Day 43

More on meat, and then I'll shut up about it. (Probably.)

Maybe I'm hyper-aware because of this project, but I keep seeing articles about the relative benefits and health risks of eating meat. Mostly the latter; it eating meat might still be the order of the day in contemporary American society, but if my Facebook page is any kind of social barometer, thinking it's cool is hopelessly passe.

To begin with, I'm very intrigued by this article that drifted my way, because it's a very intelligent argument in favor of synthetic meat products, which Pollan specifically condemns. Mark Bittman, by the way, is the same author who wrote the previous amazing NYT article about meat to which I linked last week.

The article argues that eating meat (again:) is not a healthy choice for our bodies or the environment. The author is optimistic and excited about new, more realistic fake-meat products. With fake meat this good, he posits, even died-in-the-wool meat-eaters will be eating less of it. Which is good news for us and the planet.

Pollan, on the other hand, argues that anything that's one thing masquerading as another thing (that is, vegetables masquerading as meat) is bad news from the start. Why? Because anything that is made to feel, look, and taste like something it's not has, by very definition, been highly, highly processed. And we all know how Pollan feels about processed food.

So the question is, what, exactly, is so bad about a little processed soybeans anyway? If you ask Bittman, food made out of nothing but soybeans and other veggies is practically a God-send.

And if you ask Michael Pollan, the answer is, we don't know, and that should be enough. "Nutrition science is, to put it charitably, a very young science," says Pollan in his introduction, "[It's] approximately where surgery was in the year 1650 - very promising, and very interesting to watch, but are you ready to let them operate you?"

A fair point, MP, but by those same standards, an innumerable amount of things in our everyday lives are a "very young science": cell phones, X-rays, microwaves. We trust doctors and scientists everyday to tell us, "This is perfectly safe," without even seeing a full generation that has lived and died not knowing a world without that science. If we trust some guy to say, "Look this big plastic box is pumping radiation into your food in order to heat it, but don't worry, it's totally not going to give you cancer; we did a study," trusting that same guy to say, "This food may look different, but it's really just the same soybeans people have been eating for hundreds of years, so it's completely fine," is no big thing.

And then there's also this little Huff-Po Op-Ed gem that essentially likens eating meat to smoking cigarettes. Which I think is a bit extreme, but in its defense, it has some fair points. There was a study conducted at Harvard a few years ago that everyone - my buddy MP included - loves to cite, clearly linking the consumption of red meat to mortality rates. It's hard to refute that evidence - although some have tried, citing unreliable information-gathering, and a failure to distinguish between cattle that were grass-fed and those that were corn-fed and factory-"grown."


Personally, I think that if you look at the nutritive difference between corn-fed and grass-fed beef, as well as the high rates of antibiotics and hormones found in factory-raised livestock, it's clear that this is an important distinction. Still, it's necessary to recognize that these are important points.

But I have a hard time getting behind it. And it's not because of the grass-fed argument, and it's not because of the data collection methods. It's basic, gut instinct when I think about how I feel when I include meat in my diet vs. when I don't.

And it's the fact that people have been eating meat for thousands of years and seemed to do just fine. You know when don't seem to be doing just fine? Right now. Heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death in America, with diabetes not far behind, making this century the first time in human history that the top two causes of death are largely influenced by lifestyle choices, as opposed to accidents or communicable diseases.

It seems profoundly counterintuitive to blame meat for this.

To eat meat or not to eat meat? To embrace imitation meat products as a health- and eco-savior or to denounce it as part of the problem? In situations like this, I think the best we can do is make the choice that feels right and pray that in the end good intentions count for something.

I know what I choose. What do you think?