Myths & Truths About Beef

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Myths & Truths About Beef

http://www.healingnaturallybybee.com/articles/meat2.php?print

It's the Beef by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD

http://www.westonaprice.org/mythstruths/mtbeef.html

 

This article includes the following:

 

" The notion that beef is an " acid-forming " food is another favorite

vegetarian argument. Beef contains lots of sulphur and phosphorus, which

technically

form an acid when dissolved in water, but that does not mean that eating meat

causes the body to be too acid.

 

Actually, meat provides both high-quality protein and vitamin D (if you eat

the fat and organ meats, that is), both of which are needed to maintain proper

acid-alkaline balance in the body. "

 

With the exception of butter, no other food has been subjected to such

intense demonization in recent years as red meat, particularly beef. The juicy

hamburger, that delicious marbled steak and the Sunday roast have been accused

of

terrible crimes.

 

Beef causes heart disease, say the Diet Dictocrats. Beef causes cancer,

particularly colon cancer, beef causes osteoporosis, beef causes autoimmune

diseases like asthma, beef harbors E. coli leading to food-borne illness, beef

causes

Creutzfeldt Jakob disease.

 

Recently a vegetarian group called People for the Ethical Treatment of

Animals placed billboard ads warning men not to eat beef because it causes

impotence! Red meat is an acid-forming food, say the vegetarians, which

putrefies in

the gut because humans can't digest meat.

 

Beef production destroys the environment, according to the zealots, and takes

away land that could be dedicated to grain for starving millions. Let's

examine these accusations one at a time.

 

Does beef causeheart disease?

 

First is the notion that beef causes heart disease. This actually dates back

to the 1950's when the lipid hypothesis was & taking hold on the American

consciousness. At that time, scientists were grappling with a new threat to

public

health—a steep rise in heart disease, especially myocardial infarction

(MI)—a

massive blood clot leading to obstruction of a coronary artery and consequent

death to the heart muscle.

 

MI was almost nonexistent in 1910 and caused no more than three thousand

deaths per year in 1930. By 1960, there were at least 500,000 MI deaths per year

in the US.

 

Many scientists believed that the culprit was cholesterol and saturated fats

found in animal foods like butter, eggs and beef. They reasoned that saturated

fat and cholesterol raised the level of cholesterol in the blood which in

turned caused the deposition of cholesterol as plaques in the arteries, leading

to obstructions and heart disease. This, in a nutshell, is the lipid

hypothesis.1

 

This theory was tested in 1957 when Dr. Norman Jolliffe, Director of the

Nutrition Bureau of the New York Health Department, initiated the Anti-Coronary

Club. With great media fanfare, a group of businessmen, ranging in age from 40

to 59 years, were placed on the so-called Prudent Diet.

 

Prudent Dieters used corn oil and margarine instead of butter, cold breakfast

cereals instead of eggs and chicken and fish instead of beef. Anti-Coronary

Club members were to be compared with a " matched " group of the same age who ate

eggs for breakfast and had meat three times a day.

 

Jolliffe, an overweight diabetic confined to a wheel chair, was confident

that the Prudent Diet would save lives, including his own. The results of Dr.

Jolliffe's Anti-Coronary Club experiment were published in 1966 in the Journal

of

the American Medical Association.2 Those on the Prudent Diet of corn oil,

margarine, fish, chicken and cold cereal had an average serum cholesterol of

220,

compared to 250 in the meat-and-potatoes control group.

 

However, the study authors were obliged to note that there were eight deaths

from heart disease among Dr. Jolliffe's Prudent Diet group, and none among

those who ate meat three times a day. Dr. Jolliffe was dead by this time. He

succumbed in 1961 from a vascular thrombosis, although the obituaries listed the

cause of death as complications from diabetes.

