Science often has a funny way of making people react in a rather unscientific manner. Emotions play their fractious part, particularly when it comes to something as deeply personal as the food we eat, the fuel we put in our tank.
Meatless Monday is backed by over 20 public health schools around the country. They provide the building blocks, and we build the facade. We're growing an international movement that connects people, schools, campuses, workplaces, communities and entire cities by the simple idea of cutting meat one day a week.
As a nonprofit public health initiative, for us it all comes down to personal health. Here are our building blocks...
LIMIT CANCER RISK: Hundreds of studies suggest that diets high in fruits and vegetables may reduce cancer risk. Both red and processed meat consumption are associated with colon cancer.
REDUCE HEART DISEASE: Recent data from a Harvard University study found that replacing saturated fat-rich foods (for example, meat and full-fat dairy) with foods that are high in polyunsaturated fat (for example, vegetable oils, nuts and seeds) reduces the risk of heart disease by 19%.
FIGHT DIABETES: Research suggests that higher consumption of red and processed meat increases the risk of type 2 diabetes.
CURB OBESITY: People on low-meat or vegetarian diets have significantly lower body weight and body mass indices. A plant-based diet is a great source of fiber (absent in animal products). This makes you feel full with fewer calories, ie. lower calorie intake and less overeating. Research has found that eating more plant foods and less animal products may help individuals control their weight.
LIVE LONGER: Red and processed meat consumption are associated with modest increases in total mortality, cancer mortality and cardiovascular disease mortality.
IMPROVE YOUR DIET: Consuming beans and peas results in higher intakes of fiber, protein, folate, zinc, iron and magnesium with lower intakes of saturated fats and total fats.
There you have it. Now, even if you think this is bunkem, it's incontrovertible that vegetables are good for your health. That's why the Meatless Monday Recipes we offer this week are delicious, unique and veggie-centric. Give 'em a try. And if there are studies or reports or findings or just your own noodlings that represent your opinion on this critical topic, please send them my way in a Comment. After all, what's a little healthy debate about health among friends?
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Ellen Kanner: Meatless Monday: The Gulf Without Seafood
Ellen Kanner: Meatless Monday: Produce to the People
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Right now, asparagus is in season. INDULGE and rejoice that it there for you to enjoy. Fiddleheads and the new spring greens are here. Partake of the feast before you and take pleasure in it. You don't need a scientific study for this.
You are striking at the heart of the puritanism that has motivated America's food obsession from the beginning, and through all changes in fashion. We smother our enjoyment of the present with the heavy hand worries for a future we cannot really control. The idea that there are simple animal pleasures that cannot be deconstructed into moral or political imperatives is as alien today as it was in the Presbyterian cults of Virgina or in joyless Salem. Looking over the comments on this and other posts, "joyless" is the first word that comes to mind.
And by the way, billions of small animals are lost every year due to agriculture. One sustainably raised cow could probably last you a whole year. If you ate sustainably raised meat, you would actually be saving the lives of countless "sentient beings."
Sometimes having a heart means recognizing the key importance of animals in any sustainable method of food production. The environmental consequences of agriculture without animals would be an absolute nightmare.
Nope. Less agricultural plant matter (which means fewer small animal casualties) is required to feed a human for one year than to "humanely raise" a cow to feed a human for one year.
this seems like hyperbole. can you give more information here?
Surely, meat is never on the Most Healthy Foods list. Protein we need, but it doesn't need to come from meat, especially that which is hormone and antibiotically raised on industrial farms.
David Murdock is a billionaire who has spent millions researching the most healthy foods to eat. Meat is not on the list, but these 33 foods are:
http://www.garmaonhealth.com/2009/09/an-86-year-old-billionaires-recipe-for-longevity/
http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php
it's on these sorts of lists because the collective We wouldn't accept being told otherwise.
all the nutrients we need are available, readily, without killing animals.
if you choose to eat meat, it's your choice. it's not my place to make decisions for everyone, but it's naive to believe that meat is necessary to our survival.
the need is different where food isn't as available. but here in the contiguous US?
we're fine without it.
