Dr Hector Perera         London

However much it is stated that beef is unhealthy to eat due to a number of reasons, still people eat beef in their daily diet. It may be in the form of beef burgers, also called hamburgers, stakes, roast or cooked. The number of reasons why beef is unhealthy to eat are far too many to mention here but a few are as follows. Sometimes the supermarkets sell beef in attractive prices to keep the business going and the customers find it is too difficult not to buy beef for their daily meals.

Far too many chemicals are either injected or fed the cattle during it’s life time and eventually those chemicals enter into human digestive system when people eat those kinds of beef. That may be because they are not properly cooked still some chemicals remain in beef even after cooking. In cooking for a reasonable time, some chemicals get destroyed or decomposed so they are not harmful to consume but sometimes they do not get properly cooked.  Just watch some British TV cooking programmes where they toss these pieces of beef on a hot cooking pan just a few times then they shout, It’s cooked”. When they are cut to eat, you would see virtually red, blood still dripping red meat. Even the cooking programme judges eat them happily and enjoy that kind of raw beef. You might have heard some judges shout out, Wow” or sometimes, It’s divine”.

Some chemicals in beef may be antibiotics, anti-parasitic drugs or growth hormones fed or injected to cattle. Apart from the chemicals fed and injected to cattle, the supermarkets add more chemicals to beef to keep them fresh looking.  Have you not noticed the packs of beef or lumps of beef displayed are always look pink and fresh looking? Those packs might have done a week ago but still they look quite fresh due to carbon monoxide and other chemicals added to them.

You want more evidences to say why beef is unhealthy to eat

Eating beef products, which are loaded with artery-clogging cholesterol and saturated fat, is a good way to increase both your waistline and your chances of developing impotence and diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and asthma. Research has shown that vegetarians are 50 percent less likely to develop heart disease than are meat-eaters, and they have 40 percent of the cancer rate of meat-eaters.

Plus, meat-eaters are nine times more likely to be obese than vegans are that means they are extremely fat throughout the body. They even find difficult to walk about easily. Every time you eat animal-derived products, you’re also ingesting bacteria, antibiotics, dioxins, hormones, and a host of other substances, some toxic, that can accumulate in your body and remain there for years.

 Dioxin is one of the most toxic chemicals known to humankind

Deposition of airborne dioxins onto plant and soil surfaces, and subsequent ingestion of this contaminated vegetation and soil by food animals, is considered the primary pathway by which dioxins enter the food chain (Fries, 1995).

Dioxins belong to a class of 75 chemicals with similar properties; the most toxic is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD). Dioxins are known to cause cancer, immune suppression, and birth defects in animals. They can act as endocrine disruptors, which means that they have the ability to mimic or block hormones in the body.”

Where does it come from?

“The main sources of dioxins are municipal waste incineration, metal smelting, medical waste incineration, chemical and plastic manufacturing, and pulp/paper bleaching. Dioxins can travel long distances in the atmosphere via air currents. Rain, snow and dust carry it to the ground, and it eventually enters the food chain when animals, such as cattle, graze on the dioxin-contaminated crops. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, over 90% of our exposure to dioxins is through food, with major sources including beef, dairy products, milk, chicken, pork, fish and eggs. Dioxins are also passed from mother to developing infant across the placenta and through breastfeeding.

“Dioxins and related compounds are highly persistent in the environment and in living organisms. It is believed that almost all living beings on earth have dioxin-like compounds in their body tissue. No amount of dioxin exposure can be considered safe, as very small amounts have been associated with impaired development, reproduction, neurological, and immune function. The EPA’s most recent report concluded that the cancer risk to the general population from dioxin is now as high as one in one hundred people.

