http://epic.iarc.fr/keyfindings.php

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When alternet starts telling us the dangers of being a vegetarian, or a vegan. Or tells us that drinking booze is good for us, I might start to pay more attention to the 'zomg meat is teh evil' articles.

While I utterly abhor factory farming and slaughter house methods, and think animals should be raised better, treated better, killed better and I would be happy to pay more for this to happen, I think the hysteria about eating meat is stupid.

No one is going to get any converts by saying meat is bad. Or vilifying meat eaters. Grow up. Human psychology does not like being lectured to.

I was a vegetarian, lacto-ovo, a strict lacto-ovo vegetarian for ten years. My health is better now than it was when I was a veggie.

How you eat, what you do, and the choices you make in life are much more significant than if you eat meat or not.

Veggie-nazis suck. When I was a vegetarian, if other vegetarians made a stick, I would take the meat-eaters side, 100% of the time. I dislike cults, clubs or cliques. It is so east to make everything divisive. Forget what people eat, work on how to grow the food and save the planet and end malnutrition.

Alternet is so dull sometimes with their perpetual droning about the same issues without ever giving another POV.

Oh, and I am female, lesbian, liberal, borderline socialist, a greenie, old enough to know better, young enough not to care. So whichever veggie-nazi reads this and decides I Am a republican redneck or something, bzzt, wrong!

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Even avid meat eaters will admit meat all the time is not particularly healthy.

The reason they eat it is because they enjoy it.

The taste, the texture, then aroma of a nice steak gets them going, and that is perfectly sensible, far more sensible than pretending telling people about dangers they mostly know will change their ways.

The attraction to "meat" is genetic in that as creatures not yet civilized Omnivorous humans found meat to be the very best source of ready calories protein Etc. that could be eaten without preparation to nullify toxins or break down barriers that prevented digestion and denied access to the nutrients in plants.

Yes originally humanity ate meat raw.

And like any animal any easy source of protein and calories it was found very tasty, resulting in Humans finding all sorts of ways to eventually ensure they'd get to eat as much meat as they wanted 24/7.

Later we cooked it, and found it was even more enticing.

These sorts of articles are an insult to most people's intelligence.

THey're comments not worth making, because THE SPECIFICS DO NOT MATTER.

People who are big meat eaters are well aware that meat intake should be very limited, but do not care.

About the only thing that would stop people, well men at least, from eating meat would be a finding that eating meat shrinks your penis.

Other than that you can forget little silly lectures or patronizing warnings like this will change anyone's ways.

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I live in Japan for the last 31 years. As a former vegetarian (and pretty far left as well, like the previous poster), I have to say that such articles Do do your readers a disservice.

Sure we know about factory farming, BGH, the "bad" fat in meat (well, at least in non grass fed beef since grass fed beef has a fat profile closer to that of fish, I read). But consider that the US is also an over consuming and sedentary society. Other societies have different risk levels, and I would not be surprised to find that they do not match the US.

In China (and Okinawa, Japan, which has one of the highest life expectancies in the world) pork is considered one of the healthiest meats. Not that I think it is absolutely, but US puritanism, when wed to left-radical ideas, results in a tendency to preach and make absolutist all-or-nothing statements. Not only is this a turn off to people who SHOULD be more careful about what they eat, it also flies in the face of evidence that one CAN eat some of these bad foods and be well.

Again, maybe culture and other factors have something to do with it. Maybe the fact that fish is consumed in large quantities here makes the consumption of beef less of a threat. (Yes, "western" diseases are on the increase here as well, but pork and beef were eaten long before that started to happen. What DOES seem to have a causative effect is the increase in FAST food and the larger portions now, a la the US.)

Ah, the worst comment I ever heard from a US vegetarian a few years ago was that she would not breast feed her baby because "mother's milk is an animal product."

I rest my case.

paul

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You forgot choking. It happens all the time.

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This silly veggie thing is completely out of control. Here's the choice: Don't eat meat and become an introverted psychotic - or enjoy an Angus steak and enjoy vitality and joy in life.
For my life, Ive always enjoyed the latter. Hey, almost 75-years on this crazy planet and enjoying every minute of it - booze included.

p.s. Avoid the lemming-like rush to flu shots

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I am so tired of the junk science claiming that eating meat is bad for you. They never distinguish the sources of the meat.

Factory farmed pseudo-food is bad for you. Whether meat or veggie, it's bad for your health.

The dangers of e-coli are the direct result of factory farming. Agribusiness created the disease - one that was unknown before 1983. Was Virulent E-Coli Created by Agribusiness?

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"6 studies found the following trends: 1) a very low meat intake was associated with a significant decrease in risk of death in 4 studies, a nonsignificant decrease in risk of death in the fifth study, and virtually no association in the sixth study; 2) 2 of the studies in which a low meat intake significantly decreased mortality risk also indicated that a longer duration (>= 2 decades) of adherence to this diet contributed to a significant decrease in mortality risk and a significant 3.6-y (95% CI: 1.4, 5.8 y) increase in life expectancy; and 3) the protective effect of a very low meat intake seems to attenuate after the ninth decade" *American Journal of Clinical Nutrition*

One and a half to six years over, perhaps, nine decades? I will continue to enjoy my red meat.
I am a 64 year old farmer who grows all of my family's pasture raised beef, chicken, Tamworth pork and vegetables.(We have yet to find a way to grow coffee or citrus in N.E. VT.) At my last physical my Doctor informed me that my heart and health was of a 40 year old. My father, who was a vegetarian, died at the age of 47... from a heart attack.

