Meat is bad for you.
Meat is good for you.
Neither sentence is true.
You’ll often see headlines, opinion pieces or posts citing studies that prove that meat (often red meat) is “bad for you”.
And you’ll see even more headlines that red meat is bad for the planet.
The problem here is that the truth is too nuanced for modern debate.
It’s not binary. It’s not black and white.
The true answer is it depends.
Now pay attention you...
There are plenty of studies out there linking red meat to cancer.
We’ve all seen them.
And yes, if you study people who are eating red meat that was pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, fed glyphosate-laden grains on an enormous, lifeless feed-lot and never even see a blade of grass you will undoubtedly encounter some pretty disastrous health outcomes.
But what if the animals were grass-fed, on organic pasture, on a farm deeply connected to the natural environment and the seasons?
Do the studies differentiate?
Of course not.
That would ruin the headline.
And there’s more.
Do they ever differentiate between a pack of mince from a butcher and a heavily treated supermarket pack?
Or whether you’re eating it with tallow-fried potatoes and fresh vegetables or seed oil-fried chips?
The answer is the same.
And so the truth gets lost.
Please brace yourselves for two nuanced arguments in the same article, something not seen since the mid 1990s.
Even more common than “red meat is bad for you” is “red meat is destroying the planet”.
And yes, you can make a case that the methane emissions from cattle are a contributing factor to climate change.
The mainstream seems obsessed with either veganism or lab-grown meat as a solution.
But we live in a world where nature is in retreat.
No one would deny, we hope, that we need more nature. More life. Not less.
So where are the voices telling us that animals are nature?
That farms are too?
In fact, the environment’s carbon and water cycles depend entirely on animals doing what they do.
Trampling, weeing and (sorry) shitting all over the place.
More! More! More!
So next time this debate comes up at work or round the dinner table, let’s leave the anger and fury to the hard-of-thinking and bring a little nuance.
Grass-fed, regeneratively farmed meat is a world apart from its industrially farmed, processed equivalent.
So much so that there really is no such thing as meat today.
Speak soon,
R, J & N
