Reap the Sow You Eat: How Americans Are Becoming the Fat Cows They Ingest

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, eating red meat increases the risk of the following: colon cancer, prostate cancer, rectal cancer, and cancer of the lower intestine. And that's just the beginning.

Various studies have indicated that red meat consumption leads to a higher incidence of heart disease, arteriosclerosis (irregular heart beat), breast cancer, obesity, stroke, and high cholesterol. So why the hell are we so hooked? The simple answer: because it's delicious.

But the funny thing is, it appears that the less you eat of it over time, the less you crave it. Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate and Executive Director of the Consumer Wellness Center, had this to say about his love to hate relationship with red meat:

"I found the transition away from red meat to be difficult at first. I started consuming less of it and eating other meat alternatives, and pretty soon I began to view red meat in a different way, because if you eat less of it, you eventually start to lose your appetite for it. And within less than a year, any time I would see red meat at the grocery store, it would gross me out. I look at it and I realize what it is: a chunk of flesh sliced off the carcass of a living creature that has been ground up and stuffed into a box. Usually there's some blood running around in the container as well. Every time I would look at that I would get grossed out and think to myself, "Gee, is this really what I want to eat for the rest of my life? This sliced up chunk of a dead cow?" And the answer was, "No." So it didn't take very long before I didn't want any red meat, and now I can't imagine eating it."

How very appetizing.

What's funny is that our society has created an environment in which this habitual meat-eating lifestyle is totally normal. You can't be a true-blue American if you don't eat the holy cow. Or support the USDA, for that matter.

Consider why you are accustomed to your eating habits. Big brother's got a huge steak (pun intended) in the agricultural industry, and certainly doesn't want you to have any negative association with their product. But let's examine one tiny fragment of the USDA's endorsed practice: manufactured hormones. (I prefer to call these particular ones "horror moans.")

RBGH is the manufactured hormone, made by Monsanto, which is regularly injected into cattle. The side effects are numerous, and horrendous. For the cows, a painful condition called prolapses, which causes internal organs like the rectum and vagina to actually uncoil out of the cow's body, are a regular occurrence. For us, the consequence is cancer. At least that's what Canada and Europe seem to think, as they've banned the hormone to "protect consumers" (this according to preventcancer.com, among others).

Meat has become an industry run by conditioned automatons - soldiers of the slaughterhouse who become immune to the barbarity and callousness of their profession; it can't be fun killing the innocent.

Much of our culture has been reared on the echoed sentiments of the Bible. Unfortunately, we've become accustomed to lending credence to this aged document that has decreed Man, or humanity, as having dominion over all the animals. Perhaps this can partially explain our resistance to halting our unhealthy eating habits, for we feel that "cows are meant to be eaten." But this infantile power, regardless of how we attained it, is a burden - one that is destroying not only compassion or the environment, but our bodies as well.

The question that arises out of all of this is a big fat, why? Why eat what'll kill you? Why eat a being that suffers needlessly at the hands of the greedy overseers? Why contribute to the 70% of Amazon rainforests destroyed for cattle grazing, to the 18% of greenhouse emissions (according to the UN), to the extreme environmental degradation that is ruining the fertility of our soil?

The answer is simple, and the results are obvious: You are what you eat. Do you want to be a fat, unhappy, cancerous cow? A bloated, tormented pig? Stick your fork in it, people, and reap the sow you eat.