Many people tend to drop red meat because of health reasons, and then continue to eat chicken, without the health consequences associated with heart disease, salmonella, arsenic in the feed, antibiotics, please consider the dire consequences to your health. Ian Coghill, Vice Chairman of the Environmental Health Office’s Food Safety Committee says that chicken should carry a government health warning on the packet, like cigarettes.
Consider this: Chickens may be fed the flesh and by-products of any other animals including sheep (which may be infected with scrapie) and cattle (which may be infected with BSE), dead (through disease) chickens and chicken excrement.
SALMONELLA ON THE RISE
In 1991 the Atlanta Constitution did a special report on the poultry industry. A Special Report from Atlanta Constitution found that Of 84 federal poultry inspectors interviewed, 81 said that thousands of birds tainted or stained with faeces which a decade ago would have been condemned, are now rinsed and sold daily.
And just listen to USDA Inspector Ronnie Sarratt: “I’ve had birds that had yellow pus visibly coming out of their insides, and I was told to save the breast meat off them and even save the second joint of the wing. You might get those breasts today at a store in a package of breast fillets. And you might get the other in a pack of buffalo wings.” Previously, inspectors used to condemn all birds with air sacculitus, a disease that causes yellow fluids and mucus to break up into the lungs. In an 1989 article in Southern Exposure, USDA inspector Estes Philpott of Arkansas estimated that he was forced to approve 40 percent of air sac birds that would have been condemned 10 years ago.
CHOLOSTEROL and HEART HEALTH
Studies by Dr. Dean Ornish following his popular vegetarian diet for reversing heart disease, contrary to the hypemyths that chicken and turkey contain less cholesterol and that, reportedly, they represent a good option for those on a healthier diet, after a five-year follow-up of patients on his popular vegetarian plan for reversing heart disease, compared with patients on the chicken and fish diet recommended by the American Heart Association (AHA), the majority following the AHA guidelines got progressively worse, while those who made intensive changes got progressively better. Cholesterol hides in the lean part of meat, it’s time to reconsider chicken.
Plant foods contain no cholesterol but animal products always do. For every one percent increase in cholesterol levels, heart attack risks rises by two percent. For every 100 milligrams of cholesterol in the daily diet; the typical amount in a four-ounce serving of either beef or chicken, one’s cholesterol level typically zooms up five points. And, worse still: Unlike fat, cholesterol concentrates in the lean part of the meat.
Chicken not only gives you a load of fat you don’t want, it’s Heterocyclic Amines (HCAs) are potent carcinogens produced from creatine, amino acids and sugars in poultry and other meats during cooking. These same chemicals are found in tobacco smoke and are fifteen times more concentrated in grilled chicken than beef. HCAs may be one of the reasons that meat-eaters have much higher colon cancer rates; about three hundred percent higher compared to vegetarians.