"RedMeat" news and stories

The National Pork Board has been touting pork as "the other white meat" for decades, providing low fat pork to the American public. In the last fifteen years the average pork chop has about the same amount of fat as skinless chicken breast. The only problem is that while being low fat, it is also low taste, just like that pasty white, mushy chicken breast. In many cases the pork has no taste at all. You try to fry up a chop and you end up having to add lots of fats or oils to brown it, and if you aren't careful you end up with a tough, dry, and flavorless hunk of inedible pseudo-pig on your plate.

Pork isn't supposed to be white, or even light pink. It should be a light red meat, but commercial pork producers have been breeding lower and lower fat hogs for decades, and it hit it's apex a few years ago. The fat and flavor ratios are so low in today's commercial pork that my local A&P / Food Emporium doesn't carry much in the way of untreated raw pork, only pre-brined, chemical laden and flavored raw pork. Brining is soaking raw meat for several hours to days or even weeks in a mix of water, salt, phosphates, and other chemicals and flavorings. It is used to add moisture and flavor to meat that has had all the fat, and so all flavor, bred right out of it. You also end up with the pork absorbing up to 10% water, a cheap way for pork producers to charge more for less meat per pound.

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Every time we turn around it seems that there is some expert or some study telling us that another food is "bad" for us. And given a little more time, there will be another person saying that the food is, in fact, "good." Red meat -- a category that includes beef, pork and lamb -- has been subject to this time and again and it is getting difficult to keep track of all the things that it can -- and cannot -- do. Fortunately, an Independent columnist neatly summarized the benefits and risks of eating red meat.

Benefits

• High in zinc, which is important for a healthy immune system.
• Contains more iron than most foods, and it is more easily used by the body than iron from other sources
• Also a good source of other vitamins and minerals, including phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, selenium and b vitamins.
• Excellent source of complete proteins
• A high-protein diet based on lean red meat has been shown to help weight loss

Risks

• An increased risk of bowel cancer was found for people who ate more than two servings of red meat per week.
• The Mediterranean diet, which is low in red meat, has been shown to decrease the risk of Alzheimer's disease
• Excessive amounts of red meat can lead to a higher risk of osteoporosis due to an acid byproduct from digesting very large amounts of protein.
• Eating red meat every day can double the risk of Arthritis
• Red meat is high in saturated fat and cholesterol
• A recent study found that rating more than one serving of red meat per day can double the risk of breast cancer, especially in young women.

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