Nothing speaks of America, especially our generation, more than red meat. I was raised on meat and potatoes. But the downside of our diets is beginning to catch up with us. As we age, we are seeing more and more problems with chronic diseases, such as arthritis, dementia, heart disease and cancer. And some recent research suggests meat may be contributing to the problem.
A study released by the World Health Organization suggests processed meats, such as bacon, hot dogs, sausages, corned beef and canned meat, may contribute to cancer and that any red meat may as well, to a lesser degree.
Now there is a debate about whether to recommend eliminating or reducing meat in the diet or whether any recommendations should be made at all.
I was trained to look at diet from a different perspective. To me, the issue is not whether or not to eat meat; nutrition from a wellness viewpoint looks at how processed a food is. The more processed it is, the more problems it causes. For example, the natural sugar in an apple is a good source of energy, but refine it into pure white sugar and it becomes almost toxic. And the added preservatives, colorings, flavor enhancers, such as MSG and whatever else they put into our foods, do not contribute to our health.
The same applies to eating meat. It does not surprise me that processed meats contribute to cancer. This is why I recommend avoiding this type of food. But as usual, it’s not quite that simple. For example, bacon is mentioned as one of the processed meats to avoid, and I certainly agree with that — if it is cured with nitrates, sugar or other chemicals. However, it is possible to buy bacon that is free of these chemicals and processed more naturally.
Also, the way bacon is prepared is a factor; frying it at high temperatures can cause more disease-producing chemicals compared to baking it in the oven — it is called bacon, after all.
I also was taught that meat from an animal raised in its natural environment would be healthier for you than one raised in a “factory farm,” forced to eat unnatural foods and given hormones and antibiotics to fatten them up. It works — the animals are fatter, but they also are sicker, and so are we when we eat their meat. Meats raised in these farms have a very different nutritional profile than meats from animals allowed to eat their natural diets and to move about freely.
One of my nutrition textbooks in chiropractic school was “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” by Dr. Westin Price, an American dentist who practiced in the 1930s. He noticed that the quality of his patients’ teeth, as well as their overall health, was influenced more by the quality of their diet than anything else. He traveled the globe to study the relationship between nutrition and health, especially looking for humans who still lived and ate as our ancestors did for centuries before modern civilization.
Price was amazed to find entire villages or tribes that were nearly free of many chronic diseases, including cavities, diabetes, arthritis and even cancer. And the health of the people did not depend as much on what they ate as the quality of it.
For example, several tribes of American Indians lived in the plains, where there are no plant-based foods to eat; they ate only the local animals they caught. According to the theory that a purely animal-based diet is not a good one for humans, they should have a lot of health problems: heart disease, cancer, etc. Yet, they were amazing physical specimens.
There also were African tribes in similar environments, who had no history of heart disease until they moved to the cities and began eating processed foods. Within a generation, their disease rates were catching up with the citydwellers.
Of course, no one is suggesting we copy these native diets exactly. My standard recommendation is to consume more plant based food than meat and milk. But I also believe meat can be a great source of nutrition — or a contributor to disease. It just depends on how the animal is raised, whether the meat is processed and how it is prepared.
Dr. Michael Noonan practices chiropractic, chiropractic acupuncture and other wellness therapies in Old Town. He can be reached at noonanchiropractic@gmail.com.