Friday, February 25, 2011
by Alex Chaple
Upon arriving at the gym bright and early this morning to put my first two trainees through their paces (who were unfortunately not quite as "bright" at that time of the morning as I would have hoped - you know who you are! ), I was confronted with the news that there had been a study published in the media which claimed red meat caused Bowel Cancer. I immediately wanted to know more and began fiercely defending my beloved red meat, explaining why this can't be so. First let's look at the facts...
Humans have been eating red meat since approximately 2,600,000 b.c. Cavemen drew pictures of four legged beasts on their walls, fashioned tools to hunt them and it is long established that the consumption of animal meat and organ tissue has been one of the key factors in our physical evolution. The first reported case of cancer, although it was far from a frequent occurrence, was in 15,000 b.c. in ancient Egypt when some citizens were found with lumps in their breast tissue. When you consider that we (as humans) were living apparently free from this disease for the previous 2,585,000 years (as far as we know), cancer is not something we have always suffered from. In fact, the Egyptians were also the first civilisation to mass produce grain and suffer obesity. Could that be a link?
In his documentation of isolated cultures around the world Western Price DDS famously discovered many examples of cultures living free from disease and living exclusively from the animals in the environment. When observing "primitive" North American Indians in 1933 who fed almost exclusively on animal meat (such as moose) he reported in amazement the lack of ill health suffered by the community members. They knew nothing of cancer, arthritis, tooth decay or any other degenerative disease. They even knew how animals themselves could provide all of the nutrition one could need to maintain health such as eating the adrenal glands of animals, which contain enough vitamin C to ensure scurvy never became an issue in the harsh winters when plant foods became completely unavailable.
There have been a number of studies published investing potential causes of Colorectal Cancer such as insufficient folate levels, table salt intake, lack of probiotics and let's not forget that both sugar and estrogenic compounds found in our modern environment that rapidly accelerate cancer growth. There have even been studies to support the link between Colorectal Cancer and diabetes!
In my opinion, cancer has been shown to be a multi-factorial disease with no single cause. Before we truly understand the disease in more detail there can be no accurate assessment of what causes it or a sure fire way to cure it. However, to blame red meat, a food which has proven over time to have only benefited man kinds development seems short sighted. Red meat can and should be part of a healthy diet. The authors of the study recently brought to light even discussed how this may only be a very small piece of the puzzle and there is far more research to be done before anything can be conclusive. If we are to find the cause of such diseases we need to look in far more detail at the many other very dangerous foods we consume as a nation on a regular basis.