Day 86 – Let Them Eat Steak

“The only time to eat diet food is while you are waiting for the steak to cook.”

~ Julia Child

187.9 lbs

Again my weight keeps bouncing *sigh*. And my body seems to be tiring of this whole ordeal. I’ve gone from sleepless nights to, lately, sleeping 9 to 10 hours a night, which is not necessarily a good thing. Usually if you require more than 8-9 hours on a regular basis that’s a sign that something is wrong, which is why your body is demanding more rest.

Fortunately only two weeks are left of this phase of the project. Woot! Summer barbecues, here I come. Of course I still won’t be able to eat much, but turning down food because you’re full is different than turning it down while starving, I imagine.

Marie Antoinette at 19. Hey, we all had our 'awkward' phase...

Speaking of starving, certain historical records claim that when the French lower classes were starving, not having (among other things) any bread to eat, Marie Antoinette allegedly said “let them eat cake” – which is meant to show how out of touch she was with just how bad the peasants had it.

Well, that’s complete horse feathers. First, it’s a bad translation: “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” doesn’t mean “let them eat cake”. The french word for cake isn’y “brioche”, it’s “gateau”. Brioche is, well, brioche. With lots of eggs and butter in it, brioche costs more than bread.

Add this into the mix: the phrase came not from Marie Antionette’s lips, but from the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1766 – published in 1769 – both before Marie even came to France. In 1766 she was about 10 years old. Some claim Russeau was inspired by something said by Marie-Thérèse, wife of Louis XIV, said about 75 years before he even wrote about it.

So Marie-Thérèse was the heartless bitch? Well, no. There weren’t any famines under Louis XIV, but there were occasional bread shortages. So a law was passed that when bakers ran out of bread, they had to sell the sweeter, slightly more expensive brioche at the same price that they charged for bread. Hence the phrase “let them eat brioche”.

Sometimes things get repeated often enough though that we start believing them as fact. One is that red meat is an unquestioned cause of heart disease. Unfortunately for vegetarians and some nutritionists, I don’t feel bad about eating red meat. I don’t buy that it’s more moral to eat things that move slowly than things that aren’t rooted, and red meat isn’t as heart-disease inducing as the anti-fat propeganda would have us believe.

Processed meats, on the other hand… well, they’re just horrid.

A meta analysis published in Circulation looked at the effects of red meat and processed meats on heart disease, stroke, and diabetes (meta analysis pool data from other research reports to reach their conclusions).

Data in this new report comes from trials in which eating red meat and processed meat was compared, but there aren’t many of these studies that exclude poultry and fish, and all of ‘em were based on what people reported that they ate rather than being assigned to eat certain things. Still, the data is compiled from more than a million participants – more than you see in most nutritional studies.

The study claims eating pure red meat (steak, hamburger, etc) has no meaningful association with heart disease risk, but each daily serving of processed meat (hot dogs, cold cuts) raised the apparent risk of heart disease by 40% .It also says that processed meats can increase your risk of diabetes by 19%.

My theory would be that’s because processed meats often have sweetener in them – brown sugar, HFCS, etc. – but of course pure red meat doesn’t. Processed meats also tend to be higher in fat and lower in protein, since they’re commonly made up of ground-up meat of less than steak quality, if you catch my meaning. They also have added sodium and nitrates and nitrites, which are both linked to “vascular injury” (damage to your veins or arteries – that’s bad) and atherosclerosis (thickening of your artery walls from a buildup of fatty things like cholesterol).

Red meat does contain saturated fat and cholesterol, which is what makes the disconnect between it and heart disease interesting. It’s important to remember that nutrition isn’t simple. The “fat is bad” crowd forget that omega3 fatty acids help fight heart disease. The cholesterol-is-bad crowd forget about the benefits of HDL cholesterol. Even saturated fats aren’t created equal; about a third of the saturated fat in red meat is stearic acid, which seems to be free of the harmful effects of the other sorts of saturated fats.

In fact dietary cholesterol is very weakly connected to heart disease risk, and may be irrelevant. After all, cholesterol has been a normal part of our diet since fur was in fashion and people decorated their caves with the latest in designer moss. There’s a difference between eating something and having it form in your body. Eating fat isn’t what makes your fat cells grow, and eating cholesterol isn’t neccessarily what makes cholesterol form in your arteries.

There’s a difference between our ancient meat-eating habits and the modern version, though; they’re as dissimilar as our ancient rooting for tubers and modern corn production. Back then we used to chase down wild antelope, which is 5% of calories from fat, all of it unsaturated and some of it omega3. Beef cattle is 35% calories from fat, a lot of it saturated, and who knows what steroids and other injections it’s received.

This isn’t a carnivorous rallying cry – let me repeat my dietary mantra: everything in moderation. Eat pure red meat and don’t feel bad about it, but also eat lots of veggies, fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds and fish. And just as with everything else, cut down on or avoid the processed versions. Does a hot dog really taste so good that it’s worth shortening your life over?