If you are like most Americans, you probably ate beef at some point this week. Maybe it was a big juicy steak, or maybe it was a hamburger at lunch. The average American eats about 110 pounds of beef each year, about the same amount as our intake of wheat.

What you probably didn't consider as you munched on deceased animal flesh was that this particular food choice is killing you. Quite literally.

Beef is highest in saturated fat of any meat. Beef always contains fat. The more "marbled" your steak, the more "juicy" your burger, the more saturated animal fat you are putting into your system. High cholesterol, clogged arteries, hypertension, heart disease, digestion problems all follow from what you put into your system.

Beef is loaded with poison. No kidding. Beef is one of the best ways to put the deadly poison dioxin into your body.

Beef is gross. The way cattle are raised is a huge problem if you happen to enjoy food that is not full of garbage. "feed lots" consist of crowded dirty fenced-in yards filled with feces and other disgusting byproducts. These finishing lots are where cattle are gathered just before they are slaughtered. Here they are fattened up with whatever cheap fatty foods are handy, including out-of-date food intended for humans, chicken litter (including feathers and feces...i am not makign this up), and even ground up bits of dead cows. Did it occur to you that the cow you just ate might have been a cannibal? Ever hear of mad cow disease? This is how prions are transmitted from one sick cow to an entire herd. Healthy cows are forced to consume the ground up bits of sick cows, including parts of the nervous system that contain mad cow disease.

Oh, yeah, and by the way, that French Dip sandwich you enjoyed last week was pumped full of chemicals that you would never allow a doctor to inject into your body. To keep the animals healthy in the disgusting factory environment, the ranchers pump them full of hormones and antibiotics. The over-use of antibiotics breeds superbugs. No wonder we have an epidemic of disease-resistant bacteria. And the overuse of hormones causes all sorts of systemic problems in the humans who consume these meats, including low sperm count in men.

If that isn't enough to make you think twice the next time you get the urge to munch on a Big Beefy Burger, you might also consider that meat is incredibly inefficient source of energy. It takes 78 calories of fossil fuel to generate 1 calorie of beef protein. We waste enormous amounts of resources on raising cattle, including vast tracts of land for the cattle plus vast tracts of land for the grains to feed them, plus huge amounts of fertilizer for the grain plus all the energy necessary to transport the grain and the cattle. for what? The idea that you need to eat meat in order to build muscle is nonsense. Think of it this way, cows and horses manage to grow to large size eating principally grasses and grains.

You don't need to eat beef to be healthy. And you might discover that you get more health benefits by eliminating factory-bred beef from your diet altogether.

Do the research, check it out, and then come back here and tell me I'm wrong.

Go ahead! Make my day!

NE