My love affair with meat is almost over. Although I have packed a turkey sandwich in my brown-bag lunch for most of my life, I’ve been eating less and less meat over the years for a number of reasons.
For one, I know a plant-based diet is good for my health; in some studies, vegetarian diets have been associated with lower LDL, or bad, cholesterol and blood pressure, and a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer. High cholesterol runs in my family (my mother recently discovered she had high LDL levels), plus meatless meals can be cheaper, have less impact on the environment, and are just plain easier when I’m dining out with my vegetarian boyfriend.
There’s just one teensy problem: I actually like the taste of meat. Who doesn’t want turkey on Thanksgiving or a bowl of chicken soup when she’s sick?
And I’m not alone. The results of a national survey published in 2003 in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a majority of self-described vegetarians eat meat once in a while. In fact, two-thirds of people who identified themselves as vegetarians ate meat, fish, or poultry on one or both of the two days they were asked to recall.
Although I stick to my meat-free diet 90% of the time, social occasions have posed some serious problems for my almost-vegetarian lifestyle. My mind says, Veggies only, but my mouth says, Meat, please! There was the chicken wing incident after a long-distance run and a bit of impossible-to-resist foie gras a few weeks ago.
I’ve always felt a twinge of guilt after a slipup, but I’m feeling less ashamed after speaking with Dawn Jackson Blatner, RD, the author of The Flexitarian Diet: The Mostly Vegetarian Way to Lose Weight, Be Healthier, Prevent Disease, and Add Years to Your Life. According to Blatner, there’s a name for people like me, and that’s a social carnivore.
She says that less meat is nearly as good for your health as no meat. Even if I cut out just red meat, it can help keep my ticker in tip-top shape. A 2009 study in Archives of Internal Medicine found that if people were to slash their daily red meat intake to about 9 grams per 1,000 calories (roughly a bite of a Quarter Pounder a day), it would result in an 11% decrease in cardiovascular disease mortality in men and a 21% decrease in women.
The saturated fat in meat is a big culprit in patients with high cholesterol. So do your heart a favor and use these six dietitian-approved tips to cut down on meat and lower your cholesterol naturally.