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In this publish or perish world one can find studies that prove anything you want. The data never lies but liars collect data. These correlation studies are really not worth the paper they are printed on.
Prostrate Cancer – A study of 175,313 males found after nine years that:
Assume fifty-percent control group low meat eaters and heavy meat eaters (undefined), the study found that 87656 heavy meat eaters had prostrate cancer and 77137 low meat eaters had prostrate cancer. Twelve percent more heavy meat eaters had the cancer. Ninety four percent of all had the cancer. Who in the hell knows what arithmetic was used to determine twelve percent? Maybe 9 heavy meat eaters had cancer and 8 low meat eaters had cancer, twelve percent more heavy eaters had cancer. If you see any scientific study and the results are given in percents ignore it. Give me the scales and the correlation R or give me death. Better yet give me the results of a design of experiments (DOE) in which you took two groups none of which had cancer, fed one group meat for nine years and one group veggies. Oh yea, no one in the study had a family history of the cancer. Gets complicated not to mention ethical, doesn’t it?

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to see so many posts countering this constant barrage of Alterblech propaganda. I'm so 'fed up' to here with the vegetarian baloney on this site. Eating good quality meat cooked in a healthy manner is GOOD FOR YOU, okay? Read the research again. I won't go into details but eating lots of good quality protein is what your cells need and meat has the most of it. Vegetable protein is so insufficient, and hard as hell to digest. Cows have four stomachs for a reason. We are and have been a meat eating species for eons and eons and will continue to be. Even our closest cousins the chimps eat (raw) meat sometimes. The only arguments I might have against eating critters could be the ethical and healthy farming ones, and those are anyone's personal decisions. Those aside, health issues boil down to concomitant risky lifestyle, smoking, drinking, eating sugar, salt, plenty of carbs. Cancer, cholesterol, heart disease, are not increased by eating meat. Show me the studies. Transfats are the enemy here. Meat does not turn into transfats, okay? No way no how. VEGETABLE oils turn to transfat when heated, every time. Carbohydrates are your worst enemy, and those come from PLANTS. Carbs turn to sugars in the bloodstream. Sugars starve the cells of oxygen. Read 2x Nobel Prize winning scientist Otto Warburg's research into cellular respiration for primary cause of cancer, discovered, hello, back in the 1930's. But ask your doctor if he's ever heard of Warburg or his research. And of course hormones, steroids, antibiotics, nitrites, excessive sodium, those are a major danger and disease factors. For instance women who eat high amounts of fruits and vegetables are not shown to have less breast cancer, and no link between eating meat and colon cancer has been proven. But "conventional wisdom" myths prevail.

So Alternet how about you stop proselytizing this veggie agenda and do some journalism by giving some fair and balanced reporting? I am a lefty and despise the MSM, but I also despise ignorance. You owe it to your readership to provide a true picture of what the debate is about. You obviously don't like meat, bully for you, more for me. I need it, I want it, I'll eat it. I tried vegetarianism, it's not what's for dinner. I nede lots of protein for my health and I can't eat ten bushels of veggies and nuts to get it. I also researched it because as Mulder says, THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.

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Very little in this article tells me why meat causes these problems. It simply states that there is a link. This doesn't mean that meat causes these issues. There may be many other underlying factors such as amount of exercise or stress. Without looking at all of the differences between the groups being studied you get at best a positive correlation not a cause.
Now the question is why time and time again do we see articles on here and other places stating that there is a link between meat and this and that. That is because in most cases it is only a correlation.
I'm sure anybody here who has taken statistics knows the story about shark attacks and ice cream sales. For those that don't as icecream sales go up or down shark attacks follow the same trend. This doesn't mean that eating ice cream increases your chance to get eaten by a shark. As temperatures go up more people eat ice cream. Also more people are swimming in the ocean increasing the number of shark attacks. Correlation not causality.

I believe that meat should be eaten in moderation. It shouldn't be the focus of a meal or even at every meal. But I firmly believe that it is healthier to include some meat in your diet. Moderation is the key.

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They are down right deceiving. With out knowing the absolute level of risk associated with any given behavior its impossible to to make an informed choice. To wit, if your 10 year risk of getting heart disease from eating meat goes from 3% to 4% that is a 33% increase in risk, but you still have a 94% chance of not getting it.

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Equating red meat with processed meats under #1 makes the rest of the article and supposed associations specious. I'm certainly against factory farmed meat but you won't get more nutrient dense food than meat. This specious evolved and thrived eating meat...be thankful for that.

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You have made my day! That's exactly what I have been trying to tell my relatives and friends, often to no avail...except w/ my husband of 50 years whose type 2 diabetes is in control w/ PCRM advice and my vegan cooking!
I just finished reading "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer. Yeah! I want to adopt the guy as my son!
I will not read the comments now about your wise report Sara...probably too depressing to start my day! Why are people so much in denial?

