Maudene Nelson, RD, CDE tells us why it can be good for our health to eat less meat than we usually do. Maudene has been a nutrition educator at the Columbia University Institute of Human Nutrition for the past thirty years. She is also a diabetes educator at the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center.
Q: We often hear that white meat is better for us than red meat–is that true?
A: Generally the “white meat vs red meat” debate is about the kind of fats that are in the meats. The more saturated fat on a food, the less healthy it is for our bodies. Saturated fats are associated with higher total cholesterol and higher “bad” LDL cholesterol.
A heart healthy diet is low in saturated fat. White meat, such as chicken, turkey, and fish is much lower in saturated fat than red meat such as pork and beef.
However, your cholesterol levels have a lot to do with your genes, that is, whether or not your parents or close family members have high cholesterol levels. If you eat lots of saturated fat from red meats (untrimmed steaks and chops, salami, balogni, corned beef, ham, and bacon) and high cholesterol runs in your family, there’s a good chance you’re going to have an unhealthy high cholesterol level as well.
However, if you have some red meat now and then, as long as you don’t eat too much saturated fat for the rest of the day, then eating red meat isn’t going to be the kiss of death.
Q: What about total fat? Does that matter?
A: The other thing to consider is the amount of total fat in your food choices from day to day. When the pork industry started those ads saying it is “the other white meat,” it was not only based on saturated fat, but on total fat. There was a study done where volunteers were asked to eat only six ounces of white meat per day for six weeks. Another group of volunteers was asked to eat only six ounces of red meat per day for six weeks. Their cholesterol was measured at the beginning and end of those six weeks. Then they had the two groups of volunteers switch—those who were eating only white meat had to eat only six ounces of red meat per day and those who were eating red meat had to eat only six ounces of white meat per day for another six weeks. In the end, there was absolutely no statistical difference in their cholesterol levels. This is because they were only eating six ounces a day. A deck of cards is about the volume of three ounces of meat. So the volunteers were only eating the size of two decks of cards of meat per day.
Q: So you’re saying that it’s more about the amount of meat we’re eating, not the type of meat?
A: Right. The message isn’t that red meat is bad and white meat is better, but that we should be eating way less meat than we ordinarily do. You should also be sure to trim off all of the visible fat. Unless you’re a person who digs ditches everyday or chops down trees (someone who has a very physical job), fat is not your friend.
So, if you trim all of the visible fat off of your meat and begin eating less meat than you usually do, you probably don’t need to decide whether white meat is better or worse for you than red meat—you just need to cut down on every kind of meat.
