Ronnie:

"Yes, I love meat, we need meat, but we need vegetables too. And we need to be more humane."

I'm doing my best: having just eaten our way through a half beef, I'm picking up another half this week from a local rancher whose cattle feed on grass their entire lives.

Mike:

It happens.

Yes, it's a bit dispiriting to do all this careful, patient work and then have someone tell you "But Dr. Oz said..."  Remember, though: for every commenter, there are thousands of readers -- and while it's fun to throw insults, they'll be more impressed by calm and patient responses.

eddie:

Since "meat rots in your colon" is such a durable myth, this article sees a lot of traffic.  In most months, it's my second most popular article (after Eat Like A Predator).

JS

Augiedoggy:

I've already debunked the Hunza and Okinawa myths above -- but since you didn't read the comments, I'll reprint my debunking here:

The idea that the Hunza are either vegetarian, excessively long-lived, or even exceptionally healthy is baloney.  The book “Hunza – Lost Kingdom of the Himalayas” (PDF here, illustrations here), by a geologist who actually lived with them year round as a field doctor and teacher, illustrates this perfectly:

“Each family owns so few animals that they can butcher but one or two a year, which they do at Tumushuling time in December. As one sheep lasts a family about a week, this means that the average Hunza gets meat for one or two weeks per year. Since visitors always come in the summertime, this also explains the ridiculous tale that Hunzas are vegetarians by preference.

One of the stories is true—they certainly eat the whole sheep! Brains, lungs, heart, tripe, everything but hide, windpipe, and genitalia! They clean a bone to a polish that would put a western dog to shame, and in conclusion they always crack the bones and suck the marrow. As their diet is deficient in oils and vitamin D, all Hunzas have soft teeth, and fully half of them have the barrel chests and rheumatic knees of sub-clinical rickets.“

As far as the ridiculous claims for Hunza lifespan, that's a simple combination of lack of written records and a very, very poor (but smart) people eager to capitalize on the delusions of rich Western tourists.  Again, read the book.

Continuing: the idea that the historical Okinawan diet is nearly vegetarian and low-fat is, as far as I can tell, a scam concocted to sell diet books:

“The main meat of the diet is pork, and not the lean cuts only. Okinawan cuisine, according to gerontologist Kazuhiko Taira, “is very healthy-and very, very greasy,” in a 1996 article that appeared in Health Magazine. [...] Okinawans eat about 100 grams of meat per day-compared to 70 in Japan and just over 20 in China-and at least an equal amount of fish, for a total of about 200 grams per day, compared to 280 grams per person per day of meat and fish in America. Lard-not vegetable oil-is used in cooking.” (link)

And their lifespan has decreased remarkably in recent years as they've adopted a more grain-based diet.

"Also, the so-called Paleo Diet doesn't even remotely mimic the true diet of our Paleolithic ancestors. I think the diet authors should really come up with another name for the diet."

I wrote that article long ago: "What Is The Paleo Diet, Anyway?" 

JS

Daria:

Apparently you didn't read the BOLD-FACED WARNING which I repeated less than ten comments above. I'll reprint it here:

1. The purpose of this article is to address one very specific topic: the claim that “meat rots in your colon”.  Making the general case for veg*anism vs. omnivory is not only a non sequitur, it's beyond the scope of one article — and most certainly beyond the scope of a comment.

2. Please read, at the very least, my responses to comments before asking a question (or making a statement).  I have previously answered many of these questions: asking them again says, to me, that you're not interested in productive dialogue and are just spouting off.

Yes, there are a lot of comments!  Deal with it.

Now, since you haven't given me and my readers the basic respect of reading any of the comments, I'm going to be a bit short with you.

1. If you want to play "dueling anecdotes", I can cite Steve Jobs, Robin Gibb, and Sam Simon just off the top of my head -- and they're public figures whose veganism and subsequent early deaths from various forms of cancer are verifiable facts, not unsourced anecdotes.

2. Feel free to contribute actual evidence that meat "clogs the arteries". 

Note that a Standard American Diet of deep-fried, bread-encrusted spare chicken crumbs doesn't count as "meat clogging the arteries".  Neither does a fast food "value meal" of large fries, large Coke, and a giant bun slathered in mayonnaise-like substances, with a tiny meat patty hiding in the middle.  Blaming the unhealthiness of these food items on the tiny scraps of meat they contain is silly...and you won't find anyone here advocating consumption of such "foods".

3. "Does anyone have any thoughts as to the BEST balance?"  Eat like a predator.  

Jen W:

Never play "dueling anecdotes"...anyone can just make them up.

However, I note that studies that actually bother to check the difference have found that processed meat consumption is associated with heart disease...but not fresh meat consumption.  I'm not a fan of associative data, and what this says to me is that the sort of person willing to regularly eat lunchmeat probably does a lot of other things that are more harmful than eating lunchmeat...but it's a point to consider.

Dirigible:

I doubt it's even a consequence of failing to buy pastured beef...more likely it's a consequence of other unhealthy habits.  As I point out in this article, over 2/3rds of self-described vegetarians eat meat...but their diets are healthier in many other ways than self-described omnivores.