 

The truth is that in spite of all the propaganda you have heard, the lipid

hypothesis has never been proved. In fact, inadequate protein intake leads to

loss of myocardial muscle and may, therefore, contribute to coronary heart

disease.3

 

There are many societies where the populace consumes high levels of animal

food and saturated fat but remains free of heart disease. Dr. george Mann, who

studied the Masai cattle herding peoples in Africa, found no heart disease,

even though their diet consisted of meat, blood and rich milk.4

 

Butterfat consumption among Masai warriors, who consider vegetable foods as

fodder for cattle, can reach one and one half pounds per day. Yet these people

do not suffer from heart disease. Mann called the lipid hypothesis " the

greatest scam in the history of medicine. "

 

It is a scam that has been used to convince millions of healthy people that

they are sick and must take expensive drugs with serious side effects, a

falsehood that has persuaded Americans to adopt a bland, tasteless diet simply

because their cholesterol has been defined as being too high.

 

It is true that beef consumption in the United States has gone up during the

last eighty years, the period of huge increases in heart disease. Today we

consume 79 pounds of beef per person per year versus 54 in 1909, a 46%

increase—

but poultry consumption has increased a whopping 280%, from 18 pounds per

person per year to 70.

 

Consumption of vegetable oils, including those that have been hydrogenated,

has increased 437%, from 11 pounds per person per year to 59; while consumption

of butter, lard and tallow has plummeted from 30 pounds per person per year

to just under 10. Whole milk consumption has declined by almost 50%, while

lowfat milk consumption has doubled.

 

Consumption of eggs, fresh fruits (excluding citrus), fresh vegetables, fresh

potatoes and whole grain products has declined; but consumption of sugar and

other sweeteners has almost doubled.

 

Why, then, do today's politically correct dietary gurus continue to blame

beef consumption for our ills? Is it because it is the one wholesome food that

has shown an increase over the past ninety years?

 

What's the likely cause of heart disease?

 

The most likely causes of increased heart disease in America are the other

changes in our diets—huge increases in consumption of refined carbohydrates

and

vegetable oils, particularly hydrogenated vegetable oils; and the decline in

nutrient levels in our food, particularly minerals and fat soluble vitamins—

vitamins found only in animal fats.

 

The only claim that can be made against beef as a cause of heart disease is

that some studies have shown beef consumption to temporarily raise cholesterol

levels in short term feeding experiments.

 

Other studies have shown that beef consumption, including beef fat

consumption, lowers cholesterol levels. But even if all studies show that beef

consumption raises cholesterol levels, the only conclusion you can draw is—so

what?

 

There is no greater risk of heart disease at cholesterol levels of 300 than

at 180, and people with cholesterol levels below 180 are at greater risk of

death from other causes, such as cancer, intestinal diseases, accidents,

violence

and suicide.5 In other words, it's much more dangerous to have cholesterol

levels that are too low than cholesterol levels that are too high.

 

Cholesterol is your best friend

 

The truth is that cholesterol is your best friend. It is vital for the

function of the nervous system and the integrity of the digestive tract. Steroid

hormones that help the body deal with stress are made from cholesterol.

 

Sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone are made from cholesterol. Bile

salts that the body uses to digest fats are made from cholesterol. Vitamin D,

needed for thousands of biochemical processes, is made from cholesterol.

 

Cholesterol is a powerful antioxidant that protects us against cancer. It is

vital to the cells because it provides waterproofing and structural integrity.

And, finally, cholesterol is the body's repair substance.

 

When our arteries are weak and develop fissures or tears, cholesterol is

sequestered and used for repair. When cholesterol levels in the blood are high,

it's because the body needs cholesterol. Blaming heart disease on cholesterol is

like blaming a fire on the firemen who arrive to put out the flames.

 

Does beef cause cancer?

 

What about the accusation that beef causes cancer, in particular cancer of

the colon? The genesis of this myth involves more than just muddied thinking,

but actual skulduggery. In 1965 an influential physician, Ernst Wynder, took the

data for the mostly processed vegetable oils, called them animal fat (which

they were not) and compared them with worldwide colon cancer mortality.6

 

The table he produced showed high rates of colon cancer in European countries

and low rates of colon cancer in Japan, and concluded that there was a

positive effect, in other words, that saturated fat, the kind found in beef,

caused

colon cancer.

