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For Now, Bypass The Meat Counter

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By IRENE MAHER News Channel 8 Medical Editor

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 18, 2008

When I was a child, the freezer was always filled with steaks.

Back then, my dad could get them at the base commissary for about a dollar each. That's right. Large, bone-in rib-eyes and T-bone steaks for 95 cents to a $1.25 each.

Dad had a family of five to feed and couldn't resist a bargain, so he bought stacks of them for the freezer. He loaded up on pork chops, too. In those days they were on the skinny side, not more than a quarter-inch thick. My brothers and I could easily put away three or four each in one sitting. We also went through a lot of ground beef, bacon, sausage, hot dogs and lunch meat, mostly ham and salami.

Feed a kid that way today, and you'd likely be reported to some agency or, at the very least, get some raised eyebrows and a loud gasp of horror.

Diets certainly are different now. In my childhood home, I'm talking the early to late '60s, chicken was served on Sundays, roasted whole or cut up and fried. Today, at my grownup house, the freezer is packed with chicken, and you're likely to find just a couple of small steaks individually wrapped so my husband and I can share one for dinner. Even if I could get a gorgeously marbled Delmonico for a buck and a quarter, steak would still be a treat. The truth is, we know too much now about saturated fat, cholesterol and cancer.

But are we healthier?

I posed the question to Nagi Kumar, the director of Nutrition Research at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa. Her answer, without hesitation, was, "No I don't think so."

She cited television's Food Network, where Emeril Legasse gets a round of applause for cooking anything in bacon fat. And Paula Deen's liberal use of butter is rivaled only by my beloved Ina Garten's use of heavy cream. We know it's bad for us, but, somehow, we can't resist.

I'm on this tear because I received an eye-opening news release from the American Institute for Cancer Research, a respected international cancer research organization.

"Americans can't afford to wait any longer to make a cancer-protective shift in their eating habits. The evidence linking red meat to colon cancer is now so strong it should prompt a nationwide reduction in red meat consumption," it said.

The researchers consider red meat to be beef, pork and lamb, including processed, cured and smoked meats such as sausage, bacon, ham, bologna, salami and hot dogs. All the things I was fed week in and week out in childhood.

The institute recommends limiting red meat to 18 ounces a week and avoiding processed meats. Eat more than 18 ounces of red meat a week, and your colon cancer risk goes up by 15 percent for every 1.7 ounces you eat each day. Even worse, there is no safe amount of ham, bacon, lunch meat or sausage consumption. The group's research panel found that having a little less than 2 ounces of processed meats a day raised the colon cancer risk by 21 percent. Check it out for yourself at www.aicr.org.

But Kumar was quick to add, "You don't have to avoid red meat. Rather, eat it more conservatively ... a small portion, the size of your palm."

In other words, sharing that small steak with my husband is a good thing.

While searching the Web for more information on the topic, I came across some chilling research in an article on webmd.com. "People who eat more than 2 ounces of red meat or pork a day are about 50 percent more likely to get pancreatic cancer," it said.

My family was shocked to find out my mother had pancreatic cancer five years ago, only to lose her to the disease a year later. Maybe we shouldn't have been. For years, her favorite lunch was a can of Vienna sausages. Did all those years of pork chops, steaks and sausage catch up with her?

We've gotten desensitized to various research findings claiming gloom and doom. One study says this is definitely bad for you only to be followed the next month by another that says small amounts may be beneficial. My mom didn't have the information, the inclination or the time to change her diet. But I do.

For now, I think I'm pretty safe in walking past the meat counter. But, if someone comes out with a study that says red meat is actually good for you, I'll meet you at Bern's.

But only if we can share.

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