Worth reading this OP…
https://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/red-meat.aspx

Personally I’d try a bit harder to find alternatives.

Fish? Chicken? Veggie stuff?

Apex Predator

I had the chance to eat Polar Bear meat once – I didnt take it though

was being served in a bar on Svalbard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkQYZ6FbsmI
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkQYZ6FbsmI[/video]

Humans have evolved to eat a huge range of stuff.

I’m struggling with your use of the word evolved there Molly. We’re not wildly different to our chimp cousins tbh, and in turn not hugely more than the rest of the primates. There is a specialist in our recent past (Panathropus Boisei) that did evolve to eat very tough fibrous veg though.

Probably a key to our success

might be…

Job, jobbed. Have have good cutlery obvz..

The cancer risk related to the consumption of red meat is more difficult to estimate, because the evidence that red meat causes cancer is not as strong. If, however, the association between red meat and colorectal cancer was proven to be causal, data from the same studies suggest that the risk of colorectal cancer could increase by 17% for every 100 gram portion of red meat if eaten daily.

hardly conclusive stuff, but I’d be inclined to mix it up if only for the sake of variety! FWIW I agree with the general notion that (pre) historically meat would’ve been an occasional, hard earned treat. I’m sure there are far worse vices though!

if nothing else, the amount of resource and energy that goes in to producing meat is much greater than fruit and veg! The amount of meat that we as a race eat these days isn’t sustainable and everyone should be eating less meat.

Probably not that comparable to you, but some of the indigenous tribes in the Arctic will eat almost nothing apart from caribou for months at a time. Europeans who have tried this diet claim they never felt healthier. So a few steaks should be all good!

Is eating that much red meat bad for you? Maybe.

Is it bad for the planet? Definitely

Do you need to eat that much red meat everyday? No.

Is it bad for the planet? Definitely

Not as clear cut as that.

Intensively reared grain fed beef in the US – bad for the planet.

British hill farmed lamb on marginal land? Not so bad.

I can eat lamb raised on grass a few miles from my house. I can’t eat lentils grown in the same country.

And what do you reckon the OP’s getting served for his pub grub steaks?

Intensively reared grain fed beef in the US – bad for the planet.

British hill farmed lamb on marginal land? Not so bad.

I can eat lamb raised on grass a few miles from my house. I can’t eat lentils grown in the same country.

Unfortunately the evidence says otherwise. You could fly lentils or soybeans many times around the world before their carbon footprint even comes close to the most efficiently produced meat.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919212000942

And it’s really not as simple as intensive & distant = bad, natural & local = good. The vast majority of meat’s carbon footprint is produced on the farm, transport is negligible in comparison. And animals that live for longer, eat less digestible foods, and move around more (those on British farms for example), will produce more carbon dioxide and methane per kg of meat than those that grow quicker, move less and are fed more calorific foodstuffs.

Obviously intensive animal farming has a lot of other problems too – pollution from pesticides and fertilisers, runoff of animal waste, over-reliance on antibiotics etc.

Yes – it is bad to eat red meat every day. I thought this was common knowledge these days.

Fish? Chicken? Veggie stuff?

You’ll need to be careful where the chicken has come from after the recent contamination reports.

Unfortunately the evidence says otherwise.

Some evidence does, yes – but I’ve read it both ways. Animals can sometimes turn otherwise useless land and feedstock into high quality protein effectively.

And what’s the chance of the OP being able to source and exclusively eat that meat every night molgrips?

You must have missed when I asked you that above.

No, I just didn’t answer it cos it’s an obvious point.

I’m talking about meat vs non-meat protein across the world, not the OP’s dinner. I don’t think it’s necessarily the case that all meat is always worse for the environment. Undoubtedly lots of meat is, and you can certainly ship dried lentils around the world cheaply. But then, lots of veggie meals seem to be full of aubergines and nice tasty soft vegetables, I bet they have a fairly high carbon footprint too. Of course, I’m not saying that all veggie food is high carbon footprint just because some of it might be; but that’s my point. Don’t quote the stats for intensive grain fed beef when talking about meat either (as most vegetarians seem to do).

worth reading this

http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2015/10/world-health-organisation-meat-cancer/

I wouldn’t be quoting Zoe Harcombe for diet advice. She has a bit of a quack reputation in dietician circles with a lack of rigour when applying research information to her pet theories.