 

What the data actually showed was that consumption of polyunsaturated

vegetable oils, not saturated animal fats, was associated with the incidence of

colon

cancer. And Wynder forgot to mention that Asians have much higher rates than

Americans of other types of cancers, particularly cancers of the liver,

pancreas, stomach, esophagus and lungs.

 

Then in 1973, William Haenszel and his colleagues from the National Cancer

Institute reported the findings from a study that relied on dietary recall and

lacked matched controls—in other words, a very poorly designed study.7 The

researchers stated that they found a relationship between beef and colon cancer

that fit the earlier work of Wynder.

 

Actually, what they really found was that among westernized Japanese

Americans, those who said they consumed lots of macaroni, green beans and peas,

as

well as beef, had the highest rates of colon cancer; while among traditional

Japanese Americans, those who said they consumed lots of dried cuttlefish,

Chinese

peas, bamboo shoots, rice and fermented soy products had the highest rates of

colon cancer.

 

Thus, the researchers singled out beef as the culprit from a choice of

several foods associated with cancer in Westerners and ignored politically

correct

foods like soy products, fish and vegetables as a potential cause of cancer in

Japanese Americans.

 

Instead, this second-rate and inconclusive study has become firmly fixed in

the consciousness of the scientific community as providing evidence for the

assertion that beef causes colon cancer.

 

Two American studies conducted in the 1990's have found a higher risk of

colon cancer among those who eat red meat.8 However, no study done in Europe has

ever shown an association between meat consumption and cancer.9

 

This suggests that European sausage and luncheon meat, included in the rubric

of " meat consumption, " are prepared by traditional methods that require few

additives, while the similar products in the United States contain many

carcinogenic preservatives and flavorings.

 

Unfortunately, the American Cancer Society's 1996 recommendation that

Americans cut down on their consumption of meat—particularly fatty meat—in

order to

avoid cancer makes no distinction between fresh meats and those that have been

embalmed with modern chemicals.

 

While two US studies have implicated meat consumption as a cause of colon

cancer, there are several that contradict these findings. In 1975, Rowland

Philips compared Seventh-Day Adventists physicians, who do not eat meat, with

non-Seventh Day Adventist physicians, and found that the vegetarian doctors had

higher rates of gastrointestinal and colon-rectal cancer deaths.10

 

National Cancer Institute data show that Argentina, with very high levels of

beef consumption, has significantly lower rates of colon cancer than other

western countries where beef consumption is considerably lower.11

 

A 1997 study published in the International Journal of Cancer found that

increased risk of colon and rectal cancer was positively associated with

consumption of bread, cereal dishes, potatoes, cakes, desserts and refined

sugars, but

not with eggs or meat.12

 

And a 1978 study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute

found no greater risk of colon cancer, regardless of the amounts of beef or

other meats ingested.13 The study also found that those who ate plenty of

cruciferous vegetables, such as cabbage, Brussels sprouts and broccoli, had

lower

rates of colon cancer. So just because it's all right to eat beef doesn't mean

you

shouldn't eat your broccoli.

 

Actually, we know one of the mechanisms whereby colon cancer is initiated,

and it does not involve meat per se. Colon cancer occurs when high levels of

dietary vegetable oils and hydrogenated fats, along with certain carcinogens,

are

acted on by certain enzymes in the cells lining the colon, leading to tumor

formation.14

 

This explains the fact that in industrialized countries, where there are many

carcinogens in the diet and where consumption of vegetable oils and

carcinogens is high, some studies have correlated meat-eating with colon cancer;

but in

traditional societies, where vegetable oils are absent and the food is free

of additives, meat-eating is not associated with cancer.

 

Riding piggy back on the alleged association of beef with colon cancer are

supposed links with other cancers, such as breast cancer. Here the evidence

shows a similarly inconsistent pattern.

