Red Meat – good or bad? Part 1
There was a BBC2 Horizon documentary this evening by Dr Michael Mosley called ‘Should I Eat Meat?’. One interesting little bit of information mentioned was:
- An American study showed that eating red meat increased health/mortality issues
- A European study showed that eating some red meat was healthier than eating none.
But no-one looked into WHY this difference in results might occur! Perhaps it’s to do with what each location feeds the animals?
In the USA they keep the cattle in feed lots where they are fed soy and grain based diets, whereas the Eurpoean cattle are more grass fed or hay based. This highly impacts the amount of omega 6 the animals are consuming which has associated health implications – see the page ‘Grass fed vs Grain fed animal diets‘ and my previous blogs regarding omega 3/omega 6 ratios and the health issues…
In summary, if you want to eat meat make sure it’s grass fed…
When will these documentaries or studies start to consider the diet of the animal too? The saying ‘we are what we eat’ applies to animals too…