Heart Disease and Meat Consumption

Coronary heart disease is the number one killer in the world, responsible for over 12% of all deaths. Consuming an unhealthy amount of meat (which nearly ALL of us do) drastically effects your health later on in life- It not only increases your chances of getting heart disease, but of dying from it. Men with the highest meat consumption are 27% more likely to die of heart disease; women are 50% more likely.

Eating high amounts of meat is bad for your body. Point-blank. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine followed over half a million middle-aged and elderly Americans for 10 years. They found that those who consumed four ounces of red meat a day, the equivalent of one small hamburger, were 30% more likely to be dead by the end of those 10 years.

I pulled this quote from a Washington Pyost article on the same topic:

“You can be very healthy being a vegetarian, but you can be very healthy being a non-vegetarian if you keep your red-meat intake low,” said Walter Willett, a nutrition expert at the Harvard School of Public Health. “If you are eating meat twice a day and can cut back to once a day there’s a big benefit. If you cut back to two or three times a week there’s even more benefit. If you eliminate it entirely, there’s a little more benefit, but the big benefit is getting away from everyday red-meat consumption.”

Heart disease is a scary, daunting future for many, many people. However, you don’t have to be one of them! As Willett said, you don’t have to cut meat out completely, you just have to cut back. Even the smallest change will have a positive effect on your health. Also by eating less meat, you’ll naturally be consuming more fruits and vegetables which can fight disease, rather than cause it. Who’d say no to that?

Brilliant comic from Gabriel Utasi.

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