attention to its provenance.
By contrast, the new clamour among the anti-meat brigade for avocados, soya products, lentils and goji berries, is having a much greater impact than we might realise. In essence, tucking into a piece of beef that was raised on open grassland a few miles down the road is far more environmentally sustainable than an avocado that originated in Kenya or a bottle of pomegranate molasses that has been shipped over from India.
Improving the earth
When it comes to soil depletion, rearing cattle can actually reverse the trend towards poorer soil. Cattle manure is a natural fertilzer, which will inject important nutrients back into soil that has been depleted while growing crops. Cattle trampling on pastures will disperse seeds, meaning that wild flowers and pollen producing grasses will grow on grass land, adding richness to the soil structure and encouraging a vibrant pollinator population.
Again, looking at the huge increase in demand for grains, seeds and pulses, and it is obvious that vast areas of natural forest and woodland needs to give way to satisfy the global market. Can we really still point the finger of blame for deforestation and climate emergency upon cows?
How beef is good for our health
The concept of life choices beyond the omnivore or herbivore extends to our health. Many meat eaters who are obese or who have life-threatening conditions such as heart failure or cancer have a diet that is heavy in refined sugar and low in vegetables and fibre. It seems to come with the territory. But, there are also plenty of vegans and vegetarians who choose to eat food stuffs that are high in sugar. A vegan diet is not necessarily a healthy diet.
When it comes to fat, beef again suffers bad press based on many untruths. Cattle that are reared in natural conditions, eating grass, living outside, with no unnecessary medical intervention, no growth hormones, weaned naturally and allowed to grow and develop at nature’s pace, will provide much more nutritious meat. Beef produced in such a stress-free environment have a better omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio, something that is essential when it comes to our health.
Our bodies can not produce omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, so we need to get them from our diet. They are called ‘essential’ fatty acids because without they are biologically active and have important roles in processes like blood clotting and inflammation.
We now know that inflammation is essential for our survival. It helps protect the body from infection and injury, but it can also cause severe damage and contribute to disease when it’s chronic or excessive. In fact, chronic inflammation may be one of the leading drivers of the most serious modern diseases, including heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer’s and many types of cancer.
Scientists have hypothesized that a diet high in omega-6s but low in omega-3s increases inflammation, while a diet that includes balanced amounts of each reduces inflammation. They also suggest that generally people following a Western diet are typically eating way too much omega-6s — found, for instance, in soya products — relative to omega-3s. Grass-fed, slow-grown beef contains high levels of omega-3.
Steeling ourselves through food
We also need iron in our bodies. A lack of iron leads to fatigue, decreased immune function and general ill-health. Women, in particular, need iron because of menstruation. While vegetables do contain iron, it is not the sort of iron that meets our requirements. The type of iron we really need — heme iron — comes from red meat, pork, poultry and fish. According to the World Health Organization, more than 30 per cent of the world’s population suffers iron deficiency.
Another essential part of the human diet is vitamin B12. This little hero of the vitamin world keeps our bodies free of anaemia, helps nerve and blood cells function correctly and supports genetic material. A deficiency in B12 mimics Alzheimers and multiple sclerosis. Of course you can get vitamin B12 in tablet form, but a large body of research suggests that pills in no way replace what is on your plate.
Tucking into a steak every so often might be more of a life saver than you thought.
When it comes to the ethics behind eating meat, I confess to a brain freeze. I address this by seeking to buy meat that comes with assurances that the animal has enjoyed a healthy, stress-free life. There is no answer to the charge that by eating meat, I am complicit in an animal losing its life. Rather, I would argue that by voting with my consumer dollar, I am encouraging a farmer to rear the animals in the best way possible.
Seeking to buy meat from an animal that has been reared locally, has grazed all of its life on clean pastures, has been kept free of growth hormones and excessive antibiotics and was killed as humanely as possible, is the way I balance things out.
By expressing a desire for meat reared this way and by being prepared to pay for it, consumers can change the way animals live and die. It’s not ideal, but without meat eaters, there would be no cattle.
Are humans designed to eat meat?
Ancient history is pretty much on my side in the debate as to whether humans are actually supposed to eat meat. A study by Harvard University evolutionary biologists Katherine Zink and Daniel Lieberman, published in Nature magazine, shows that not only did processing and eating meat come naturally to humans as they evolved, but it is very possible that, without an early diet of animal protein we would not have become the verbally dextrous, intelligent humans that we are today.
To make this point stick we need to travel back 2.6 million years ago when meat first made its way onto our ancestor’s dining rocks. Until that point, the early form of human beings had been herbivores, living on vegetation and root foods. But these were not very calorific and, in the case of the roots, had to be chewed so much that they negated the calorific intake.
While chewing was taking up a large portion of our ancestor’s day, a more important point was that the brain was an organ that demanded calories in order to grow. Eating meat was a far more efficient way of ingesting calories than munching through tonnes of green stuff. As we learnt to capture and eat animals, so our brains grew and we developed advanced speech organs.
“Whatever selection pressures favored these shifts,” Zink and Lieberman wrote, “they would not have been possible without increased meat consumption combined with food processing.”
Fast forward 2.6 million years and there is every chance our ancestors would be scratching their heads as they tried to understand why a sizeable chunk of the population is turning its back on a food stuff that contains so much goodness.
Of course it comes down to personal choice. For me, that means a little red meat, reared to the best standards of animal husbandry, and surrounded by a vibrant plate of locally-grown, seasonal vegetables. And not an avocado in sight.
