05/25/07 Healthy beef

Sometimes the difference between feeling good and feeling bad is relative to what you read. I'm Jeff Keane; I'll be back in one minute to tell you what I mean. Reading through one of the cattle industry publications the other day had me a little down in the month. It was an article about revising Dietary Guidelines for Americans and how red meat could be a loser again just like the 1970's model that advocated eating less beef and more poultry and fish. Since the health and food activists have corralled trans fats, beef industry spokespeople feel the activists will now have more time to turn their agenda toward saturated fats. You guessed it  meat is second only to dairy as a contributor of saturated fat in the human diet. The big worry for the meat industry is a chance the USDA may turn control of nutrition over to other agencies. Well, with radical environmentalists preaching cattle are detriment to the environment on one side and health activists denouncing beef in our diets on the other side, I was feeling just a little low, but reading an article in our local newspaper's Food and Health section, I perked right up. The article was entitled Have Your Tasty Steak and a Healthy Heart Too. This is one time I'll say an Associated Press writer knows what he is talking about. There was even a picture of perfectly done beef and a simple receipt to get the same results. It was a truly beautiful article. I'm Jeff Keane.