Red meat, predators, and freedom of speech

Note: Contains excessive use of the word apparently but it couldn’t be helped. Apparently.

Americans are eating way too much red meat, Big Oil is weaponising freedom of speech, which doesn’t mean what you think it means, and cats are bad for the environment. This snapshot of recent news could probably take part in a Mad World competition and go home with the bronze, possibly the silver.

Dear Men, You’re Eating Too Much Meat, a dear WSJ author told the world in September. Apparently, American men are eating way too much meat, at least according to federal guidelines, which were recently revised to advise even lower consumption of the red stuff, to be replaced with, and I can’t stress this enough, beans. Also peas and lentils, collectively known as pulse.

The dietary guidelines revision has received abundant coverage in the media, focusing, of course, on how bad red meat is for us — especially men, apparently — and how much better it would be if we switched to beans, greens, and seafood. There’s even a suggestion that meat and eggs are re-categorised as least important protein, to be replaced in the most-important category by, yes, beans, lentils, and peas.

The presumable problems with meat consumption span a wide range of serious diseases, from heart attacks and stroke to diabetes, and “some cancers”. I’m actually surprised meat consumption doesn’t cause blindness and alopecia, too, but there’s time to add more health problems to the list of bad things meat is supposed to do to those who overindulge. I mean, look at climate change.

The benefits of meat consumption are there, too, with a “but” following them, of course, like here: “Red meat contains iron, an important nutrient. But when iron is consumed in excess, it causes inflammation that “triggers underlying processes for heart disease.””

I’m not sure how much meat you must consume for your iron content to move into excess but I guess the food scientists want to be erring on the side of caution, so they’re recommending, well, beans. I am sure, however, that we can all see the problem with that, can’t we? Okay, I’ll say it: emissions.