No one would accuse the Brits of being on the cutting edge of things culinary — but some big burger news is coming from across the pond:
Under new British Department of Health guidelines about to be issued, the Scientific Committee on Nutrition (SCN) has cautioned adults not to eat more than 17.5 ounces of red meat each week. (That’s a bit more than four of McD’s Quarter Pounders.) They warn that consumers who eat more are at risk of developing cancer later in their lives.
Photo by McCormick Spices
Before you puff up in indignation over this seemingly vast amount of beef, you should know that we checked with several government and academic diet and nutrition websites, and most reported that the average American and Canadian ate 100 to 150 hamburgers a year, which is pretty much in line with what the English are about to report. And, of course, that doesn’t include steaks, roast beef and all the other sorts of red meat and pork.
The report is going to recommend that those who eat more than five ounces of meat a day should cut back to about three ounces daily, and that includes breakfast meats.
Next week’s release is a followup to a draft report released 18 months ago. That research concluded that cutting the consumption of red and processed meat–and the authors included pork, beef, lamb and goat–could reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. Last year, England’s top medical officer told reporters that a 30 percent reduction in eating meat could save more that 18,500 lives a year, according to the BBC.
SCN, a group of independent government advisers. was asked by the British health department to review and add their own recommendations to the 2009 draft.
Next week’s report will also address limits on ham, bacon, sausage and other processed meats.
What may put devoted dieters into a spin is that earlier this month there was a lot of media attention to a meat study conducted by the British Nutrition Foundation. It reported that most of adults ate “healthy amounts” of red meat and a link to cancer was “inconclusive” at best.
The flow of conflicting studies has been going on for years with several linking eating too much meat with cancer, heart disease and diabetes. However, other research has warned that eating too little meat can cause iron deficiency, especially in women.
(A version of this story by Andrew Schneider also ran on AOL News.)
–The Food Watchdog staff
