The North American Meat Institute (NAMI) and American Meat Science Association (AMSA) released a new Meat MythCrusher video examining the link between red meat consumption and obesity. While popular media often link obesity with red meat consumption, Eric Berg, Ph.D., professor and associate head of animal sciences at North Dakota State University explains that while obesity rates have doubled since the first Dietary Guidelines for Americans were released in 1977, red meat consumption has decreased over the same time frame.

“Consumption trends, particularly the consumption of red meat has gone down,” said Berg. “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 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 request by emailing publicaffairs@meatinstitute.org or by downloading from the resources section of www.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.

All of the videos and more are available at http://www.meatmythcrushers.com/.

Source: NAMI