High Meat Diets Essay

There are numerous medical studies which show that high meat diets are causes of heightened blood pressure, greater risk of diabetes type 2, prostate cancer, heightened the risk of cardiovascular disease, and stomach throat related cancers (e.g. Key et al. 1998; Pan et al. 2012). A study conducted by Sinha et al. (2009) that received a lot of media attention indicates that 11% of deaths are preventable by reducing the consumption of red meat. Given this, it is interesting to consider why many men choose to adhere to high meat diets, even after they become aware of the associated health risks. The answer may in part be the homosocial nature of the hetero-masculine self (Schrock and Schwalbe, 2009: 280), and the desire to be seen as heteronormatively acquiescent.

The way in which meat is not only marketed by the supermarkets and MLA but is pre-packaged and labelled may be seen as phobic in relation to the animal consumed as meat – it is rare to see an image of the animal in the meat section of supermarkets, which is consistent with Carol Adam’s views on the ‘absent referent’. By omitting the animal from the supermarket’s meat section, shoppers are navigated away from the moral dilemma of eating animals, namely that animals are slaughtered to satisfy the gastronomic

We could afford to eat it every day here. The food at home in Greece was mostly vegetarian – but we didn’t know what a vegetarian was back then. We cooked the same dishes here as back home, but we added meat to most dishes - that was something we could never do before. But that is not what Greek food used to be in Greece. What we cook now is not really authentic Greek food anymore. Irma, my Turkish neighbour, tells me the same story. It’s ‘Australianised’ with meat in everything. I want to cook food like my mother and grandmother cooked back home – just vegetables and beans and lentils - it’s lighter and easy to