MEATY MATTERS
Dietitian
Nicole Senior ponders finding health in the happy medium
Eating meat kick-started the evolution of modern big-brained humans. But
we can actually live long and healthy lives without eating it, and many
millions do. However, it’s a highly nutritious food that provides us
with essential nutrients more difficult to obtain from plant foods.
Source: Reversing Diabetes (Murdoch Books)
Red
meat, for example, is rich in iron necessary for healthy blood, zinc
for immunity and vitamin B12 for healthy DNA and cell division. Sure,
there are vegetarians who thrive on a meatless diet, but there are also
those who don’t and take nutrient supplements to make up the shortfall.
In some poor countries, where people cannot afford to eat meat,
iron-deficiency anaemia is one of the most common childhood diseases.
But meat poses ethical questions around the environment – red meat has
the highest environmental footprint – and animal welfare.
While
it’s true livestock contribute to environmental problems, the
environmental argument against meat has been infused with emotion and
ideology as to whether we should eat meat at all. Veganism is rising,
with the extremists in the movement taking a militant approach going so
far as trespassing on farms and causing damage.
The
picture has also been muddied by the rampantly excessive consumption of
meat in some rich countries and the environmentally damaging effects of
factory farming, the vast scale of commercialised livestock production
where animals become a unit in a production line, and the scandals in
Australia over the cruel export and slaughter methods of live cattle and
sheep, and more recently what happens to race horses that have passed
their use-by date (in our book). For many people the way we treat farm
animals is no longer acceptable and higher moral standards are being
demanded.
In a way, meat offers nutritional insurance
for reckless eating and incompetent cooking whereas plant-based eating
requires a new diligence both for nutritional balance and enjoyment. The
degree of difficulty of a meatless diet is much higher than an
omnivorous diet. Maybe rather than blindly following all the vegan
marketing hype (not all vegan products are healthy), we just need to be
more mindful of our diet generally? For example, reducing the amount of
nutrient-poor, highly processed foods we eat, learning to grow and cook
our own food, only buying what we can eat, and not throwing food in the
bin (which wastes the resources that went in to producing it and
produces greenhouse gases in landfill).
The question of
how much meat we can get away with eating and still look after our
health and the environment is hotly debated and depends on a myriad of
factors including: location/region, climate, production method, land and
water use, feed type, animal genetics, waste management, supply chain
efficiency, transport and wastage.
The EAT-Lancet
Commission on Food, Planet, Diet and Health report published in February
2019 took a global approach that aimed to incorporate nutritional needs
and environmental limits needs with a Planetary Health Diet. It is a
plant-based diet with 14g a day of beef/lamb/pork (98g/week) with a
range of 0–28g/day, 29g poultry per day (203g/week), 28g of fish per day
(196g/week) and 13g of egg per day (about 2 eggs/week).
This report has drawn both congratulations and criticism in equal
measure. The harshest criticism has been directed at the very small
amounts of meat, which are less than previously proposed for
environmental sustainability and less than currently recommended in
dietary guidelines. We shall wait to see how the rest of the world takes
on their recommendations.
While high intensity factory
farming such as feed lot cattle is seen as unacceptable to most on both
environmental and ethical grounds, the agricultural story around meat
production isn’t all bad. In Australia, for example, most cattle and
sheep are grass-fed on marginal land unsuitable for crops. Integrated
farming is a better and more sustainable way forward and this approach
involves mixing animal and plants on the same farm to allow for maximum
output through nutrient cycling and minimal pollution.
It
is unrealistic to think we will all stop eating meat to save the
environment or to “be kind” to animals, however, we can produce meat in a
much more sustainable and ethical way, and we can eat less meat to
minimise our environmental impact. There’s no need to banish meat from
your dinner plate – just cut back so it’s a tasty side show rather than
the main event. We as citizen-eaters can help by eating animals
“nose-to-tail” (not just our favourite bits) and not wasting any because
throwing animal foods in the bin just adds insult to injury (it wastes
the already significant environmental costs in producing it).
Australian
ex-food-critic-turned-farmer, TV presenter and author Matthew Evans
says we will need to pay more for meat that meets our higher moral
expectations, “The simplest way to better impact the animals, the land,
the farmer, is to perhaps eat meat less often, but spend more on it.”
And remember eating less red meat is easy because there is (sustainably
sourced) fish, chicken and pork with smaller environmental footprints as
well as good plant sources of protein that we should be eating more of.
This dietary strategy when taken on by the population will send a
message to producers that they can use less intensive, kinder and more
sustainable methods to produce animal foods, and can ramp up sustainable
plant food production to meet demand.
My takeout
message is this – meat is nutritionally important, but we in rich
countries should eat less; and only our fair share. We need to focus on
farming animals (and crops) more sustainably and with minimal
environmental impact.
Avowed carnivores and vegans are
dietary extremes while health is so often found in the happy medium. If
we ate according to health guidelines, both our own health and the
health of the planet and all the people living on it could be improved!
Read More:
