Organic meat may be good in small doses. However most of the meat today is not the same as it was centuries ago. The book "The China Study" does a good job at explaining the diseases caused by meat.
It's not so much organic meat even, as grass fed, antibiotic free, ranged fed beef, served very fresh has the same benefit.
Things such as Vitamin C decay away in the meat with the current slaughter to serving times, and the corn diet instead of the proper grass diet lead the beef to be made up of Omega 6 instead of Omega 3 fats.
Meat itself may not be perfect, but modern factory meat is horrible. Corn Fed, Trough Locked Cows are horrible for you.
I don't eat much meat - I don't eat beef or pork at all, I eat some fish and chicken. I think too much meat is hard on your digestive tract, and the high caloric density with relatively low micronutrients makes it a bad call for me. Chicken, fish, yes. Beef, pork, other mammals, no.
BUT, the China Study book is very questionable. There's a very thorough rebuttal here:
It's a very good rebuttal. I agree with a low-ish meat diet, but the China Study book (as opposed to the actual study) is riddled with errors and bad science.
I don't want to be right yesterday, so thanks for that link. I agree that the book contains lots of promotion, but it still helped me a lot in understanding the role that nutrition has in our lives. My take home from that book is that eating a lot of processed foods and meat is harmful, and it's better to eat whole foods instead, mostly plants.
That's funny, I specifically avoid fish (but eat other mammals) because I care more about the mercury in fish (and all aquatic meats) than I do about the non-cerebral badness of meat.
Yeah, nutrition is funny with all the conflicting advice. I did some looking into it and the rates of mercury poisoning are extraordinary low - fish-eating societies like Okinawa and Japan tend to be quite healthy and long-lived, and it takes eating an immense amount of fish to get mercury poisoning (something crazy like 5 servings/day, if memory serves). I feel pretty comfortable eating 1-3 servings of fish maybe 3-4 days per week, chicken or no meat on the other days.
That's completely crazy. Meat and fat are the easiest things to digest. There is no such thing as an allergy to meat, whereas something like a quarter of people have various allergies to grains, or various nightshade related plants.
Pretty much all plants have various toxins to prevent digestion. That's why plants in general need so much heavy processing and cooking to eat safely. You can eat a freshly killed animal raw reasonably safely. Eating a lot of raw grains or sweet potatoes could kill you.