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Men who date older women do it because they are quite obviously and literally motherfuckers. These are men who have been involved in steamy affairs with their own biological mothers for most of their lives. Most of them aren't even heterosexual; they merely sublimate their desire to submit to a powerful man by giving it to a proxy for their mothers. Often, (about 32% of the time according to a recent study) this irreconcilable internal conflict leads them to brutally murder their mothers or any "cougar" whom they manage to dupe into playing the role. It should be noted that many others engage in infantilism with their mommy-stand-ins, dressing up in diapers that they then gratuitously soil so that they can have the sexual pleasure they derive from being changed. Fortunately for those of us who find such perverisions disgusting, there are covert efforts disguised as "cougar matching" services which lure such diseased individuals to slow, horrible deaths by torture with knives, power drills, and hand-held cake mixers (don't ask). We should support the efforts of such sites to advertise wherever they get the opportunity.

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The health advantages of a vegetarian diet are well-known in the American medical community, but are just beginning to gain acceptance in the popular culture. The ethical, nutritional and environmental arguments in favor of vegetarianism have been well documented by author John Robbins in his 1987 Pulitzer Prize nominated book, Diet for a New America, which makes ethical vegetarianism seem as mainstream as recycling.

It’s healthier to be a vegetarian. During the period of October 1917 to October 1918, war rationing forced the Danish government to put its citizens on a vegetarian diet. This was a “mass experiment in vegetarianism,” with over three million subjects. The results were astonishing. The mortality rate dropped by 34 percent. The very same phenomenon was observed in occupied Norway during the Second World War. After the war, heavy consumption of meat resumed, and the mortality rate shot back up.

Studies done at Yale University by Professor Irving Fisher demonstrated that flesh-eaters have less endurance than vegetarians. A similar study done by Dr. J. Ioteyko of the Academie de Medicine in Paris found that vegetarians have two to three times more stamina than flesh-eaters and they take only one-fifth the time to recover from exhaustion.

In recent years, there has been widespread concern about osteoporosis, which is epidemic in America, especially among older women. The popular myth has been to solve the problem by consuming more calcium. Yet this doesn’t attack the root of the problem.

Osteoporosis is caused by excess consumption of protein. Americans overdose on protein, getting 1.5 to 2 times more protein than their bodies can handle. The body can’t store excess protein, so the kidneys are forced to excrete it. In doing so, they must draw upon calcium from the bloodstream. This negative calcium balance in the blood is compensated for by calcium loss from the bones: osteoporosis. The calcium lost in the bones of flesh-eaters is 5 to 6 times greater than that lost in the bones of vegetarians.

Excessive protein intake also taxes the kidneys; in America, it is not uncommon to find many over 45 with kidney problems. A strong correlation between excessive protein intake and cancer of the breast, prostate, pancreas and colon has even been observed.

It must be pointed out that meat, fish, and eggs are the most acidic forming foods; heavy consumption of these foods will cause the body to draw upon calcium to restore its pH balance. The calcium lost from the bones gets into one’s urine and often crystallizes into kidney stones, which are found in far greater frequency among flesh-eaters than among vegetarians. Studies have found that vegetarians in the United States have less than half the kidney stones of the general population.

The high consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol leads to artherosclerosis—more popularly known as “hardening of the arteries.” Plant foods contain zero cholesterol and only palm oil, coconuts and chocolate contain saturated fats. Lowering the cholesterol and fat intake in one’s diet lowers the risk of heart disease—America’s biggest killer.

As far back as 1961, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that “A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions.” Much has been said about the advantage of polyunsaturated fats as a means of lowering cholesterol in the blood. Unfortunately, this also has the adverse side effect of driving the cholesterol out of the blood and into the colon; contributing to colon cancer. The best way to prevent heart disease is to avoid foods high in fat and cholesterol.

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Up to 50 percent of all cancers are caused by diet. Meat and fat intake are primarily responsible. The incidence of colon cancer is high in regions where meat consumption is high and low where meat consumption is minimal. A lack of fiber in the diet also contributes significantly to colon cancer.

It’s important to note that unprocessed plant foods are high in fiber and carbohydrates, while animal flesh has none. The highest incidence of breast cancer occurs among flesh-eating populations; meat eating women have a four times greater risk of developing breast cancer than do vegetarian women. There is also a greater risk of cervical, uterine, and ovarian cancer—all linked to diets high in fat. Men who consume large quantities of animal fat also have a 3.6 times greater risk of getting prostate cancer.

Diabetes is known to be treatable on a low fat, high fiber diet. Incidence of diabetes balloons among populations eating a rich, meat-based diet. Hypoglycemia is caused by the excessive consumption of meats, sugar and fat. Multiple Sclerosis is also treatable on a low-fat diet. MS is prevalent among populations where consumption of animal fats is high and is least common where such consumption is low. A brain tissue analysis of people with MS found a high saturated fat content.

Ulcers occur most frequently in diets which are acid forming, low in fiber and high in fats. Meat, fish, and eggs are the most acid forming of all foods, and animal flesh has no fiber and excess fat. Low fiber, high-fat diets are the principle cause of hemorrhoids and also diverticulosis—which affects 75 percent of Americans over the age of 75. Similarly, 35 percent of Americans are afflicted with some form of arthritis by the age of 35. Over 85 percent of all Americans over age 70 have arthritis, yet it is treatable on a fat free diet.

