Meat or Sugar
You know the drill. You want a degree in nutritional science so you need to do research and get noticed. You find a food to dissect and demonize and publish in some obscure journal. The media with their reliable Google alerts find it, blow it up and warn us against eating the named item. Next thing you know you are on TV being quoted on the subject of “Wellness.” We’ve been playing this game for about 40 years. First it was fat, then carbs. Now we are left with protein. Meat protein is promising, except that it is the focus of so many profitable diets!
In order to side step the weight losing discussion, the questions about meat eating typically focus on the ethics of killing animals rather than disadvantages of being a vegetarian. We know that plants yield proteins of lower biological value than animal sources. So vegetarians must consume more food to meet their daily protein requirements. A mere eight ounces of chicken supplies the 56 grams of daily protein that male adults require (46 grams for women). If we obtain half of the 56 gram requirement from 4 ounces of chicken, we consume 220 calories and three-fourths of a cup in volume. Substitute kidney beans and you need to consume 19 ounces of beans (3 ½ cups!) at a whopping 840 calories! Even if you stretch your stomach to contain this enormous quantity, you would still have to make up the missing amino acids with some other grain or vegetable to get a complete protein equivalent to the biological value of chicken.
Another issue that makes bashing meat bad is that sugar consumption is high on the list of wellness worries. We have to ask ourselves, “Is it really smart to crucify meat when sugar is cheaper?” Obviously we can’t do them together; eliminate fat, sugar, and meat and, well, we’re cookin’ with nuthin.
So how do we make this vital decision: Meat or Sugar. What choice makes the most sense for the bottom line ( ours, maybe not yours)? Sugar or Meat. It’s a no brainer! We have a runaway diabetes epidemic, and deceased people have very little purchasing power. Seventy-five percent of the US adult population is fat, so if they don’t yet have the D word they soon will. It’s obvious. Sugar goes. Meat stays. And that’s straight from the gut.