People ask me why I don't eat meat. One reason is I am against killing animals for our pleasure! All these years I took pains to explain in layman terms the other rationale - why meat eating is like committing slow suicide and also like murdering the environment! Hmm! People get surprised all the time. How can humble meat people are consuming since ages, be that bad? Most of them couldn't believe it! But there is support for me from World Health organization, Cardiologists and other Specialists around the world and Scientists from International Association for Research in Cancer (2) no less.

After reviewing more than 800 epidemiological studies, the World Health Organization has designated processed meats as carcinogenic. WHO made the announcement online October 26 in The Lancet Oncology. WHO report quotes recent studies suggesting that an additional 3.5 ounces of red meat (refers to all mammalian muscle meat, including, beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, horse, and goat ) everyday raises the risk of colorectal cancer by 17 percent. Eating an additional 1.8 ounces of processed meat daily raises the risk by 18 percent, according to the research cited.

“For an individual, the risk of developing colorectal cancer because of their consumption of processed meat remains small, but this risk increases with the amount of meat consumed,” says Kurt Straif, an official with the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, which produced the report. “In view of the large number of people who consume processed meat, the global impact on cancer incidence is of public health importance.”

The research into a possible link between eating red meat and cancer has been the subject of scientific debate for decades, with colorectal cancer being a long-standing area of concern. But by concluding that processed meat causes cancer, and that red meat “probably” causes cancer, the WHO findings go well beyond the tentative associations that some other groups have reported.

The WHO findings were drafted by a panel of 22 international experts who reviewed decades of research on the link between red meat, processed meats and cancer. The panel reviewed animal experiments, studies of human diet and health, and cell processes that could explain how red meat might cause cancer. But the panel’s decision was not unanimous. In reaching its conclusion, the panel sought to quantify the risks, and compared to carcinogens such as cigarettes, the magnitude of the danger appears small, experts said.

According to The American Cancer Society,  many studies have found “a link” between eating red meat and heightened risks of colorectal cancer. But it stops short of telling people that the meats cause cancer. Some diets that have lots of vegetables and fruits and lesser amounts of red and processed meats have been associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer, the American Cancer Society says, but “it’s not exactly clear” which factors of that diet are important.

Processed meat (pork or beef or poultry, offal or meat by-products such as blood) includes hot dogs, ham, sausages, corned beef and beef jerky, canned meat and meat based preparations and sauces — or any other meat that has been cured, smoked, salted, fermented or otherwise changed to enhance flavor or improve preservation. How exactly does red meat and processed meat cause cancer? There are a group of handful of chemicals involved in cooking (at high temperatures) and processing meat. Some of them are found to be carcinogenic.

And as always the skeptics brushed this WHO report aside.  Because the experimental data is not terribly strong. However, in this case the epidemiological evidence* is very strong.

*( Epidemiology is the study of the patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined populations. )

But, different people react differently to the same food consumed depending on their metabolic mechanisms and genetic make up. Therefore, you cannot really generalize things. Some people might face an adverse effect, some  may not.

In fact, meat does provide important proteins and other micronutrients such as B vitamins, iron and zinc, the IARC notes. But quantity and life expectancy are different today than in the past and they will have to take several other things into account now while preparing this report. For instance age is the biggest carcinogen that we have. We’ve been eating meat for a long time, but currently, we may be eating it in much higher amounts and our life expectancy is higher so we have more time and reasons to develop cancers.

I myself had found and published a paper which says that eating a lot of fiber removes toxins produced by the microorganisms from the digestive system. Some of the toxins get adsorbed to the fibers and removed with the excretion of it. So eat lots of plant based  fiber if you are eating processed meats and other foods that are toxic to human systems.

We know that processed food contains carcinogenic (cancer-causing) chemicals. Research has proven that if you consume them in large quantities daily and if your body provides the environment for the cancer to originate and flourish, you would have to face the cancer consequences. Try to connect them both and you will become wiser and understand the importance of WHO's warning!

