Is meat really unhealthy ?

When our vegetarian ancestors started eating meat around two million years ago, it wasn't just because animals taste good, it was out of necessity. Climate change made many of the plants our ancestors relied on less available, and meat filled the gap. At least since the discovery of fire, meat has been a staple of the human diet. But in recent years, eating meat has been increasingly associated with health risks such as heart disease, certain cancers and early death. So how unhealthy is meat really?

In this text, we're only going to talk about meat. Dairy products deserve their own text. Biologically, we need to eat for three reasons: for energy, to get materials to make our cells, and to get special molecules that our bodies can't make themselves. The energy and most of the materials come from the three macronutrients: fats, carbohydrates and proteins. Proteins are the most important resource for repairing and replenishing our cell structures. Macronutrients are a wide variety of vitamins and minerals that we need to fuel our metabolic processes. Meat provides most of these. It contains all the essential amino acids our body needs and many minerals such as: iron, zinc and essential vitamins, some of which are difficult to find in plants, such as vitamin B12.

Only one essential nutrient is missing from most of the meat we eat: vitamin C. It is found in almost all plants and supports our immune system and the development of connective tissue. Without it, you'd get scurvy after a few months. But meat has another great advantage: it's highly bioavailable. Some of the nutrients in meat are broken down and made available more quickly than those from plants. For example, spinach contains more iron than meat, but it's absorbed much more slowly and the body needs more energy to digest it. Some health benefits have also been observed in communities that rely exclusively on meat. The Inuit, for example, are able to survive in extreme climates thanks to a meat-only diet. Because they eat the whole animal, including the organs, they get all the nutrients they need, including vitamin C. So meat itself is definitely not dangerous for us. But its health effects vary depending on how it is prepared and which animal it comes from. When we talk about meat in the western world, we usually mean muscle tissue, which is high in nutrients, but also lacks some of the vitamins that make it possible to survive on meat alone.

The healthiest animals to eat are probably fish. Fish contains polyunsaturated fatty acids such as omega-3, which can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and support anti-inflammatory immune functions. As part of a balanced diet, fish is safe to eat regularly. However, eating fish comes with its own set of complications, such as overfishing and the destruction of the oceans. We'll talk about that in another text.

A close second is the most popular meat, chicken. It's considered the meat with the least health risks. The only negative health effect of poultry is somewhat controversial: fat. It's high content of saturated fat has been linked to higher cholesterol levels and cardiovascular disease. But even this idea has been criticised by many scientists, who argue that high cholesterol levels may be inherited and not caused by diet. So in general, if you want to eat meat and are concerned about your health, go for chicken.

The problem comes with high intakes of red meat such as beef, veal, pork, lamb, horse and goat.For example, a recent study recommended a maximum of 23 grams of red meat a day - the equivalent of one small steak a week. However, large meta-analysis studies have shown that eating 100g of red meat a day increases the risk of diabetes by 19%, stroke by 11% and bowel cancer by 17%. This sounds alarming. But before we panic, let's look at how these studies were conducted. Because that brings us to the second big problem with trying to answer the question of whether meat is unhealthy or not. Most of the studies that have linked health risks to eating red meat have been case-control studies. This means that you take a group of people with a disease and classify them according to their eating habits. The more red meat they ate, the more likely they were to develop certain diseases. The problem is that it's very hard to rule out other factors. People who eat less meat tend to have a healthier lifestyle in general. They tend to eat more fruit and vegetables, and are less likely to smoke or drink alcohol.

Most studies try to control for these factors, but it's extremely difficult to make definitive statements. Things get even worse when we look at processed meat. Processing meat means adding certain chemicals by curing, smoking, sorting or fermenting, or in other words, making it delicious. Bacon, ham, salami, sausages and hot dogs contain chemicals that are harmful to us, such as nitrates and nitrites, which can damage DNA in our digestive system and lead to cancer. The w-h-o reviewed 800 studies over 20 years and concluded that processed wheat is strongly linked to an increased risk of bowel cancer. Every extra 50 grams of processed meat a day increases your risk of cancer by 18 per cent. In terms of cancer risk, processed meat is now in the same category as plutonium, asbestos and smoking.

The w-h-o stresses that its research is only concerned with whether something causes cancer, not to what extent. But processed meat can also significantly increase the risk of diabetes, stroke and coronary heart disease. It also makes a difference what kind of life our meat had when it was part of a living being. It's common practice to feed livestock large amounts of antibiotics to prevent diseases that can spread antibiotic resistance. Taken together, a high intake of red and processed meat could increase your risk of premature death by up to 29%. So if your chance of dying this year is 3%, it's now 4%. This may not sound like much, but tiny percentages have a huge impact on societies of millions. They also seem harmless until they affect you. But it would be wrong to blame meat alone for poor health. There's no evidence that the nature of meat itself has any negative effect beyond its high fat content. And even this is highly controversial. As with many other pleasures in life, sometimes too much of a good thing can be harmful.

Most health authorities recommend cutting back to 500g of meat a week, while studies suggest cutting back on processed meat as much as possible. So if you eat meat no more than once or twice a week, you should be fine. For most people, however, this is already a drastic change in diet: the average American eats almost 1600 grams of meat a week. The average German eats 1100 grams a week. And many of us need a lot more. If you're not sure, try making a mental note of how much meat you eat for a week or two. You'll be surprised how much it really is. So most people watching this video would benefit from eating less meat. Aside from health concerns, there's also the fact that the meat industry is one of the biggest contributors to climate change and has reached a scale where it's impossible to supply millions of tonnes of meat and still treat animals with dignity. We've already discussed this in detail in another text.

All in all, meat is not unhealthy in moderation, and you don't have to become a vegetarian overnight to make a real difference to your health and the planet. But your lifestyle choices do matter. For yourself and for others. The key is to be open to trying something new from time to time. Maybe you'll discover your new favourite food.

Until you try, you'll never know what you like or what you're capable of. So try as much as you can!