Excess cholesterol forms gallstones. Gallstones, as well as gallbladder disease and gallbladder cancer are usually found in people with low-fiber, high cholesterol, high fat diets. Hypertension is virtually unknown in countries where the intake of salt, fat and cholesterol is low. At the University Hospital in Linkoping, Sweden, even severe asthma patients were found to be treatable on a vegetarian diet. Flesh foods in America are also contaminated with coliform bacteria and salmonella. Much healthier alternatives exist.

William S. Collens and Gerald B. Dobkens conclude: “Examination of the dental structure of modern man reveals that he possesses all the features of a strictly herbivorous animal. While designed to subsist on vegetarian foods, he has perverted his dietary habits to accept food of the carnivore. It is postulated that man cannot handle carnivorous foods like the carnivore. Herein may lie the basis for the high incidence of arteriosclerotic disease.”

Some argue that human intelligence has enabled man to transcend his physical limitations and function as a “natural” flesh-eater. If this is true, then we must also classify napalm, poison gas, and nuclear weapons as “natural,” too, because they are also products of (misused!) human intelligence. Agriculture , cookery, transportation, refrigeration, etc. aren’t found in nature, either. One might therefore argue if human technology is “natural,” then humane ethical behavior towards animals is equally natural.

The fact predators exist in the wild does not imply man must imitate them. Cannibalism and rape also occur in nature. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his book, In the South Seas, wrote that there was no difference between the “civilized” Europeans and the “savages” of the Cannibal Islands: “We consume the carcasses of creatures with like appetites, passions, and organs as our own. We feed on babes, though not our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear.”

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This article is just wrong on lots of counts, but let's just look at a couple. Commercial beef is a killer, true, but does that make all beef bad? No. Grass fed, pastured, beef supplies many of the things necessary for good health, without the issued brought on by feeding grazing animals grain and corn.
The diseases listed in the article are inflammation issues initially. What does grain feed beef do, causes inflammation due to the high levels of Omega 6.
Sara please do your due diligence when you publish articles that deal with health.

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As a prior poster gave his wish list of Alternt articles....here's mine:

Give me a "typical" Alternet article about Glen Beck pointing out the 10 dangers of axe-murdering a man-hating feminist homosexual, cheating man, who points out the secret fifteen dangers of eating bacon-wrapped sliced Hippopatamus in a Vegan over-processed Tofu Suitcase sauce, and how it all connects to the financial bailout and the Afghan war!


Now THAT would be the pinnacle of Alternet journalism!

Bleh!

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The following quotes, facts, figures, and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

---Albert Einstein

"Each year, the meat industrial complex abuses and butchers nearly 9 billion cows, pigs, sheep, turkeys, chickens, and other innocent, feeling animals just for the enjoyment of consumers. Each year, nearly 1.5 million of these consumers are crippled and killed prematurely by heart failure, cancer, stroke, and other chronic diseases that have been linked conclusively with the consumption of these animals. Each year, millions of other animals are abused and sacrificed in a vain search for a 'magic pill' that would vanquish these largely self-inflicted diseases."

---Alex Hershaft, PhD, president, Farm Animal Reform Movement

When analyzing 8,300 deaths in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany among 76,000 men and women in five different, large studies, researchers concluded that vegetarians have a 24 percent reduction in death from heart disease.

Similarly, in the famous Oxford Vegetarian Study, where 6,000 vegetarians were compared with 5,000 meat-eaters over nearly two decades, scientists found that the rate of death from heart disease was 28 percent lower in vegetarians than in meat-eaters.

One study analyzed eighty scientific studies in leading medical journals. The analysis found that vegetarians had lower blood pressure, and were less likely to suffer from stroke, heart attack, and kidney failure.

A large German study of nearly 2,000 vegetarians found that deaths from heart disease were reduced by over one-third, and that heart disease itself was far less than that of the general population.

Another large study examined the coronary artery disease risk of young adults ages 18 to 30 and vegetarians were found to have much higher levels of cardiovascular fitness and a greatly reduced risk of heart disease.

"The process of gradual blocking of the coronary arteries begins not in adulthood but in childhood...and the main cause of this arteriosclerosis is the steadily increasing amount of fat in the American diet, particularly saturated animal fats such as those found in meat, chicken, milk and cheeses. If there was another disease that caused half a million deaths a year, you can be sure that the public would be acutely aware of the danger, and that the cure or prevention would be universally practiced."

---Dr. Benjamin Spock, author, child expert

"I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives."

---Dr. Dean Ornish, author, Reversing Heart Disease

Stroke is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer. Vegetarians have a 20 to 30 percent reduced risk of having a stroke. Stroke, like heart disease, is associated with diets high in saturated fats, and the vegetarian diet is naturally low in these fats.

The Oxford Vegetarian Study found cancer mortality to be 39 percent lower among vegetarians when compared with meat-eaters. The European Prospective Investigation of Cancer found vegetarians suffer 40 percent fewer cancers than the general population.

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Studies have shown that decreasing a woman's animal fat intake can reduce the chances that she will die from breast cancer. A large-scale, long-term study in the Netherlands found a powerful connection between the amount of animal fat consumed and the rate of prostate cancer. A review of a dozen studies found dietary fat strongly correlated with prostate cancer.

