The WHO has just fired a shot across the bows of the processed meat industry, with a whiff of grapeshot for the red meat industry too. Links to cancer. Carcinogenic chemicals. If you want some scientific details try this link to the Sydney Morning Herald.
It’s not news that large-scale consumption of red meat and processed meat products is unhealthy. So anyone who’s been paying attention during the last 20 years would have avoided both or at least limited their intake. Same with alcohol and tobacco, especially if one is female and pregnant. Right?
Last night I saw a news item about a little girl whose brain function is permanently impaired because her mother drank heavily during pregnancy. The mother was interviewed and claimed that she didn’t know this might happen.
I don’t want to appear heartless but how can anyone, however dim and ill-informed, not realise that putting poison into one’s bloodstream at a time when that blood is being pumped through a foetus is a very bad idea? Mrs SG worked that out for herself more than 40 years ago.
Last year there was talk in Australia about making it illegal to drink alcohol during pregnancy. Some people objected that this would unfairly target Aboriginal people. Others, more reasonably, asked how such a law could ever be enforced. I think the idea has been quietly dropped.
StroppyGit 
We would have to prohibit alcohol sale to and consumption by women if child-bearing age since it can be some weeks before pregnancy is “diagnosed”. (Presumably the most important few weeks.)
Re the red meat saga, upheavals continue. See page 17 of the 2015 US dietary guidelines.
Click to access Scientific-Report-of-the-2015-Dietary-Guidelines-Advisory-Committee.pdf
It says, inter alia:
“Cholesterol. Previously, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended that cholesterol intake be limited to no more than 300 mg/day. The 2015 DGAC will not bring forward this recommendation because available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol, consistent with the conclusions of the AHA/ACC report. Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.”
This contradicts the 2010 guidelines– which trumpeted the “evidence”.
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Thank you, Brendan. As well as venting my anger at dishonesty, hypocrisy and foolishness, I like to add to people’s knowledge and understanding.
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Genuinely when someone doesn’t understand afterward its
up to other viewers that they will help, so here it happens.
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