 

Cancer is a disease of rich countries where numerous factors can be fingered—

altered fats, fabricated foods, low levels of protective nutrients, high

levels of carcinogens—and rich countries consume lots of beef.

 

But association is not the same as cause. Countries where there are more

telephones have more cancer, but that does not mean that telephones cause

cancer.

Fat consumption in general also gets the blame for high rates of breast

cancer. But a recent survey showed that women on lowfat diets have just as much

breast cancer as those on high fat diets.15

 

High protein diets are said to cause osteoporosis and Americans are now being

advised to avoid beef in order to protect their bones. Once again, it's

important to look at the studies carefully.

 

Research that showed a link with bone loss and protein consumption was done

with purified protein powders.16 With meat, a natural protein food, there was

no negative calcium balance. New evidence indicates that women who eat lots of

meat had fewer hip fractures compared to those who avoided it.17

 

High protein diets are said to contribute to kidney problems but, again, the

evidence is contradictory. Although protein restriction can be helpful for

those who are suffering kidney failure, there is no evidence that eating meat

causes kidney disease.18 The fat-soluble vitamins found exclusively in animal

fats are very important for healthy kidney function.

 

Does beef cause autoimmune diseases or asthma?

 

What about the accusation that meat contributes to autoimmune diseases and

asthma?

This hypothesis is predicated on the fact that meat contains arachidonic

acid, a fatty acid from which the supposedly pro-inflammatory Series Two

prostaglandins—local tissue hormones—are formed.

 

This is one of the nuttiest notions to take hold in the scientific community

for a long time. It was promulgated by Barry Sears, author of The Zone, and

taken up with a vengeance by the anti-meat forces.

 

These people know nothing about prostaglandins. Some of the prostaglandins

that the body makes from arachidonic acid do indeed promote inflammation—which

is a very important protective response when you have injured yourself.

 

But the same arachidonic acid also forms the basis of anti-inflammatory

prostaglandins that the body uses, when appropriate, to reduce inflammation.19

And

besides, the amount of arachidonic acid in beef is very low—less than half a

percent of total fat content.

 

It is much lower than the amount of omega-3 fatty acids, the current darlings

of the nutritional community, yet none of the voices promoting omega-3 fatty

acids ever tell us that we can get them from beef.

 

What about " Mad Cow Disease " ?

 

Beef consumption in England plummeted recently with the 'Mad Cow Disease "

scare. Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is a wasting

disease of cattle characterized by nervous disorders and weakness, said to be

related to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans.

 

Scientists have not been able to link a virus to this disease, so they

theorize that an abnormal protein particle called a prion, found in the brains

of

cattle with BSE and humans with CJD, is the cause.

 

The theory is that these prions are infectious agents, passed along to cows

though the practice of animal part feeding and then to humans who eat infected

meat, particularly meat from the nervous system, like brain.

 

There's a lot wrong with this theory. For one thing, BSE is nonexistent in

the USA, where animal part feeding has been going on for almost one hundred

years.

 

Another is recorded cases of CJD among vegetarians; yet another is the

absence of CJD in the Shetlands where scrapie, a disease similar to BSE, is

common

in sheep and where potted sheeps brain is a national dish. The research of Mark

Purdey, a diary farmer in England, indicates that the mad cow disease

epidemic in England occurred in areas where farmers were forced to treat their

cattle

with organophosphate pesticides in a warble fly eradication program.20 The

warble fly makes holes in the cows' backs—not dangerous in itself, but it

reduces the value of pelts sold to leather manufacturers. These holes are open

doors

to the spinal cord and organophosphate pesticides are very toxic to the

nervous system. By a complex process, these compounds seem to cause certain

proteins to fold in pathological ways—these are the prions that are found in

the

brains of animals with BSE and humans with CJD. Mineral deficiencies are also

involved, particularly magnesium, which is a mineral that protects the nervous

system. Finally, a similar disease occurs among wild animals living in areas