Ovarian, uterine, and endometrial cancers have all been shown to be strongly correlated to the amount of animal fat in one's diet, and vegetarian women have significantly lower rates of these cancers.

"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all the natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined."

---Dr. Neal Barnard, Executive Director, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

"Vegetarians have the best diet. They have the lowest rate of coronary disease of any group in the country. They have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40 percent of our cancer rate."

---William Castelli, MD, Director, Framingham Heart Study

"Human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores."

---Dr. William Roberts, editor-in-chief, American Journal of Cardiology

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Who cares?!!
Life's a bitch and then you die. If you can AFFORD a steak, eat, drink and be merry. Let the boring people eat leaves and sticks and believe they'll live forever. What a waste of perfectly good taste buds!

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This all you've got, ALTERNET??

Like most other readers and posters here I'm getting quite FED UP with your unbalanced, unprofessional and overly opinionated, SLANT on eating - with your condescending and ill-founded insults to our intelligence!

Next time hire an expert. NO!! Next time hire two experts to give us both sides in a fair and balanced manner, try not to allow them to mislead by conflating factory farming with healthy eating and offer realistic alternatives for a changing world. If your authors are going to carry on about the petroleum basis of much modern farming then the reader must see the same standard applied to growing our monoculture of grains. They must know of effective utilization of marginal or unproductive soils and terrains - in short of a world of alternative, holistic, farming and ranching methods and what is possible - BEYOND VEGAN-ISM!!!

Your agenda is getting verrry tiresome! Maybe if you can't do any better, you should just stick to world affairs and politics???

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say, mmmmm...steak. Dude, moderation is the key--water will kill you in excess. Seriously, f-off on the pushing veggieism!

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Some discussion of the cruelty of modern factory farming is is necessary here. Most Americans are still under the mistaken impression that animals are raised on idyllic farms with sunshine, fresh air, and open spaces, and are killed humanely, after a pleasant life. The reality, however, is quite different.

A contermporary Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast, wrote in Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a peace and justice periodical on the religious Left, in 1995, that "...the survival of our planet depends on our sense of belonging--to all other humans, to dolphins caught in dragnets, to pigs and chickens and calves raised in animal concentration camps, to redwoods and rainforests, to kelp beds in our oceans, and to the ozone layer."

In a sermon preached in York Minster, September 28, 1986, John Austin Baker, the Bishop of Salisbury, England, attacked factory farming; choosing as his example, the treatment of chickens.

"Is there any credit balance for the battery hen, denied almost all natural functioning, all normal environment, lapsing steadily into deformity and disease, for the whole of her existence? he asked. "It is in the battery shed and the broiler house, not in the wild, that we find the true parallel to Auschwitz. Auschwitz is a purely human invention."

On another occasion, Bishop Baker taught: "By far the most important duty of all Christians in the cause of animal welfare is to cultivate this capacity to see; to see things with the heart of God, and so to suffer with other creatures."

On World Prayer Day for Animals, October 4, 1986, Bishop Baker preached against indifference to animal pain and lauded the animal welfare movement:

"To shut your mind, heart, imagination to the sufferings of others is to begin to slowly but inexorably to die. It is to cease by inches from being human, to become in the end capable of nothing generous or unselfish--or sometimes capable of anything, however terrible. You in the animal welfare movement are among those who may yet save our society from becoming spiritually deaf, blind and dead, and so from the doom that will justly follow."

According to Bishop Baker: "...Rights, whether animal or human, have only one sure foundation: that God loves us all and rejoices in us all. We humans are called to share with God in fulfilling the work of love towards all creatures...the true glory of the strong is to give themselves for the cherishing of the weak."

The realization that meat is an unnecessary luxury, resulting in inequities in the world's food
supply, has prompted religious leaders in different denominations to call on their members to abstain from meat.

Paul Moore, Jr., the Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of New York, made such an appeal in a November 1974 pastoral letter, calling for the observance of "meatless Wednedays." A similar appeal had been issued earlier by Roman Catholic Cardinal Cooke of New York. The Reverend Eugene Carson Blake, former head of the World Council of Churches, and founder of Bread for the World, has encouraged everyone in his anti-hunger organization to abstain from eating meat on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action pointed out in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, that 220 million Americans were consuming enough grain (largely because of the high consumption of grain fed to livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

Father Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, author, and founder of the Riverdale Center for Religious Research in New York, wrote in 1987 that "Vegetarianism is a way of life that we should all move toward for economic survival, physical well-being, and spiritual integrity."

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Who gives a shit if eating steak raises your risk of some diseases? Even assuming all of the relationships above have been found to be directly and causally linked to steak eating (which is by no means true), do you really want to live your life like this? Forgoing little pleasures for the sake of a minutely lower risk of some disease? The fact is, almost all of us will die of cancer or heart disease at some point, this is certain. It's good to know the risks, so thanks to schools of public health for that, but as someone who is a practicing statistician I can tell you that I would not base life decisions on many of these studies. Throw one on the barbie!

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Personally, I don't think eating meat in moderation will harm anyone. I enjoy a steak occasionally, but only like once or twice a month. I prefer seafood or vegan meals most often. There are drawbacks to eating too much of any one food group.

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None of the veggie-heads I got to know personally ever TOLD me they were veggie-heads. I had to ask 'em. They weren't looking for converts. Why waste the energy ?

