On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, Don and Rachel Matesz wrote:

> 2)  I have heard countless vegetarians say that Americans eat a meat-based
> diet, implying that meat makes up the foundation or largest part of the
> diet.  This is laughable to me.  I have yet to see shoppers in grocery
> stores buying mostly meat.

When people say that Americans eat a meat-based diet, they don't
mean that they eat mostly meat.  They mean that they organize the
meal around a meat dish.  This is the sense in which meat is
"foundational" in the American diet, even if most of the calories
end up coming from the potatoes, rice, pasta, or whatever else
one eats with it.

If you compare what many Americans eat with what is eaten
elsewhere in the world where meat is scarce and/or very
expensive, you'll see the point more clearly.  I have talked with
many Europeans who, when they come here on a visit, are struck by
the "monster meals" that they are served in restaurants, and
especially by the giant (by their standards) portions of meat.  I
noticed the same thing in reverse the last time I was in England
and France, a few years ago.  The steaks in Paris were tasty and
nicely seasoned, but small in comparison to what I am used to,
and quite expensive.

> 3)  It is possible that meat is merely a marker for certain others habits
> than those with cancer (namely consumption of a high starch, high sugar diet
> laced with wrecked fats).  In America, those who eat a lot of meat (again
> this term doesn't mean much, but implies a lot) also consume a lot of empty
> starch, sugar, preservatives, additives, wrecked fats/oils, and a host of
> other foodstuffs that are not nutritious.  Likewise, in America, those who
> are health conscious, and eat little red meat, are often the same people who
> abandon smoking drinking, take less coffee, eat more fresh vegetable and
> fruit.  So this can confuse things for researchers who don't look at all of
> these details/variables.

There is a thing called multivariate analysis, in which the
contribution of various factors is statistically separated.  The
larger the sample size, the more likely this is to be reliable,
but even then one is limited to only the variables that one
thought to track in the first place.  So, if the people who are
eating all the other crap you mentioned but not eating red meat
are not getting colon cancer, then there is something to think
about.

In recent decades we have the relatively new phenomenon of the
"junk food vegetarian", i.e., the person who thinks that a
"healthy diet" is any combination of junk that doesn't include
meat.

I am personally more or less persuaded that the colon cancer
connection is indeed the hetercyclic amines generated by broiling
meats at high temperatures.  The clues seem to point in that
direction, and there is a fair biochemical basis for the theory.

Todd Moody
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