Nutritional heresy no. 4: You probably don’t eat enough red meat
When planning big international events, some see it as an opportunity to impose their ideology on others, certain they’ll be sure to cooperate.
That must have been the thinking of the organisers of the recent Olympic games. They decided that athletes should ignore human biology and switch to an inferior, 60% meatless menu, for the sake of the planet. And what better time and place to educate them than the biggest sporting event in the world.
The athletes were having none of it. They demanded more meat and eggs and less tofu and pea protein, to much media attention. They couldn’t risk compromising their performance with inferior substitutes. The organisers had no choice but to reverse their decision and capitulate to the demands of the athletes.
Hot on the heels of the Olympics debacle came yet another study (by the same people at Harvard University who are famously anti-meat) suggesting that red meat is bad for us. Various reasons have been proposed, in the past, but none has ever stood up to scrutiny. This time the reasoning was that meat increases the risk of developing diabetes type 2.
It doesn’t, of course. A study that looked at a variety of questionnaires filled in by nearly two million people in 31 countries over a period of ten years is not a real study. It’s the sort of confection that is designed to mislead.
It’s easily done: the fact that people who eat meat (that is, almost everyone) might also eat a lot of fries, bread, pastries, crisps and so on to go with that meat is conveniently overlooked. The authors of the study didn’t include that meddlesome detail.
What we do know as fact is that diabetes is an inability to handle blood glucose. Meat does not contain glucose.
No association, no causation
The 2017 U.S. Department of Agriculture report, US Trends in Food Availability, revealed that between 1970 and 2014, red meat consumption decreased by 28%. At the same time, consumption of grains, in the form of wheat flour, rice, corn, oats and barley, increased by exactly the same amount – 28%.
However, if you lump red meat and poultry together into one big statistic, a different picture emerges. Overall meat consumption has increase dramatically, because of the global demand for chicken, a white meat.
Chicken consumption more than doubled, from 27.4 pounds per person in 1970 to 58.7 pounds per person in 2014.
Overall, red meat consumption (i.e., beef, pork, veal, lamb, and mutton) declined from 136.1 pounds per person in 1971 to 95.4 pounds per person in 2014.
As red meat consumption plummeted, rates of diabetes soared. In the 1970s prevalence of diabetes was 2% in women and 2.7% in men.
By 2021, 14.7% of all US adults had diabetes.
If you were to follow guidelines and cut down even more on your meat consumption, you could also expect to cut down on your nutrient intake, as meat is the most nutrient-dense food on the planet. Here is just a select few of those nutrients.
Haem iron
There are two forms of dietary iron: haem and non-haem.
Haem iron, found in red meat, and to a lesser extent fish and white meat, is the form of iron that the body readily absorbs. Non-haem iron, the type found in plant foods, has a poor absorption rate.
The human gut can absorb 25%-30% of haem iron from animal-source foods. Non-haem iron absorption can be as low as 2%.
If you get your iron exclusively from plant foods you will probably become anaemic. For babies and children, the consequences could be serious. Low iron is a serious threat to intellectual ability and can lead to cognitive problems.
Women who lack iron in pregnancy are more likely to have babies with neurocognitive deficits. Approximately 45% of women start their pregnancy with low or absent stores of iron, even though iron requirements increase ten-fold in the first trimester.
In the UK, approximately 46% of women develop anaemia at some point during pregnancy.
Common signs and symptoms of iron deficiency include:
Pale skin
Fatigue
General weakness
Rapid heartbeat
Shortness of breath
Sore tongue
Restless legs syndrome
Spoon-shaped nails
Ringing in ears
Protein
Red meat is an excellent source of quality protein. ‘Quality’ means that it contains good levels of all the essential, or indispensable, amino acids, of which there are nine.
Protein plays many vital roles in the body and is involved in the growth and maintenance of tissues, including bone, skin, and muscle. Protein structures include collagen, hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters, antibodies and haemoglobin, the protein that transports oxygen in the blood.
Plant sources of protein have poor digestibility, meaning that much of it passes through and out of the body. Which in turn means lost opportunities: protein is not something that the body stores. Amino acids are used almost immediately once they enter the blood. Therefore, you should ensure that protein is eaten at each meal.
The Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS) is now recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as the most accurate measurement of how much protein you eat is absorbed into the body.
According to the FAO, anything with a score of 1.0 or above is classified as an excellent source of protein. A “good” protein scores between 0.75 and 0.99. If a food or food product scores less than 0.75, it’s a poor source of protein.
Here’s a quick guide to some DIAAS scores – note that red meat has an excellent score.
source
Zinc
Zinc is a trace element that plays an essential role in just about every function of the body, including cognitive function. It is highly concentrated in the brain.
The best sources of zinc are seafood (especially shellfish), red meat (especially offal), poultry, and eggs. Zinc is also present in plant foods, including wholegrains, nuts and seeds, but in much smaller amounts and in a much less absorbable form. The body cannot store zinc in the long term, so a constant dietary supply is required.
Intake and serum concentrations of zinc have been shown to be lower in people following vegetarian diets, compared with non-vegetarian people.
Zinc deficiency symptoms include:
Loss of taste and smell
Poor appetite
Hair loss
depressed mood
Poor immunity
Poor wound healing
Diarrhoea
Vitamin B12
This vitamin is essential for the functioning central nervous system. Because this vitamin is found exclusively in animal-source foods, the most vulnerable groups are vegetarians and vegans.
“Vegetarians have vitamin B12 deficiency and are more prone to developing neuropsychiatric and neurological problems.”
Symptoms of B12 deficiency include:
Fatigue
Depression
Anxiety
Loss of appetite
Hair loss
Pallor
Numbness or tingling in the hands and feet
Poor memory
Beef and beef liver are among the richest sources of vitamin B12, along with lamb’s liver, clams and sardines.
Red meat is so nutrient dense that there isn’t space here to cover all the other micronutrients that will be lacking if you don’t eat enough (vitamins A and K2, for example). But one nutrient requires special mention, and that is the amino acid taurine.
Found naturally in red meat and fish but virtually non-existent in plants, taurine is an amino acid that the body can make, but only in small quantities, making it semi-essential.
Circulating taurine declines with advancing age in mice, monkeys, worms and, it turns out, humans: elderly people have 80% less taurine circulating in the blood than young people, which is a potential problem because low taurine can contribute to various age-related diseases.
A study published in June 2023 in the journal Science reported that when middle-aged mice were supplemented with taurine, life expectancy increased by over 10%. They even appeared younger, according to the authors of the study, a thrilling outcome for the ageing mice, and one that leaves us all wondering how much to take. They experienced better health all-round: bones, muscles, pancreas, brain, gut, and immunity were all in better shape.
This latest ‘study’ makes no sense. How can a food that we evolved on, since becoming human, and which contains the greatest nutrient density of all foods, and is the most compatible with the human body, be harmful to health?
“Meat has long been, and continues to be, a primary source of high-quality nutrition. The theory that it can be replaced with legumes and supplements is mere speculation”
Ideology is one thing, but facts are another. People can believe anything they want, but beliefs cannot change genetic make-up or basic human biology. Eat more, not less, red meat.
Thanks, Maria: But it is the TYPE of red meat, such as meat from sick animals at gigantic "factory farms" vs healthy animals from smaller, grass fed, free range, organic farms!