It's time to kick the high-protein habit!
Photo Credit: racorn/Shutterstock.com
March 5, 2014
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Whenever I order a veggie burger, the question comes up. A member of
the group will lean over between tearing meaty chunks out of their
double-beef special, and make a concerted effort to feign benevolent
interest as they ask: "So, you're a vegetarian, are you? Is that because
you prefer it or for, well, ethical reasons?"
Here, the
questioner is offering the questioned a polite way out. It is phrased so
you can apologetically gesticulate towards your halloumi and mutter
something self-deprecating about a weak stomach and a delicate
constitution. You can chow down quietly on your balls of fried falafel
and then scuttle off with your quiet personal views about factory farm
conditions, global warming and antibiotic overuse like someone who
secretly believes in a particularly suspect 9/11 conspiracy theory.
Either that or you can admit that your food choices are, yes,
"technically for ethical reasons", and then endure the 212th exhaustive
conversation about exactly why you stick to them. Inevitably, this will
end up with some well-informed carnivore telling you all about how you
are a hypocrite for eating cheese while bacon fat drips slowly down his
chin.
Personally, I am completely on board with the idea that most
of my views are hypocritical while I still buy butter and enjoy
mozzarella. I accept that my position on food is complicated, as well as
everybody else's, and I couldn't care less about the bacon fat or the
spaghetti bolognese or the rare steak being consumed next to me. Like
the majority of people in Sudbury, Suffolk,
I don't think that butcher's shops should have their dead animal displays censored when
all they do is quite rightly draw attention to the reality of where
meat comes from. And to be perfectly honest, a sizeable chunk of my
reasoning for vegetarianism comes from a selfish place: I've always had
the vague notion that meat – and, in particular, red meat or processed
meat – doesn't do the human body much discernible good.
According to the latest study into protein consumption, it turns out that this theory may well have something to it. The
National Health and Nutrition Survey has
been collating data on 6,381 people across the US, and found that diets
rich in animal protein (as opposed to protein routinely taken from
plant sources) could be as
harmful to health as other vices such as smoking.
Those under the age of 65 who regularly consume a lot of meat, eggs and
dairy are four times more likely to die of cancer or diabetes –
although it's worth noting that, if you make it to 66, beginning to eat a
high-protein diet for your remaining years is a better shout than
sticking with the steamed kale.
Perhaps you would
accuse me of perpetuating the "everything gives you cancer" agenda. But
it's not only sensationalist carcinogenic claims that deserve attention
in light of these findings. Consider the diets endlessly touted in
women's magazines and the most successful self-help books of the late
20th and early 21st century: the
Dukan diet, for instance; the internationally renowned
Atkins plan; and of course "
going paleo".
All of these emphasise a drastic cut in carbohydrate intake and a
regular protein overload. All of them claim to base their advice on
medicine (and, in the case of the paleo diet, sketchy pseudo-scientific
claims about what we are "naturally intended" to eat if we are to "mimic
the diets of our caveman ancestors".) Now it turns out that losing all
that weight for your health might be backfiring spectacularly, taking
months of your life off with every spare tyre you shed.
Having been raised in a vehemently anti-veggie northern English city on a steady diet of chicken nuggets and turkey dinosaurs,
years before Jamie Oliver began to suggest there was anything wrong with feeding kids the components of dog food, I don't expect to reap the benefits of a lifelong healthy diet anytime soon, either. But if it's true that
39% of women report being on a diet "most of the time",
and that the average woman spends 31 years on a diet, then we in
particular are setting ourselves up for serious middle-aged falls.
Where
protein shakes for "bulking up" and adverts that demand to know whether
or not a passerby is "man enough" to eat a five-tiered burger have
remained masculine domains since time immemorial, the high-protein
dieting phenomenon is fairly new for women. The long-term effects
haven't emerged in enough numbers to draw definite conclusions, but this
latest finding shouldn't be ignored. It is a credible warning about a
society currently obsessed with protein and weight loss, operating in
meat production hyperdrive with some of the most accessible fast food
that ever existed.
Ultimately, it makes no difference whether you
did it for the love of fluffy lambs in spring or deep-seated narcissism
combined with a fierce survival instinct: the fact is you should
probably eat less meat. You may well have to face a couple of awkward
questions over a bowl of hummus, but hey, we all have our crosses to
bear. And so, for the love of the NHS, please consign your well-thumbed
paleo book to the dustbin. Because it turns out that you may be taking
its simpering promises to make you thinner literally at your own peril.
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