Meet Your Meat

Each and every day, decade after decade, like clockwork hundreds of millions of children have asked the all time question, "So what's for breakfast, lunch, or dinner Mom/Dad?!" A hot dog, how about a B.L.T, or perhaps a nice juicy steak? Sounds like the typical items found on most of our daily menus, right? Like every other child in America I never gave much thought about the animal that once breathed life before being transformed into my juicy cheeseburger. Like most parents today mine really didn't cover the anatomy of meat, and its true ethic of origin. All that mattered was that it was tasty, was relatively inexpensive, it rounded out any given meal, and it was what I knew to be as a good fashioned balanced meal.

So, why do we eat meat? We begin life with a crash course on nibbling on a little bit of this and that throughout childhood, and then we forge into a junk food induced psychosis throughout our adolescence. It's plain to see why society has found it acceptable to have an "anything goes" approach towards their diet, since it has been just that. For the majority it is a no bars hold approach towards just about anything and everything that we choose to eat, so why not meat?

So long as one desire to consume meat and other animal by products society will continue to justify and stake their claim, meat has countless health benefits therefore why not eat it? Yes, it is true that red meat is rich in various nutrients, such as

* Iron - Carries oxygen to muscles to support physical activity. Iron in animal products is more readily available to the body than iron from plant sources.

* Zinc- Zinc is an essential mineral required by the body for maintaining a sense of smell, keeping a healthy immune system, building proteins, triggering enzymes, and creating DNA

* Protein - Proteins play a central role in biological processes and form the basis of living tissues.

* Folates - A B vitamin that is essential for cell growth and reproduction

* selenium - Selenium is a trace mineral that is essential to good health but required only in small amounts

However, there are certain things that meat lacks in. Meat does not contain any source of fiber, aiding to a healthy digestive system, and furthermore it is extremely high in saturated fats. In fact the average American consumes twice the daily allowance allotted for his or her protein intake; this has contributed to overwhelming heart disease, obesity and cancer rates which have since soured over the past fifty years. More recently, in a report completed by The World Cancer Research Fund was completed and unveiled more than 7,000 clinical studies covering links between diet and cancer. The conclusion left the health world stunned. "Processed meats are too dangerous for human consumption. Consumers should stop buying and eating all processed meat products for the rest of their lives. Processed meats include bacon, sausage, hot dogs, sandwich meat, packaged ham, pepperoni, salami and virtually all red meat used in frozen prepared meals. They are usually manufactured with a carcinogenic ingredient known as sodium nitrite." Sodium nitrite is used as a color fixer by meat packaging companies to retain a bright red color, thus appearing fresh. World Cancer Research's findings concluded, "Unfortunately, sodium nitrite also results in the formation of cancer-causing nitrosamines in the human body. And this leads to a sharp increase in cancer risk