Meat Is Murder: America’s Deadly Beef Obsession

US News and World Report | July 30, 2014

For most Americans, a meal isn’t a meal unless there’s a piece of meat on the plate. But the desire to have chicken or beef every time we sit down to eat is making us sick – not only by increasing our waistlines, but raising our risk for cancer and heart disease as well.

The average American ate more than 57 pounds of beef and 45 pounds of pork in 2012, according to the American Meat Institute, a national trade organization. This works out to more than a half-pound of meat-based protein per day, which doesn’t include protein from non-meat sources. “Americans are eating 57 pounds more meat than they were in 1950s,” says Dean Ornish, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco and founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute. “It’s not surprising why Americans are fatter than ever.”

Much of the disease risk comes not just from red meat, but from processed meat, such as hot dogs, bacon and lunch meats, which contain nitrates, says Jennifer Weddig, a registered dietitian and associate professor of nutrition at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. “Those meats have been shown to increase your risk of death from all causes, especially cancer and heart disease," Weddig says. "No one would argue that.”

Red meat has recently been linked to poor health outcomes as well, Weddig says. A 2012 study in the​ Archives of Internal Medicine looked at more than 121,000 doctors​ and nurses and found that those who ate one 3-ounce serving of red meat per day were ​13 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease or cancer – and that number jumped to 20 percent for those ate processed meat more than once per day.​ “The studies are clear in their link,” Weddig says. “People who eat ​large amounts of red meat have an increased risk of mortality.”

Source: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2014/07/30/meat-is-murder-americas-deadly-beef-obsession