Blah:

Apparently you didn't read the BOLD-FACED WARNING which I repeated less than ten comments above. I'll reprint it here:

1. The purpose of this article is to address one very specific topic: the claim that “meat rots in your colon”.  Making the general case for veg*anism vs. omnivory is not only a non sequitur, it's beyond the scope of one article — and most certainly beyond the scope of a comment.

2. Please read, at the very least, my responses to comments before asking a question (or making a statement).  I have previously answered many of these questions: asking them again says, to me, that you're not interested in productive dialogue and are just spouting off.

Yes, there are a lot of comments!  Deal with it.

"If EVERYONE turned vegetarian, all the land we currently use to produce livestock in the United States would be more than enough to feed the ENTIRE WORLD."

It's unfortunate that most vegetarians (including yourself) understand so little about food production that they believe statements like yours are true! 

First, only 19% of the land area of the USA is arable (suitable for growing crops) -- and much of that is only due to unsustainable depletion of underground aquifers, like the Oglalla, and massive irrigation from ecosystem-destroying dams.

In contrast, animals can graze nearly everywhere.  Grazing animals don't take away from agricultural land...the only reason we feed corn to cows is because of destructive government subsidies that make it artificially cheap.  In reality, cattle graze in places where it's not economically feasible to grow crops.

(If you think you can grow crops on any of the ranches I buy my beef from, go right ahead and try it!  I'll watch and laugh as you try to puzzle out terms like "water allotment", "acre-feet", and "estimated annual rainfall", and finally realize why no one grows corn or soybeans out West.)

Second, let's do a thought experiment.  There were somewhere between 40 and 90 million bison living on the Great Plains previous to the European invasion and the agricultural takeover.  That's before we cut down the forests that covered the rainy parts (Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, etc.), which were far more productive and would sustain tens of millions more.

Third, current agricultural yields are totally unsustainable, depending on massive applications of fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and GMO hybrid seeds.  3-5% of world natural gas production is burned just to make fertilizer! (via the Haber process)  Farming is far more environmentally destructive than grazing...cattle grazing on grass are actually a carbon-negative system that restores the soil.

"Humans have a digestive track [sic] that's most similar to herbivores."

Do humans have a rumen, like cattle, sheep, and goats?  No, we don't.

Do we have a dramatically enlarged cecum, like pigs and horses?  No, we don't.

Our guts are even tiny compared to chimpanzees...our closest relatives.

(Hint to veg*ans: comments like these are not helping your cause!)

JS

Marko:

Thank you for asking a pertinent question!

"But true carnivorous (meat eating animals, and 'omnivores' are meat eating as well) have in their digestive tracts a highly concentrated hydrochloric acid, about 1100% more so than ours."

That's a blatantly false statement.  I'll explain why.  (It's not your fault: I've seen variations on it repeated many times in veg*an propaganda.)

pH, the common measure of acidity, is a logarithmic scale: each unit of pH represents a 10-fold decrease in hydrogen ion concentration.  (Acids have low pH: water has a pH near 7; bases have high pH.)  Therefore, for a carnivore to have "1100% more concentrated" stomach acid than ours, the pH would have to be just over 3 points lower than ours.

Since our stomach acid has a pH of about 1.5 to 3.5, depending on what we're eating, this means a carnivore's stomach acid would have negative pH...

...which is impossible, since pure hydrochloric acid has a pH of 0.

In fact, most carnivores have a stomach pH between 1 and 2...right at the lower range of our own.  So for a wolf or lion to have "1100% more" stomach acid, our stomach pH would have to be between 4 and 5.

Tomato juice has a pH of 4.  It won't cause you second degree burns, like stomach acid does.  And even horses have a stomach pH below 4!

Yes, humans are absolutely omnivores.  For some of the fossil evidence for meat consumption, check out my article series in progress here...and I haven't even covered the last couple million years yet!

JS

Aimee:

"if you are speaking of a young, absolutely healthy colon, maybe, but check a meat eater's, especially a red meat eaters, colon later on in life."

There are hundreds of thousands of colonoscopies done each year.  Go ahead and find me a picture of these diseased meat-eater colons: you won't find any, because that's a veg*an legend with no basis in reality.  The damaged ones are either cancerous or from celiac patients -- whose problems stem from eating wheat, not meat.

"Bottomline: Meat eaters of white meat, beef, or pork have a 30-40% higher risk of getting colon cancer."

FALSE.  Meat-eaters have a lower risk of bowel cancer, as I've linked multiple times above.

Am J Clin Nutr May 2009 vol. 89 no. 5 1620S-1626S Cancer incidence in vegetarians: results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Oxford) Timothy J Key, Paul N Appleby, Elizabeth A Spencer, Ruth C Travis, Andrew W Roddam, and Naomi E Allen

"The incidence rate ratio for colorectal cancer in vegetarians compared with meat eaters was 1.39 (95% CI: 1.01, 1.91)."

Go here for more information: Carnosine, Colons, and Cancer

"In a healthy digestive tract & colon, yes, meat can digest in 6hrs. but it can take up to a month in a weaker colon."

Only in veg*an fantasy land.  In the real world, which the rest of us live in, nothing identifiable as "meat" spends any time in the colon, because it's been digested by our stomach acids and pepsin.  Go read the article again, especially the part "Can Humans Digest Meat?"

"Trust that what you put in causes things to happen to your body down the line that can be avoided today."

Absolutely!  That's why I eat like a predator.

JS