It seems that the veggie-heads promoting the message are good people: they want healthier & happier neighbors. I don't know why they suffer the aggravation inherent in promotion, but I have tremendous respect for them.

I be a veggie-head ...'cause I knows it be wrong to eat beasts of any sort when I don't have to. Plenty of sticks & leaves for me to eat at the grocery-store. I also know that omnivores ...know it be wrong too, especially the yappy ones.

No matter. Within the next generation (20 years) most people will be, at least, near-veggie-heads, whether they want to or not.

Now if only I can quit smokin'. Much tougher.

Finally, AlterNet, you be doin' a good job, in this & other issues. When you repeatedly post something I don't like, it forces me to think. Otherwise, I would have spent my whole life in intellectual sloth.

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"Global hunger could be directly attributed to meat-eating." ---Chrissie Hynde

Half the world's population does not receive an adequate amount of food to eat. Ten to twenty million die annually of hunger and its effects. The Institute for Food and Development Policy reports that, "Forty thousand children starve to death on this planet every day," or one child every two seconds.

The livestock population of the United States today consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population of the country. We feed these animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats. Less than half the harvested agricultural acreage in the United States is used to grow food for people. Most of it is used to grow livestock feed.

Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain-fed livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

The world's cattle alone, not to mention pigs and chickens, consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. According to Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, if used to grow cattlefeed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef.

In his book, The Hungry Planet, Georg Bergstrom points out that protein-starved underdeveloped nations export more protein to wealthy nations than they receive. He calls this "the protein swindle." Ninety percent of the world's fish meal catch, for example, is exported to rich countries. One-third of Africa's peanut crop winds up in the stomachs of European livestock. Half the world's cereal crop is fed to livestock and the United States annually imports one million tons of vegetable protein from Third World nations--just to feed its farm animals.

Bergstrom writes: "Sometimes one wonders how many Americans and Western Europeans have grasped the fact that quite a few of their beef steaks, quarts of milk, dozens of eggs, and hundreds of broilers are the result, not of their agriculture, but of the approximately two million metric tons of protein, mostly of high quality, which astute Western businessmen channel away from the needy and hungry."

Jeremy Rifkin, author of a dozen influential books and President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, writes in his 1992 bestseller Beyond Beef:

"Cattle and other livestock are devouring much of the grain produced on the planet. It need be emphasized that this is a new phenomenon, unlike anything ever experienced before.

"Contrary to popular belief, the poor are getting poorer each year...Increased poverty has meant increased malnutrition. On the African continent, nearly one in every four human beings is malnourished. In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night. In Asia and the Pacific, 28 percent of the people border on starvation, experiencing the gnawing pain of a perpetual hunger."

"In the Near East, one in ten people is underfed. Chronic hunger now affects upwards of 1.3 billion people, according to the world Health Organization--a statistic all the more striking in a world where one third of all the grain produced is being fed to cattle and other livestock. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species--nearly 25 percent--been malnourished.

"The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents an...evil whose consequences may be far greater and longer lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against their fellow human beings."

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this whole 'go vegetarian/vegan' thing is a very neatly constructed initiative to undermine the real benefit of animal agriculture as Nature designed it (confinement feeding operations are not natural occurances).

As Wendell Berry noted some time ago current production techniques have taken an elegant system and turned it into two distinct problems...a waste disposal problem and an animal health problem. For the purposes of this reply I address the waste disposal issue.

Forage converters (cows, pigs, chickens to name a few) supply a quality source of fertilizer that the farmer does not have to buy, which actually enriches the soil, and most importantly, reduces the farmer's dependence on agribusiness supply companies.
Properly managed these converters will put the fertilizer where it is needed at very little cost to the farmer. Even better, the forage converters multiply (Nature's design in action again) so the farmer has a naturally increasing source of income.

When farmers relearn the techniques of naturally retaining the fertility of the land they will no longer need the fertilizer companies, and if Sir Albert Howard is to be believed, the health benefits of manure returned directly to the soil should also improve soil health and reduce the need for herbicides and pesticides.

It would not surprise me if at least some of the agribusiness giants have influenced the thinking of a lot of Americans about the need to go veggie. The animal production end of the business, particularly the beef and dairy part, are the last major segments of the food supply chain that are only nominally under agribusiness control.

Just a thought.

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“I think how we treat our animals reflects how we treat each other, and it’s very important that we have a President who is mindful of the cruelty that is perpetrated on animals.”

- President-Elect Barack Obama, 2008

In 1968, civil rights leader Dick Gregory compared humanity’s treatment of animals to the conditions of America’s inner cities:

“Animals and humans suffer and die alike. If you had to kill your own hog before you ate it, most likely you would not be able to do it. To hear the hog scream, to see the blood spill, to see the baby being taken away from its momma, and to see the look of death in the animal’s eye would turn your stomach. So you get the man at the packing house to do the killing for you.

“In like manner, if the wealthy aristocrats who are perpetuating conditions in the ghetto actually heard the screams of ghetto suffering, or saw the slow death of hungry little kids, or witnessed the strangulation of manhood and dignity, they could not continue the killing. But the wealthy are protected from such horror...If you can justify killing to eat meat, you can justify the conditions of the ghetto. I cannot justify either one.”