We're doing something a little different than Meatless Mondays. We didn't eat red meat to begin with, but now we're cutting back on how much meat we have with every meal. As long as you have a good mix of grains, beans, and veggies, animal protein of every kind can be a garnish or taste instead of the main attraction.
I too grew up on a farm with our own meat which we butchered, etc. Wild salmon, organic meat, grass fed beef - these are meats entirely different from processed / hormone laden meats.
i don't get labeling it such, unless it's just an attempt to marginalise those to make that choice.
it's possible that the US is just late to eating less, or no meat, products in an effort to
improve the environment, be healthier, or consume less processed consumer goods.
though, eating organically fed meat is a much better choice than not. on that point, we agree.
No one ever seems to learn anything.
Let's say that I think that there is a link between celery and acne. If I conduct enough studies looking for a link, I WILL find one, eventually, regardless of whether it exists. If I use the P < 0.5 rule, out of 100 studies 5 are likely to show a relationship. Someone who has an axe to grind against celery could then claim that multiple scientific studies have demonstrated that celery causes acne. "Asparagus causes acne" could then enter the collective consciousness as a "scientific" fact, especially if it happens to fit the Zietgiest. In fact, it is impossible to evaluate the claimed association without knowing what ALL of the studies that looked for one had to say. And as negative results are much less likely to be published than positive ones, these can be very difficult data to get.
Without any further explanation, statements such as "Research suggests that higher consumption of red and processed meat increases the risk of type 2 diabetes" mean exactly nothing.
For example: Most medical scientists are slaves to the P < 0.5 rule, meaning that a finding is regarded as 'significant' if the odds of it being the result of chance are less than 5%. Conversely, there is a certain chance that a 'significant' result IS the due to chance (a type 1 error, or false positive). In heavily researched areas like diet and health, where thousands of studies are published, there will be enough false positives to cherry pick studies that show what you want them to show, regardless of whether it is true.
Just thought you might be interested in that bit of lore.
Isn't Monday already bad enough?
And if you fall off the wagon or miss a Monday, there’s always another Monday – another chance to recommit to positive change -- just around the corner. If you think about it in those terms, Monday can be a very powerful driver of beneficial change -- for yourself, your family, your community, the planet, whatever you deem necessary or valuable.
Thank you.
On colon cancer:
If anything, the study cited suggests a risk associated with the the chemicals used in processed meats, at best. The main problem with surveys such as that, which rely on self-reports from people who eat fast food every day, is that there are no controls for the buckets of cola, mounds of french fries soaking in trans fats, and processed white flour, so to blame the meat is more than a bit specious.
On the studies suggesting that some vegetables, such as broccoli, may be helpful in preventing cancer, you are entirely right. So eat your veggies. And by the way, there is also significant evidence of meat actually helping to protect from some forms of cancer.
We have been eating meat for at least 3.5 million years. Processed foods that we never evolved to eat, animal and vegetable, are the problem, not sustainably raised meat.
" * They included the Finnish Mental Hospital trial, which is a terrible trial for a number of reasons. It wasn't randomized, appropriately controlled or even semi-blinded*. Thus, it doesn't fit the authors' stated inclusion criteria, but they included it in their analysis anyway**. Besides, the magnitude of the result has never been replicated by better trials, not even close.
* They included two trials that changed more than just the proportion of SFA to PUFA. For example, the Oslo Diet-heart trial replaced animal fat with seed oils, but also increased fruit, nut, vegetable and fish intake, while reducing trans fat margarine intake! The STARS trial increased both omega-6 and omega-3, reduced processed food intake, and increased fruit and vegetable intake! These obviously aren't controlled trials isolating the issue of dietary fat substitution. If you subtract the four inappropriate trials from their analysis, which is half the studies they analyzed, the result disappears. Those four just happened to show the largest reduction in heart attack mortality...
cont...
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/03/leave-your-brain-at-door.html
In fact, in a far more reliable metastudy including 347,747 subjects, investigating if there was a link between saturated fat and heart disease, they found that they could find absolutely no correlate between saturated fat and heart disease whatsoever. That is from researchers who were looking for a connection!
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/short/ajcn.2009.27725v1
You can replace healthy, sustainably raised meat with processed polyunsaturated vegetable oils that turn into trans fats when heated if you like, but I will stick to the former.