Las 2 principales mentiras sobre la carne

The 2 main lies about meat

noviembre 21, 2019

1.- Meat causes cancer, diabetes and shortens your life

It has been tried by all means, even so there is not a single scientific evidence that confirms that meat is bad for our health, there are only associations between causes and potential effects.

The negative effects of meat are mostly associates to the way we cook it (fried, breaded…) and what we eat alongside meat (fries, soda…)

Recently the ‘Meat is Bad’ theory has been seriously compromised by this article published by Annals of Internal Medicine, click to read more.

This study has been made by an independent experts panel that has revised and meta analysis of more than 118 articles (56 cohorts) and more than 6 million participants.

The Conclusion is that the possible absolute effects of red and processed meat consumption on cancer mortality and incidence are very small, and the certainty of evidence is low to very low.

2.- The meat industry contaminates more than the transport industry.

This is one of the most used argument to criminalize meat, however the criteria to evaluate the impact of each industry has been very different and unfair.

For example for the transport industry it has only been measured the emissions produced by vehicles, without accounting their manufacturing and everything that involves. On the other hand for the meat industry they have counted everything from what a tractor consumes to how much it costs to bring each product to the market.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, greenhouse gas from beef cattle only represents 2% of emissions in U.S. By contrast, transportation accounts for 27% of emissions in the U.S. In the United States the feedlot farming (much more contaminant) has more presence than in Europe.

In all the matters involving environment issues there should be a consideration about the difference between industrial and grazing farming. Cherky is involved in an EU project about this, click here to know more.

Another heavy argument against meat is that we need more than 2000 liters of water to get a burger.

Most of the diet of grazing animals consist in the resources they have at their disposal (water and grass). Very often the livestock are raised in pastured environments that can not be cultivated, mountains or rocky lands for instance, where the only way to get food for people is through animals.

Cattle are also fed with vegetable subproducts or non edible crops for humans.

Well managed cattle can be part of the solution to climate change.

Several studies demonstrate that a constant rotation of livestock to new pastures sequester an important amount of carbon in the ground. In addition biodiversity and soil health improve.

Looks like by some biased interests red meat has become in the perfect scapegoat to be blamed for both our worsened health and the climate change at once.

As it has been demonstrated, a plant based diet is not the perfect solution to address neither the nutritional or the productive issues we have.

Finding real solutions require a serious approach to how we produce food far from the debate that big corporations and economic interests want us to be in.