Red and Processed Meat

There has been a recent report of a scientific study that says eating Red and processed meat shortens you life. Now these proclamations by “food experts” come out leading to rather simple statements regarding food.

The classic two one study that showed drinking a glass or two of red wine per day helped health, then out came another saying drinking more than half a glass of red wine per day was bad for your health. Therefore people end up with mixed messages and grow to distrust and ignore the health messages.

As I was a vegetarian for twenty five years, and my reason for avoiding meat was that the animals were being feed or given, chemicals, drugs, additives and foods that were dubious to say the least, I was not prepared to consume them. Therefore, I was left wondering if factory farming was or could have been a factor that had effected the results. The further I looked into this Epidemiological study, the more I realised that it was. As it looked at meat consumption and eating habits over 28 years.

We only have to look at a list of the chemicals that have been banned for use in foods, but were previously allowed, to see that these would have had an effect on the studies results. Equally, this applies to the industrial farming practices, including the routine use of drugs, that have now been stopped, to see a similar effect in the results.

If anything the study shows that we were eating to much red meat and processed meat in the past.

I personally know that some additives still used in foods effect me. I get an allergic rhinitis from eating processed cheese. Therefore, I prefer to buy a good quality cheese, in all its wonderful variations. However, sometimes when eating out I can get caught out and latter get a reaction from what I have eaten.

Therefore, if governments really want to improve health and nutrition they should “Regulate” (I know that's a dirty word to many) the chemicals that are allowed in the processing of foods. If those of us that are old enough to remember, things like Peanut allergies were so rare when I was young, but has developed into something that’s quite common. I strongly suspect that it is something that is being used frequently in food. It may not be a single additive, but combinations of them interacting to induce this once rare condition.

Here in Britain over the past thirty years, food policy has been characterised as “Leave it to Tesco”. In other words it has been left to the supermarkets and major food processors. During the same time frame, we have seen a growth in Obesity and Diabetes Et Al. As the supermarkets are cynical and will sell their customers any old rubbish as long as it makes them a profit. They will dispute this, but the telling thing is how many of the managers and executives would regularly eat the low nutritional value foods they sell? Not many if any.

The bast way of avoiding health problems is by eating a healthy balanced diet, and avoiding over processed foods. As the government and regulators will not help by controlling what big businesses do.

What's Awful about Offal?

A comment made on the previous posting actually raises an interesting point. As an awful lot of offal does go into processed meat products. As my American friend points out, most Americans would baulk at the idea of eating the edible offal. It is not really that different here in Britain, as some people will and do turn up their noses at Liver, Kidneys, Heart et al. Yet all are incredibly good food and good value too.

Here in Britain, people of my generation, were put off eating Liver at school. As simply the liver we were served in “liver and onions” we did not know if we were meant to eat it or repair our shoes with it. Yet even at a relatively young age, I also knew that liver when turned into a pate was very good. Equally I knew from an early age that other offal went into other meals, the classic that springs to my mind was a Stake and Kidney pudding.

When I was a child, and I almost hate myself for saying this but it was true, you either ate what you were given or you went hungry. This prevented us becoming fussy eaters and it meant that we did eat our greens and a whole range of foods that some folks now struggle with. To be quite honest I don't think I could cope with a child that refused to eat vegetables. But as I know how to hide vegetables in a dish, I would hope that I would never have that problem.

Its the same trick though that the food industry uses to hide the poor quality cuts in meat products. In Britain (and Europe) you can include twenty five percent fat and twenty five percent connective tissue, tendons, skin etc. and still call it meat. So that 100% burger or hot dog could only have half the meat you think. Even reading the label will not enlighten you. Further that meat may contain offal too. While the percentages differ a little across the pond, the situation is similar in the US as it is in Europe.

However, here I will stick to what is allowed in Europe and specifically Britain. And here items like Heart meat has to be listed separately on the labels of processed foods. Now heart is a very flavourful meat, but as it is a heard working mussel it requires longer cooking times to make it tender. Thus in a pie from a food manufacture, its inclusion can normally be detected when the pie is chewy and tough.

Its rather funny, funny peculiar that is, as just last week the Food Standards agency here in Britain started a campaign to get people to use low fat milk. This will help fight obesity. Well as I have now got off the floor and stopped rolling around laughing, and changed my wet underwear, I thought what a waste of time and money. As the difference between full fat milk and skimmed milk is just one percent of the fat in milk. Had they tackled the amount of hidden fat in processed meats, well that would really help. But that actually requires doing something and not just making it look as though you are doing something.

I personally do not have any problems with eating offal. I am a great fan of nose to tail eating. Not only does this reduce waste, but it also means that farmers actually get a reasonable return on the whole of an animal. If you only use the prime cuts, the farmer has to send more animals to slaughter just to meet the demands for the prime cuts. While the rest of a beast does go to the processed food industry, the reluctance to eat the cheaper cuts and the offal perpetuates the problems of food and farming.

While I know that the readers of my other Blog will have already heard this and will be bored by this, but I stopped eating meat and became a vegetarian when I discovered what cattle were fed and the writers of this book were predicting BSE long before it (BSE) had even been discovered. The difficulty for me was that I did not know what I was eating. As people became more demanding regard quality and provenance, I felt that it was only right to support the farmers that were now doing what I wanted. Yet many of the people who would extract the urine from me for being a vegetarian, will happily eat all the processed meat that the food industry can offload on them, while I can know where the meat or offal I eat comes from. Often right down to the breed.

Most people are already eating offal hidden in processed foods. This is something that amuses me when folks say that they would never eat this or that! This is why I think that cooking is such a fundamental skill, as only if you can cook from scratch can you truly know what is in your food.

Eating offal has a long and honourable tradition in Britain and Europe. When folks have tried a food and genuinely do not like it, then I respect that. What I can never understand is people that will not even try. Especially as these people will readily eat foods manufactured for them without any knowledge of what really goes into it. Further, I respect that there are cultural differences between the foods that different nations will eat. I don't think I could ever eat insects, yet in some cultures they are delicacies. The difference here, is most of the foods that people say they would never eat, they already are consuming.

There is just one last detail that I would like to mention for my American reader, that haggis are coming. Last week I read that America is changing its import regulations so that the traditional Scottish Haggis can be imported into the US. I have eaten this myself, and who knows, the Scottish could convert Americans to eating offal on a regular basis.