Should we give up eating red meat?

Before you tuck into that lovely juicy steak, it’s worth thinking about the fatal effects it might have on you, from strokes and diabetes to cancer and heart disease

I went out to eat last week and gobbled down a steak. Do not judge me: it was medium-rare and delicious. But just before my steak supper, the British Medical Journal published a study of half a million Americans showing that the risk of dying from cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, infections, kidney disease, liver disease or lung disease all increased with the amount of meat consumed. Did I miss any diseases? Could the villainy of red meat be any clearer? Those people with the highest meat intake doubled their chances of dying from chronic liver disease. How so?

All meat contains heme iron and processed meat has nitrates and nitrites added during curing. The authors of the study hypothesise that these additions cause oxidative stress, which means that our cells are less able to defend themselves from damage by free radicals and age prematurely. Other mechanisms include mutagenic substances in cooked meat that are linked to bowel cancer. In the BMJ, John D Potter, professor of epidemiology at Massey University in New Zealand, further argues that the rainforest destruction and greenhouse gas emissions that are a result of the meat industry are more harmful to the planet than fossil fuels used for transport.

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