Gregory credits the Judeo-Christian ethic and the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with having caused him to become a vegetarian. In 1973, he drew a connection between vegetarianism and nonviolent civil disobedience:

"...the philosophy of nonviolence, which I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during my involvement in the civil rights movement was first responsible for my change in diet. I became a vegetarian in 1965. I had been a participant in all of the ‘major’ and most of the ‘minor’ civil rights demonstrations of the early sixties, including the March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery March.

“Under the leadership of Dr. King, I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other—war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like—but in their practice of killing animals for food or sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike...Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.”

In a 1979 interview, Gregory explained: “Because of the civil rights movement, I decided I couldn’t be thoroughly nonviolent and participate in the destruction of animals for my dinner...I didn’t become a vegetarian for health reasons; I became a vegetarian strictly for moral reasons... Vegetarianism will definitely become a people’s movement.”

When asked if humans will ultimately have to answer to a Supreme Being for their exploitation of animals, Gregory replied, “I think we answer for that every time we go to the hospital with cancer and other diseases.”

Gregory has also expressed the opinion that the plight of the poor will improve as humans cease to slaughter animals: “I would say that the treatment of animals has something to do with the treatment of people. The Europeans have always regarded their slaves and the people they have colonized as animals.”

Since the 1980s, Dick Gregory has been involved in the anti-drug campaign. Bruce Friedrich of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) reported back in the '90s that under Gregory’s influence, Dexter Scott King—head of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolence in Atlanta, and son of the slain civil rights leader—and King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, had both become vegans.

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effects of food. These claims are mostly speculation not based upon studies rigoriously repeatable and falseafiable. Showing a cause and effect relationship between eating meat and these diseases has not been done. There are far too many random veriables unaccounted for and not mentioned in the article. Who did or did not smoke? How much exercise did people get? What else did they eat other than the meat? Junk food garbage or fresh fruits and vegatables? Articles like this are junk science foisted on a public, of whom even among the educated, don't understand food; They neither understand its chemistry nor its traditional (generally healthful)use and consumption. Basta ya! Enough already.

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badeggs,

I don't really care if you are a lesbian republican, a straight democrat or a transsexual libertarian.

YOU SAY: "How you eat, what you do, and the choices you make in life are much more significant than if you eat meat or not."

Inflicting your empty-headed, self-centered, sociopathic cruelty on animals IS significant and it IS a choice YOU make.

So ADMIT at least that you are a cold, mean-spirited, non-thinking zombie that cares only about your SMALL LITTLE LIFE.

You and the rest of the posturing CANNABILISTIC CREEPS make me sick

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i had a nice rare steak last night - eye fillet, barely singed, soft as butter. to die for, really.

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whether they be political, environmental, nutritional, etc. The reality is that a plant-based diet is healthy and a meat-based diet is not. The scientific research is proving that (some of which is mentioned above). Those meat addicts who irrationally bitch and whine about "veg nazis" are simply not paying attention to the research. I'll say it again: A whole foods, plant-based diet is simply superior in every way to an animal-based diet.

Anyone catch Dr. Oz's 28-day project w/the fat cowboy w/coronary heart disease? This guy was game enough to try a vegan diet for a month, lost 30 pounds, blood sugar went down, good cholesterol went up, and he was able to go off two out of three of his meds--after just a month! Plus, he didn't like the taste of meat after he completed the vegan experiment (proving once again that eating meat is an addiction). That's remarkable. Anyone who ignores results like that does so at his own peril.

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That there is a lot of defensiveness in the pro-meat eating crowd, the same kind of defensiveness we see in Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck (who also attack vegetarians).

The last I heard, vegetarians (of any stripe) made up approximately 2% of the population. It seems funny to me that we are perceived as such a threat. While I think that eating free roam, grass fed meat is probably better than eating factory farmed meat, note that over 95% of the meat consumed in this country (U.S.A.) is factory farmed.

I know that most people won't quit meat. All I ask is that you reduce your meat intake to 5 or less meals a week. That would have a major positive effect on the envirnment.

I would also like to add that I thoroughly enjoy eating. The respondents who claim vegetarians have no gusto in their lives are kidding themselves. A good vegetarian meal is tasty and satisfying as well as vegetarian.

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Kathleen Marquardt, founded Putting People First, an anti-animal rights group. In her 1993 book, Animal Scam: The Beastly Abuse of Human Rights, she says:

"The real agenda of this movement is not to give rights to animals, but to take rights from people—to dictate our food, clothing, work, recreation, and whether we will discover new medications or die."

Identical assertions could have been made about the abolition of human slavery, the crusade to end child labor, the liberation of concentration camp prisoners from Nazi physicians or an end to the experimentation upon black humans by white humans.

Marquardt writes that the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) "now encourages vegetarianism, the banning of fur, and the eventual end to all animal research, not just ‘cruel’ animal research." Marquardt writes that the Humane Society now supports vegetarianism.

According to Marquardt, "The typical animal rights activist is a white woman making about $30,000 a year. She is most likely a schoolteacher, nurse, or government worker. She usually has a college degree or even an advanced degree, is in her thirties or forties, and lives in a city."

