While some may link obesity with red meat consumption, Eric Berg, Ph.D., professor and associate head of animal sciences at North Dakota State University says in a new meat mythcrusher video that obesity rates have doubled since 1977 while red meat consumption has decreased over the same period.
"Consumption trends, particularly the consumption of red meat has gone down," Berg said. "Ironically this is inversely proportional to the prevalence of obesity and followed closely behind that is the prevalence of chronic diseases such as metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes."
Berg also details his own research into the relationship between amino acid consumption and obesity which has found that incomplete amino acid intake from diets that don't include complete proteins such as meat are more likely to increase fat deposits throughout the body.
The Meat MythCrusher video series, produced by the North American Meat Institute and American Meat Science Association, features interviews with meat scientists who bust some of the most common myths surrounding meat and poultry production and processing.
In addition to the video release, NAMI and AMSA are debuting an updated printed Meat MythCrusher brochure which includes more than 40 meat myths on topics such as animal welfare, antibiotic use, food safety, processing and nutrition.
The brochure is available on the resources section of meatmythcrushers.com.
The series is now in its sixth year and the new video is the 44th. Altogether the videos have been viewed more than 130,000 times.
Other video topics include myths surrounding meat nutrition , antibiotic use in livestock, "Superbugs" in meat, Meatless Monday, hormone use in animals, ammonia in ground beef, grass-fed beef and more.