Americans Love Meat and Say It's a Healthy Choice

A majority of Americans regularly eat meat and believe that it's a healthy choice, according to an exclusive Newsweek poll of 1,500 U.S. voters conducted by Redfield and Wilton Strategies. They also don't think the meat industry is bad for the climate.

• The poll showed 35% of people strongly agreed with the statement that it's healthy to eat meat, with 41% selecting "agree" and 17% selecting "neither agree nor disagree." Only 4% said that they disagreed, and a further 1% said that they strongly disagreed.
   
• In addition, 81% of people eat meat at least once a week, and 10% said that they ate it only once or twice a month. Only 4% and 3% of the respondents said that they rarely or never ate meat, respectively.
   
• The poll showed 55% would not feel safe eating lab-grown meat and 57% would not eat it. Although 30% of people said that they believed lab-grown meat provides a realistic alternative to meat produced from animals, 51% said they did not and 19% said they didn't know.

"Despite the great strides made by the vegetarian and vegan movements over the past few decades, most Americans aren't going to give up their meat-based diets anytime soon," the Newsweek article said. 

A World Without Livestock Doesn't Work

Anna Dilger, professor of meat science at the University of Illinois, responded to the article's biased slant on meat.

"A world without livestock is simply a world that doesn’t work," Dilger says. "People would have a hard time meeting their nutritional needs. To lament that Americans ‘refuse to quit eating meat’ is misguided and doesn’t recognize the scientific support for meat as part of a healthy diet." 

The Dublin Declaration of Scientists on the Societal Role of Livestock reaffirms that livestock and meat consumption are instrumental for dietary health, play a key role in the overall sustainability of our food system and is a key pillar of economic prosperity around the world, she points out. 

"Farming systems would be unsustainable as livestock play a key role in using marginal lands to produce food and in recycling by-products from other parts of the food system. In many places around the world, livestock forms the basis of healthy financial systems. As one of the few assets that women can own in some societies, livestock are a means towards gender equality and economic development," Dilger adds.

A nutritious diet consists of eating a variety of foods, including meat, says Kara Behlke-Ungerman, vice president of nutrition, health and wellness transformation at the National Pork Board.

"If we look at proteins globally, pork is at the center of human nutrition as the most culturally applicable protein, delivering a sustainable source of nutritional value across life stages, across meal occasions, to the widest range of cultures and socio-economic levels,” Behlke-Ungerman says. “Pork makes it easy to eat a plant-forward diet as it is the perfect “carrier” of under-consumed vegetables and nutrients that help us eat better. This means when pork is on the plate, it brings with it the nutrients and food groups we sometimes struggle to eat enough of.”

A recent article in a peer-reviewed edition of the scientific journal Animal Frontiers pointed out meat’s critical role in society.

“Animal-source foods are superior to plant-source foods at simultaneously supplying several bioavailable micronutrients and high quality macronutrients that are critical for growth and cognitive development. Dietary recommendations to eliminate animal-source foods from diets ignore their importance, particularly the great need for these foods in diets of the undernourished in the Global South," Adegbola Adesogan, director of the University of Florida’s Global Food Systems Institute, said in a release.

The peer-reviewed evidence reaffirms that the most prominent global study which claimed that consumption of even tiny amounts of red meat harms health (the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Risk Factors Report) is fatally scientifically flawed and should be retracted, added Alice Stanton of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland in a release.

"In fact, removing fresh meat and dairy from diets would harm human health. Women, children, the elderly and those of low income would be particularly negatively impacted," Stanton said.