Depends on whether you wish to listen to the WHO or the STW!

I don’t have access to The Lancet but there’s a brief summary of findings in this article

but some of the indigenous tribes in the Arctic will eat almost nothing apart from caribou for months at a time.

and suffer pretty poor long-term health effects; poor bone density, arterial calcification, parasite infections, and CHD levels that are about the same as a poor western diet.

I can’t eat lentils grown in the same country

I thought so. But apparently not impossible…

Lentils are a notoriously difficult crop and have never been grown on a large or commercial scale in the UK. Low-growing and typically yielding no more than two lentils in each short pod, they need a warm, dry autumn to ripen for harvest. Yet they are thought to have been one of the earliest cultivated ‘legumes’ in the UK, with traces found on prehistoric site

“We’d always wanted to grow lentils but were repeatedly told it just wasn’t possible,” said Hodmedod co-founder Josiah Meldrum. “Then we met some inspiring German lentil farmers who told us to just plant them and see what happened. We did and it turns out lentils grow well here, the trick is keeping them weed-free and harvesting them – skills we’ve been learning over the last few years.”

Should be available online about now https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/31/raising-pulses-uks-first-commercial-crop-of-lentils-to-go-on-sale-in-autumn

I love a steak but would be a bit bored of it after a week…

I’ve been working away a lot and tend to have a steak most nights- which has to be healthier than other menu options (pizza, burger, goats cheese something etc).

No fish on this menu?
No chicken?
Only veggie option is goats cheese? Mushrooms, squash, etc…
No pasta with sauce or stir fry – much less meat

I don’t think pizza or burgers are fundamentally unhealthy – it depends on the establishment deep pan four cheese probably isn’t quite the same as a beautiful handmade Italian pizza where you see more tomato than cheese.

I’m talking about meat vs non-meat protein across the world, not the OP’s dinner.

At the risk of looking like I’m trying to police the thread, I don’t think that trying to muddy the water on a health issue is helpful to the OP.

It’s probably not great for you, and it’s certainly not great for the planet (and therefore everyone on it).

“Livestock based food production… causes about one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions”
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/33/11996

Please have at least a skim of the abstract.

I don’t think that trying to muddy the water on a health issue is helpful to the OP.

Sorry. But threads drift, don’t they – that’s why they are called threads not Q&As 🙂

Please have at least a skim of the abstract.

I think skimming the abstract is the problem. Further down the text it says this:

“We base our calculations on annual 2000–2010 data for land, irrigation water, and fertilizer from the USDA”

So it’s an analysis of current US food production which is undoubtedly wasteful and damaging in all sorts of areas, both meat and non-meat. However that’s not to say that meat doesn’t have a place in a sustainable future. So saying that ‘meat is bad for the environment’ isn’t necessarily the whole truth. More like ‘current meat production is often bad for the environment’. And of course our consumption habits have driven the ‘bad’ agriculture. This is what needs to change.

From the linked article above

Week 17: What happens when you only eat meat for a year?

The key question is

how deadly were their farts? Whenever I eat too much animal fat I have farts that could kill a horse. Alas, there’s no mention of that in the paper.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDWPP5JxEWg[/video]

eating a decent portion of red meat (>85g) every day will lose you on average 30 minutes of life per day or one microlife. This compares with 10 microlives/day for smoking. These figures are based on real epidemiological data.
On the plus side >20 mins/day exercise wins you back 2 microlives.
I have met the originator of the microlife, and he was drinking red wine and eating meat at the time…

These figures are based on real epidemiological data.

Correlation or causation?

From this Austrian research seems the most “unhealthy” diet is vegetarian.

If you eat meat every day, eat actual meat rather than cured meat or meat products, and don’t eat Argentinian gaucho quatities of meat

That study themselves suggest that they cannot be sure that the poorer health outcomes of vegetarians in the study is because of their diet or from pre-existing conditions or other reasons. Here:

Potential limitations of our results are due to the fact that the
survey was based on cross-sectional data. Therefore, no statements
can be made whether the poorer health in vegetarians in our study
is caused by their dietary habit or if they consume this form of diet
due to their poorer health status.

Correlation or causation?

It doesn’t matter and is probably both, it’s based on the hazard ratio, which is a measure of relative risk. It should be sufficiently disentangled from other risk factors for it to be useful to inform lifestyle choices.