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As an effect of the increase in worldwide prosperity, the last decade has witnessed a steady growth in the number of persons who eat red meat and the quantity that is consumed per year.
According to FAO in Italy alone 90 kilograms of red meat are consumed pro capita every year. Many people claim that red meat is harmful for our body. It all depends on how, when and in what quantities it is eaten.
If consumed in the proper way, this food can be a part of any healthy diet. As far as quantity is concerned, the suggested serving is 150-200 grams to be eaten two or three times per week. The meat must be lean and high quality and the fat must be trimmed before cooking. It must be well-cooked but the meat must not become burned.
And what about hamburgers? This is another story...
The idea that they weren't healthy seems to be a consolidated truth. Remember the films Supersize me or the more recent Fast Food Nation? Both denounced the harmful effects that frequent meals based on hamburgers could have on our body.
But what is hidden inside of a sandwich of chopped meat, pickles and ketchup?
Besides the excess calories and fats that one consumes, the meat that is used to make hamburgers is dangerous because it can transmit rather serious infections to the human body, such as Escherichia Coli, bacteria that cause grave intestinal malfunctions.
The news speaks clearly. Just between June and September of 2007, E. Coli contaminated meat in the USA infected 55 persons, caused the shutdown of a company and shocked the United States Department of Agriculture who ordered the recall of more than 14 thousand tons of ground meat.
Since 1982, when the E. Coli bacteria was identified as a pathogen agent of diarrhea and intestinal hemorrhages, more that 400 infection sites have been isolated in the USA alone. Each year 110,000 persons - 80 of whom with fatal consequences - are infected in a serious manner by E. Coli.
This didn't occur in some remote African nation, but in the USA, the most industrialized and advanced country on the planet. EHEC bacteria (enterohaemorrhagic E. Coli) are transmitted mostly by bovine meat, especially in hamburgers, because the bacteria penetrate deep into the ground meat and can survive at low cooking temperatures. Children, the elderly and persons with immune deficiencies make up the category of people who are most at risk. The cause of the meat's contamination reaches back to the farm in which the animals were raised. The E. Coli infection is transmitted through the food orally and through the feces and the best container for the bacteria is the livestock. When the animal is butchered or the product is prepared, the meat is contaminated by the contents of the intestine.
The Center for Disease Control of Atlanta in Georgia (USA), the American government agency for public health, estimates that each year in the USA 76 million people become ill, 325,000 end up in the hospital and 500 die because of food that is contaminated by viruses, bacteria, parasites, toxins or metals.
In addition to that which was illustrated by the World Cancer Research Fund (Eurosalus published many of the important findings from the world conference of the WCRF on the relationship between nutrition and cancer that was held in London in November 2007), we would like to point out that the alternatives to red meat are numerous and able to satisfy any type of palate.
When you eat a hamburger you must realize that the meat was produced in large scale industrial plants with cattle that were transported from farms and areas located thousand of miles away and fed with industrial feed. Each of these details makes the food chain particularly vulnerable to bacterial contamination.
If all foods, including meat, are to be sources of vitality and health, our diet should represent the reflection of human evolution and the environment in which the individual lives.
A video entitled Backwards hamburger makes us reflect. Might this be enough to decrease our desire for a hamburger?
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