Since 2005 when the USDA rolled out a new food pyramid that the meat industry said reduced red meat’s place in a healthy diet to a mere “condiment,” the USDA has continued to discredit red meat as a healthful food. Then, an advisory committee developing the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for American, which are revamped every five years, said Americans should eat less red and processed meat in favor of a “diet higher in plant-based foods,” further inflaming the meat industry. Committee members even played the environment card and wrote that a red meat-based diet “has a larger environmental impact in terms of increased greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, and energy use,” compared to plant-based and Mediterranean-style diets.
As red meat continues to be vilified, here is some of the meat industry’s pushback.
The salt in meat is good for you!
The North American Meat Institute admits that salt “plays a critical role in the production of meat products” especially processed meat. But rather than acknowledge the role of excessive salt in high blood pressure, heart attack and failure, stroke and damage to the kidneys and blood vessels, NAMI thinks salt is a good thing. Salt “is essential for human health and development, particularly in regulating the body’s electrolyte balance, preventing dehydration, and maintaining many of the body’s cellular functions,” says NAMI. It “improves the flavor, texture, and safety of meat, especially processed,” and hydrates “muscle proteins” while it “allows a gel structure to form during cooking.” Pass the Slim Jims.
Preservatives like salt also keep meat safe by retarding the growth of germs like listeria, salmonella and E. coli, says NAMI though it does not address why so many pathogens are in the meat to begin with. Nor does NAMI address other common preservatives in meat like nitrites, ammonia gas and carbon monoxide.
Millions of Americans can’t be wrong
Defending a food simply because it is popular and has “palatability” certainly puts the cart before the horse—you could say the same thing about cigarettes. Toddlers, after all, like cough syrup and dogs like chocolate both of which can poison them. Still, NAMI charges that instead of “demonizing” red meat, the new guidelines should emphasize “proper portion size and smart choices, which still allows consumers to continue enjoying the foods they love as they build an overall healthy dietary pattern that includes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein,”—a philosophy also known as Cutting Down Slowly.
The new guidelines are also insensitive to minorities whose diets include more salty, processed and cured meats charges NAMI—they ignore important cultural differences. (Of course the diets also encourage hypertension, obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.) Big Meat even plays the elitist card, pretending that healthy diets without saturated fat are some kind of rich prerogative that few can afford. How expensive are related diseases?
6. Red meat warnings violate consumer “rights”
It never fails. When producers of controversial products are up against the wall, they scream “consumer rights.” That is how California’s GMO labeling Proposition 37, for example, was defeated. Groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom (formed by Philip Morris in 1995) pretend that harmful lifestyles and preventable cases of lung cancer or diabetes are an individual’s right to pursue and don’t raise everyone’s health care costs and squander health resources. Right.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and 29 other legislators from meat producing states strike such a tone in a recent letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell about the guidelines which moved the North American Meat Institute (NAMI) to create a change.org petition called Hands Off My Hot Dog.
“We stand together as people who value personal choice and reject taxes on foods that elite academics deem unhealthy. We assert ourselves as intelligent, free thinking people capable of making decisions that are best for our families’ nutrition needs, traditions and personal budgets,” says the Hands Off My Hot Dog petition. “Our great Declaration’s preamble declares that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right and for the 95 percent of Americans who enjoy meat and poultry, their food traditions are integral parts of their lives and their happiness and should not be impinged upon by nutrition despots who seek to impose their personal choices on others.” Take that!
So far, the petition has 2,500 signers compared with a petition supporting the less-meat guidelines that got 150,000 signers.
Who is the government to tell us how to eat?
“It is hard to believe that the very agency tasked with promoting agriculture would encourage people not to eat meat,” Sen. Thune wrote in his letter to officials. “From the short-lived Meatless Mondays, to misguided dietary guidelines, farmers and ranchers deserve more of an ally in the USDA, rather than an adversary. Misleading dietary guidelines would not only confuse consumers, but would also harm South Dakota’s livestock industry.”
Nor does government have any business considering the effect of U.S. eating habits on the environment say reactionary lawmakers representing meat industry states like Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. “Sacrificing sound science and denying the nutritional benefits of lean red meat to satisfy an extreme environmental agenda is woefully misguided.”
Rep. Cramer is no doubt appeased now that a president has been elected who rejects the extreme environmental agenda.
Martha Rosenberg is a nationally recognized investigative health reporter whose food and drug expose, “Born with a Junk Food Deficiency,” won an American Society of Journalists and Authors honorable mention. Rosenberg has appeared on CSPAN, National Public Radio and lectured at the medical school and university levels. Check her Facebook page.
