blaze spinnaker <[email protected]> wrote: Second, cooked red meat is pretty bad for you.. >
I doubt that it is bad for you in moderation. People have been eating it for hundreds of thousands of years. Before that we ate uncooked red meat for millions of years, and wa-a-a-y before that we were insectivores. People who eat meat in moderation nowadays do not have notably shorter longevity as far as I know. I will grant one thing. The people with the longest longevity in the world live in rural Yamaguchi, where I have spent a lot of time. I know some American experts in geriatrics have been investigating their lifestyle, diet and so on. Many of them are somewhat vegetarian, or fully vegetarian. Except most people there eat lots of fish. This is a carry-over from Edo-period customs. They are in their 80s which puts them halfway back to 1868, the end the Edo period. However, I do not think vegetarianism alone explains their good health. I think it a combination of diet, hard work, a clean environment, and National Health care. They do not eat as much salty pickles as rural people eating the traditional diet in northern Japan, so they suffer from high blood pressure and stroke less often. They eat fantastic quantities of white rice, three meals a day. Any theory of diet that predicts that is bad for you must be wrong. People thresh their own rice and I think they usually select "all white." There is a machine at the agriculture co-op where you can thresh a 50 lb bag for $1. They do not all eat traditional food. There is plenty of meat and American-style junk food in the grocery stores. I myself like to pig out on French bread and donuts with loads of chocolate and strawberry cream filling when I am there. I don't care for fish. - Jed
