All White


Review of the Vegetarian & Vegan Foundation’s scientific report White Meat – Black Markby Tony Wardle


As people eat less pork, beef and lamb – red meat – the sales of white meat increase with the belief that it is healthier. Not true – as a VVF report reveals To sell chicken and turkey as healthy


choices drives a coach and horses through the Trades Description Act – duck and goose are even worse. The main sales pitch for blatantly miss-sold meat is its low fat content. Yeah – and MPs didn’t fiddle their expenses! Your average raw chicken meat is 17.5


per cent fat, which rises to over 38 per cent once roasted. This compares to one per cent in a baked potato and four per cent in baked beans. In fact, meat and meat products – including chicken and turkey – are the main source of fat in the British diet. Professor Michael Crawford of London


Metropolitan University examined chicken thigh meat from several supermarkets and found that it contained as much fat – gram for gram – as a Big Mac. He also discovered some profound changes have taken place in chickens as factory farming has taken over. They contain twice as much fat as they did back in 1940, a third more calories and a third less protein. And it’s little different with organic birds. You’re not going


to believe this but a medium-sized chicken contains almost a pint of fat! And as for turkey being sold as a superfood, it


contains no fibre, no complex carbohydrates, and no vitamin C, which is the same for all poultry. What it is primarily good at is providing few vitamins and unwanted fat and cholesterol. But that’s only the start. White meat is


linked by sound research to a long list of health negatives such as food poisoning, urinary tract infections, some cancers, heart disease, diabetes, kidney stones, gallstones, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis and obesity. Now that’s what I call healthy! It’s estimated that some 5.5 million


people contract food poisoning each year and guess what the main source is? Chicken! The most common infection in woman is of the urinary tract and there is evidence that it is linked to meat eating, including white meat. There’s a peculiar dilemma facing meat


eaters when they cook chicken. Either they cook it to a temperature high enough to kill off all the food-poisoning bugs and produce some carcinogenic compounds, or they don’t cook it thoroughly and risk food poisoning. “But I eat hardly


any meat – chicken maybe once a week.” Sorry, but


you’re still not in the clear. One serving of any meat once a week is enough to increase the risk of diabetes and to raise cholesterol levels – by nearly nine per cent. If you eat no red meat at all and chicken less than once a week, you still stand a 55 per cent higher risk of bowel cancer than non-meat eaters. If you’re someone who isn’t that


concerned about health than maybe I can reach you in some other way. Every new environmental report that’s published increasingly points the finger at meat as a primary cause of most of the world’s huge environmental problems, including global warming. In fact, every piece of chicken that’s eaten plays a direct role in destroying rainforests as they are increasingly being cleared to grow soya, used widely in commercial chicken feed. Almost all chickens are factory farmed


and the appalling conditions are self- evident by what has happened to these poor creatures. They have been turned into flabby, flaccid, overweight, disease- ridden monstrosities to satisfy the increasing demand for healthy white meat. Healthy my eye!


VVF’s 70-page report – White Meat-Black Mark– is backed by over 100 scientific references and costs £3.50 (inc postage). Also available is the easy- to read, colourful guide White Meat Myths. It costs just £2.90 (inc postage) and contains some great substitute recipes such as ‘chicken’ in white wine sauce, mock ‘duck’ pancakes and ‘chicken’ satay skewers. Contact VVF on 0117 970 5190 (Mon- Fri, 9-6)


www.viva.org.uk 25


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