There is more bad news: according to the American Heart Association, many foods that come from animals — like meat and dairy products — contain saturated fats. Saturated fat is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease as it tends to raise the level of cholesterol in the blood. Excessive consumption of cholesterol has been shown to increase the risk of heart disease and stroke. Cholesterol is only found in animal food products, and thus, vegetarians  are likely to have lower cholesterol than non-vegetarians. Eggs (yolk part of it), livers, animal fats like butter and cheese, shellfish, shrimp, oysters, clams, mussels, processed meats like beacon, sausages, lambs , rabbits, beef, duck are some of the animals and their products that contain high cholesterol.  

Researchers in Singapore have shown that red meat intake may increase the risk of kidney failure, and substituting red meat with alternative sources of protein from time to time may significantly reduce this risk. The findings were published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (3).

Led by Professor Kon Woon-Puay from Duke-NUS Medical School, the research team set out to examine the relationship between dietary intake of major sources of protein and kidney function. They analyzed data from the Singapore Chinese Health Study, a prospective study of over 63,000 Chinese adults in Singapore. For this population, 97 percent of red meat intake consisted of pork. Other food sources of protein included poultry, fish/shellfish, eggs, dairy products, soy, and legumes. After an average follow-up of 15.5 years, the researchers found that red meat intake was strongly associated with an increased risk of ESRD in a dose-dependent manner. People consuming the highest amounts of red meat had a 40 percent increased risk of developing ESRD compared with people consuming the lowest amounts. No association was found with intakes of poultry, fish, eggs or dairy products, while soy and legumes appeared to be slightly protective. Substituting one serving of red meat with other sources of protein reduced the risk of ESRD by up to 62 percent. 

The findings suggest that  individuals can maintain protein intake but consider switching to plant-based sources; however, if they still choose to eat meat, fish, shellfish and poultry are better alternatives to red meat. 

Eat red meat, if you want, but try to do that in  moderation. Once in a while is okay but daily consumption coupled with a lazy life style is like inviting premature death.

Then how does your meat-eating murder the environment?

Livestock production — which includes meat, milk and eggs —  uses one-third of the world’s fresh water. There may be no other single human activity that has a bigger impact on the planet than the raising of livestock. But as a study (1) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows, there is tremendous variation in how we raise livestock around the world — and major differences in what that means for the earth and for us.

1.3 billion tons of grain are consumed by farm animals each year — and nearly all of it is fed to livestock, mostly pork and poultry, in the developed world and in China and Latin America. All of the livestock in sub-Saharan Africa eat just 50 million tons of grain a year, otherwise subsisting on grasses and on crop residue. In North America or Europe, a cow consumes about 75 kg to 300 kg of dry matter — grass or grain — to produce a kg of protein.

The poor feed quality in some impoverished regions like sub-Saharan Africa means that a cow there may consume as much as 10 times more feed — mostly grasses — to produce a kilogram of protein than a cow raised in richer regions. That lack of efficiency also means that cattle in countries like Ethiopia and Somalia account for as much as 1,000 kg of carbon for every kg of protein they produce — in the form of methane from manure as well as from the reduced carbon absorption that results when forests are converted to pastureland. That’s 10 times higher than the amount of carbon released per kg of protein in many parts of the U.S. and Europe, where livestock production is much more intensive.

The highest total of livestock-related greenhouse-gas emissions comes from the developing world, which accounts for 75% of the global emissions from cattle and other ruminants and 56% of the global emissions from poultry and pigs.

Beef, the popular red meat in the West, requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, 11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions. When compared to staples like potatoes, wheat, and rice, the impact of beef per calorie is even more extreme, requiring 160 times more land and producing 11 times more greenhouse gases.

The factory farming in developed and developing countries poses danger to public health through the over use of antibiotics  (the drugs aren’t just used to treat sick animals—they’re also given regularly in feed to help growth promotion of pigs, chickens and cattle) and the pollution it causes to air and water is really alarming.

Some experts even go to the extent of saying that eating less red meat would be a better way for people to cut carbon emissions than giving up their cars.

The food you eat should be:
• Good for human health
• Good for the planet (sustainability; ecosystem conservation; biodiversity)

And meats don't fit that bill very well!

References:

1. http://www.pnas.org/content/110/52/20888.abstract

2. http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf

3. http://jasn.asnjournals.org/content/early/2016/07/13/ASN.2016030248

                                                                          ***************