Reducing your beef (or all meat, for that matter) consumption could make quite an impact on not only your health, but also on the environment.
Beef contains high levels of cholesterol and saturated fat, as well as chemicals and growth hormones. Many scientific studies have linked the consumption of red meat to heart disease, stroke, and breast and colon cancer.
According to the National Research Council, beef has the highest levels of herbicides of any food food sold in the US. This is obviously due to all of the pesticides used on the corn and soybeans that is then used for cattle feed. The NRC says that beef rates as second highest on the list of foods that pose the greatest risk of cancer due to pesticide contamination (tomatoes being the highest on the list). Their studies also show that over 95% of all cattle in the US are receiving growth hormones and other pharmaceuticals, many of those then showing up in the cuts of beef we buy at the grocery store.
This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2009.