Should we eat red meat? Depends on who’s eating—New York Times

Left to right: Figure of an under-nourished individual (by The Twin Project), illustration of red meat (by Kristy Modarelli) and an 8,000-year-old figure of an over-nourished individual (excavated from an archeological site in Turkey).

A particularly sane, sensible and equitable news report—one that takes an uncommon global perspective about optimal meat consumption—reviews recent diet guidelines recommended by some of the world’s foremost scientists in diet-, health- and environment-related fields and published in a leading medical journal.

This news report appeared recently in the New York Times, written by Somini Sengupta, a Calcutta-born journalist at the Times. Here’s what she says.

‘A report in the medical journal The Lancet suggests far less red meat for people who eat a lot of it, like Americans and Canadians, but not the world’s poor.

What should we eat?

Depends on who is eating.

‘That’s one of the principal conclusions of a comprehensive report…