Marquardt cites studies indicating that animal rights activists tend to identify with liberal causes such as feminism and environmentalism. "Every year," writes the Reverend Andrew Linzey, author of Christianity and the Rights of Animals, "I receive hundreds of anguished letters from Christians who are so distressed by the insensitivity to animals shown by mainstream churches that they have left them or are on the verge of doing so." It is not surprising, therefore, that Marquardt reports that "Most activists share a bias against Western civilization and its Judeo-Christian foundations."

According to Marquardt, the "political clout" of the animal rights movement "is surprisingly bipartisan. But most of the leading politicians working with the animal rights movement are liberal Democrats." Marquardt mentions Senator Barbara Boxer of California, Nevada Congressman Jim Bilbray, Charlie Rose of North Carolina, Tom Lantos and Gerry Studds.

Marquardt admits, however, that "some Republicans are animal rightists, too. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas often supports animal rights causes—except, of course, those pertaining to cattle, a major business in Kansas. Senator Robert Smith of New Hampshire was a founder of the Congressional Friends of Animals. Bob Dornan of California, one of the most conservative House members, is an animal rights advocate—he cosponsored legislation banning the use of animals in testing cosmetics and received a PETA award. And Manhattan Congressman Bill Green promoted legislation that would have shut down over 90 million acres of federal land to hunting, fishing, and trapping."

Marquardt states further that "Although he’s not an elected official, a conservative political figure who, surprisingly, is on the other side is G. Gordon Liddy, author Will and a key figure in the 1972 Watergate uproar. When I went on Liddy’s radio show, he and PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk greeted each other with hugs and kisses and lots of warm words.

"With allies in both political parties and across the ideological spectrum," concludes Marquardt, "the animal rights movement has been able to score some great successes, regardless of which party controls the White House or Capitol Hill."

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Kathleen Marquardt unsuccessfully tries to equate animal rights with Nazism in Animal Scam. She claims that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and that he suffered from depression, mood swings, irritability, and agitation, all of which are symptoms of a vitamin B-12 deficiency, and that animal products are the only dietary source of vitamin B-12.

According to Carol Orsag, in Irving Wallace and David Wallechinsky’s The People’s Almanac (1975), however, Adolf Hitler consumed animal products in the form of eggs and dairy products, and enjoyed eggs "prepared 101 different ways by the best chef in Germany." He "became vegetarian because of stomach problems" rather than out of compassion for animals, and "was criticized for eating pig’s knuckles."

In a 1996 article, "Nazis and Animals: Debunking the Myths," Roberta Kalechofsky of Jews for Animal Rights states that Hitler "had a special fondness for sausages and caviar, and sometimes ham," as well as "liver dumplings." Kalechofsky states further that the Nazis experimented on animals as well as humans in the concentration camps:

"The evidence of Nazi experiments on animals is overwhelming. In The Dark Face of Science, author John Vyvyan summed it up correctly: ‘The experiments made on prisoners were many and diverse, but they had one thing in common: all were in continuation of, or complementary to, experiments on animals. In every instance, this antecedent scientific literature is mentioned in the evidence, and at Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration camps, human and animal experiments were carried out simultaneously as parts of a single programme.’"

According to Marquardt: "Having equated animals with man, the Nazis proceeded to treat men as animals." Marquardt wants to have it both ways. She wants to show that the Nazis’ so-called "respect for life" somehow led to a devaluation of human life. But would not a genuine reverence for life—elevating animal rights to the level of human rights—have had the opposite effect? Compassion for every living creature? There is no evidence that vegetarianism (for health or ethics) will make people saints or give them Gandhian compassion, but neither is there any evidence that it will make people Nazis.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, became a vegetarian in 1962. He once asked, "How can we pray to God for mercy if we ourselves have no mercy? How can we speak of rights and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood?"

Hitler’s so-called "vegetarianism" did not prevent Isaac Bashevis Singer from comparing humanity’s mass killing of 50 billion animals every year to the Nazi Holocaust. In 1987 he wrote, "This is my protest against the conduct of the world. To be a vegetarian is to disagree—to disagree with the course of things today. Nuclear power, starvation, cruelty—we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it’s a strong one."

Isaac Bashevis Singer has also expressed the view that unnecessary violence against animals by human beings will only lead to further violence in human society: "I personally believe that as long as human beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace. There is only one little step from killing animals to creating gas chambers a’ la Hitler and concentration camps a’ la Stalin—all such deeds are done in the name of ‘social justice.’ There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is."

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I saw this movie with Gerard Butler where he was in prison, and they served him a big porterhouse steak in his cell. When he had eaten all the steak, he suddenly used the bone as a weapon, and stabbed his cellmate over and over in the neck, and blood was splattering everywhere and finally the cell mate was dead.

Of course, if they had served Gerard a vegan meal, he could still have attacked his cell mate, but it would have been more difficult, and, I think, less bloody if he had been using a stalk of asparagus or something.

If I'm ever in prison, and they serve my cellmate a big steak like that, then I'm getting the hell out of there quickly........

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Vegans, when your lives are perfect top to bottom, examine others. Surely some improvement is needed that YOU actually should be analyzing and working on. It's no fun to improve yourselves rather than others, but still, it's highly doubtful that even one person has been influenced to alter their diets by articles like this. It's less likely that most of you really care whether or not omnivores get sick more than you do.

Go on, get busy. There's something right there, there with you in YOUR house, that needs fixing as badly as we all do. Get going.

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