Similar Dangers: Sausages And Cigarettes

When during the VegMed conference, the largest scientific conference on plant nutrition in Europe, held in London, the American doctor Michael Greger compared the risk of eating meat, dairy and eggs with that of smoking, I was shocked. I tend to be skeptical of these kinds of food claims, but being made by such a reputable doctor made me react.

The risk of eating meat tends to be ignored

It is true that you were already aware of the World Health Organization report stating that processed meat is carcinogenic and red meat is probably carcinogenic as well. But from there to comparing the danger of consuming animal protein with that of tobacco, there is a big leap.

How is it possible that consuming animal products is as bad as smoking if there are health warnings on tobacco packs and the consumption of meat and dairy is promoted? To end my disbelief, the author of Eating to Not Die (Ed. Paidós) backed up his claim with multiple reports.

One of them pointed out that our bad eating habits currently cause more deaths than tobacco. To support this speech, Greger shared such surprising facts as that a hot dog has as many nitrosamines – a class of powerful carcinogens – as five cigarettes.

They concluded that a person on a diet rich in animal protein is four times more likely to die from cancer than someone on a diet low in animal protein, which is a risk factor for mortality comparable to smoking.

History repeats itself

Greger recalled that until the end of the last century smoking was completely normalized. In fact, during the 18th century tobacco was believed to have healing properties.

From 1930 to 1950, even advertising posters used the figure of doctors for their advertisements. Some brands were sold as “the most smoked by doctors.” Others, more daring, declared that they were “what the doctor has prescribed.”

The popularization of tobacco caused lung cancer cases to skyrocket in the first decades of the 20th century. Even so, it took several decades and more than 7,000 scientific studies to affirm what we consider obvious today: smoking kills.

Dr. Greger believes that the history of tobacco will repeat itself with animal products. That day will come. Greger trusts that, in a few years, health institutions will begin to warn in a generalized way about the risk of high consumption of animal protein. In addition, he hopes that promoting a diet based on legumes, fruits, vegetables and whole grains will become the key to preventing diseases in our civilization.

Will we see it? Who knows, maybe then you go to a supermarket and the packages of animal meat read “eating meat seriously harms your health (and that of the planet)”.

Cristina Rodrigo is the director of ProVeg Spain, an international organization for food awareness that defends a plant-based diet. Proveg.com/es/