p****y
发帖数: 23737 | 1 Denis Campbell, health correspondent The Guardian, Tuesday 19 October 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/19/eat-less-meat-research
More than 45,000 lives a year could be saved if everyone began eating meat
no more than two or three times a week, health experts and Friends of the
Earth claim today.
Widespread switching to low-meat diets would stop 31,000 people dying early
from heart disease, 9,000 from cancer and 5,000 from strokes, according to
new analysis of British eating habits by public health expert Dr Mike Rayner
contained in an FoE report.
Dramatically reduced meat consumption would also save the NHS £1.2bn
and help reduce climate change and deforestation in South America, where
rainforests are being chopped down to grow animal feed and graze cows which
are exported to Europe, the report states.
Eating too much meat, particularly processed meat, is bad for health because
doing so can involve consuming more fat, saturated fat or salt than
official guidelines recommend, the FoE say.
They do not advocate shunning meat altogether, but do urge people to eat
meat no more than two or three times a week, with total weekly intake not
exceeding about 210g – the equivalent of half a sausage a day. Average
weekly intake at the moment is between seven and 10 70g portions.
Doing so would save 45,361 lives a year, according to research by Rayner and
his colleagues in the British Heart Foundation health promotion research
group at Oxford University.
They calculated that a switch to eating meat a maximum of five times a week
would prevent 32,352 deaths, but another 2,509 people a year will die by
2050 if current meat consumption patterns continue. There are currently 228,
000 deaths a year from three major conditions in which food intake plays a
key role: heart disease, strokes or diet-related cancers, such as bowel
cancer.
"We don't need to go vegetarian to look after ourselves and our planet, but
we do need to cut down on meat," said Craig Bennett, FoE's director of
policy and campaigns. "While the government has ignored the environmental
aspect of high meat and dairy consumption, it can't ignore the lives that
would be saved by switching to less and better meat."
Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Council of the Royal College of
General Practitioners, agreed: "People shouldn't stop eating meat but they
should eat less meat, especially processed meat, due to their salt and
saturated fat content, and eat more fruit and vegetables."
Rachel Thompson, deputy head of science at the World Cancer Research Fund,,
which has publicised the potential cancer risk of eating a lot of meat, said
processed meat – that there is convincing evidence they increase the risk
of developing bowel cancer, the third most common cancer in the UK. WCRF
recommends eating no more than 500g of cooked red meat per week and to avoid
eating processed meat – such as bacon, ham and salami."
Meat producers criticised the report. "The vast majority of consumers eat
less than average recommendations of red meat already," said Chris Lamb of
BPEX, which represents 20,000 pork producers in England. "It is over-
simplistic to say that changing one element of the diet can have such a
dramatic result. Red meat has a valuable role to play as part of a healthy,
balanced diet."
Jen Elford, of the Vegetarian Society, added: "I find myself wondering why
an organisation as courageous as Friends of the Earth can't bring itself to
recommend a vegetarian diet. Of course less meat is better than more, but we
can't address the scale of the environmental and health problems facing
society without a wholesale shift away from animal protein." |
|
