Eating Red Meat Makes You Happier

I learned not so long ago that if you don’t like what science is telling you, keep reading the newspapers because surely another study will come along that supports your belief system. You might remember my post last month railing against Harvard post-doctorate fellow An Pan’s study claiming those of us who ate red meat had a 20 percent greater chance of dying. (Kudos to commenter Beerbear who noted: Huh, so I move from 100 percent into the 120 percent chance of dying category…I’ll be danged.)

Well, I knew if I kept searching, I’d find some equally smart folks who would tell me it was okay to eat red meat. This study reported in The Telegraph gives proof to something I’ve known all along: Eating meat makes you happy.

Professor Felice Jacka, who led the research by Deakin University in Victoria [Australia] said: We had originally thought that red meat might not be good for mental health but it turns out that it actually may be quite important. When we looked at women consuming less than the recommended amount of red meat in our study, we found that they were twice as likely to have a diagnosed depressive or anxiety disorder as those consuming the recommended amount.

Now, because I called out An Pan for generalizing, I will admit to doing the same and point out the link between happiness and eating didn’t extend to all meats.

“Interestingly, there was no relationship between other forms of protein, such as chicken, pork, fish or plant-based proteins, and mental health. Vegetarianism was not the explanation either.”

However, I’m not a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard who is trying to support an empirical fact, but instead, just a humble blogger looking to justify his diet and kick-start the conversation supporting my belief (not fact) that all food-based research is biased one way or the other. So, I’m going to keep eating like I do until my own mortality gets too scary to bear, at which time I’ll probably just lie to my doctor.

I think Wild Chef reader Crowman said it best in my previous post: Eat right, exercise daily, die anyway.