 Dioxin in beef

Beef contains significant quantities of the most toxic organic chemical known – dioxin. This chemical is toxic in the trillionths of grams. (A trillionth of a gram, called a picogram, is one million millionth of a gram. A gram is about 1/30th of an ounce.) Dioxin has been linked to cancer, endometriosis, Attention Deficit Disorder (hyperactivity in children), reproductive systems defects in children, chronic fatigue syndrome, immune system deficiency, and rare nerve and blood disorders. A single hamburger (a little less than 1/4 lb, or 100 grams) contains up to 100 picograms of dioxin. That is 300 times as much as the EPA says is “acceptable” for a daily dose for an adult!  Beef has a high amount of saturated fat, which harms your heart. These fats have no C=C double bonds in the structure. Saturated fats elevate low-density lipoprotein, a bad form of cholesterol. LDL can build up in the insides of your arteries, causing narrowing, which requires your heart to work harder. The strain on your heart not only elevates your blood pressure, but it also puts you at risk of having a heart attack. You should not get more than 10 percent of your daily calories from saturated fat, according to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010.

Consuming too much beef further damages your heart by altering your good-to-bad cholesterol ratio. High-density lipoprotein is the good cholesterol that transports LDL to your liver, where enzymes break it down and get rid of it through waste. When your HDL levels become too low, LDL concentrations continue to rise, increasing your chances of cardiovascular disease.

Beef can harbour a deadly new germ, called e. coli O157:H7. This new germ is now a major cause of serious food poisoning. Beef and dairy cattle can carry the germ with no apparent adverse health effects. The germ, found in cattle faeces, has contaminated beef and produce grown with cow manure.

Antibiotics and hormones increase the cow’s growth and the farmer’s profit. Mass-production of beef cattle is a huge industry in the U.S with animal-fattening facilities known as feed lots used to produce the most beef in the shortest possible amount of time. Chemicals and hormones are commonly given to beef cattle to prevent disease, tranquilize the cows and stimulate growth. These chemicals can remain in the beef you eat, even after it is cooked that means when people eat those beef containing antibiotics and other chemicals injected to cattle goes into human digestive system.

Some British TV chefs cook lumps of beef in a matter of minutes by tossing up and down then quickly cut and serve the presenter but showered with different sources as well to cover up the uncooked situation. When it is cut, one can see just the outside is grey looking while the inside is red or pinkish red that means it’s not cooked properly. The presenter must say Yummy” to the TV as that is meant to be but the question is who would agree it’s healthy? The presenter knows as well but he or she cannot help, it’s a part of the job.

Antibiotics

Antibiotics are commonly fed to feedlot-raised cattle in the U.S, although Europe and other areas of the world do not allow antibiotic feeding to meat animals. Small doses of antibiotics can increase an animal’s weight gain by as much as three percent overall, so ranchers and farmers commonly feed these small doses of antibiotics to cattle throughout their lives. Some 15 to 17 million lbs. of antibiotics are used annually in U.S. meat animals.

Anti-Parasitic Drugs

Veterinary drugs called anthelmintics are used widely for the treatment of parasitic worms in beef cattle. A study reported in the February 2011 issue of the journal “Food Additives and Contaminants” indicates that many of these drugs remain in the beef through the processes of cooking and consumption. The anthelmintic drugs such as oxyclozanide, clorsulon, albendazole, closantel, ivermectin, mebendazole and fenbendazole all remained in beef throughout a roasting or frying cooking process also in BBQ. The drugs nitroxynil, levamisol, rafoxanide and triclabendazole were reduced, though not eliminated, by conventional cooking.

Hormones

According to Professor Epstein of the University of Illinois, beef cattle are commonly dosed with a range of hormones intended to promote faster growth. In 1990, the “International Journal of Health Services” indicated that the beef industry switched to natural sex hormones as replacements for the growth promoter diethyl-stilbestrol which was banned in 1979. Natural sex hormones used in the beef industry include testosterone, progesterone and estradiol. All these hormones are potentially carcinogenic to humans, as stated by Professor Epstein of the University of Illinois.

Effects on Human Health

Antibiotic use in beef cattle poses a risk to human health when bacteria in the animal become antibiotic-resistant. If a human becomes sick after eating antibiotic-resistant bacteria, those same antibiotics cannot be used as an effective cure. Other chemicals, drugs and hormones used in non-organic beef production are potentially carcinogenic. Your comments are welcomed perera6@hotmail.co.uk