If I had to tell people just one thing to lower their risk of heart disease, it would be to reduce their intake of foods of animal origin, specifically animal fat, and to replace those fats with complex carbohydrates--grains, fruits, and vegetables.

--Ernst Schaefer, M.D., Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, Tufts University in Boston

If you want to foster Renewal and achieve maximum life span, you may have to change your attitude toward meat. But maybe not for the reasons you'd expect.

True, meat has way too much fat (particularly saturated fat) and cholesterol, which is enough to earn it a dishonorable discharge from the Anti-Aging Diet. But it also harbors antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, preservatives, and coloring agents--toxins that sabotage cells, poison the immune system, and otherwise thwart Renewal.

Technology deserves at least part of the blame for meat's nutritional pitfalls. The days when cattle wandered open fields, grazing on natural grasses and grains, have all but vanished. Instead, the animals are raised on so-called factory farms--bred and fed for the express purpose of winding up on someone's dinner plate. Under such conditions, the meat does get to market more quickly. But both the animals that provide it and the humans who eat it pay a tremendous price in terms of their health.

Not Your Grandfather's Farm

Many modern farms rely on so-called high-efficiency confinement systems, which house animals in close quarters, then deliver their food and remove their waste with minimal human effort. Such systems are intended to make raising cattle cheaper and more efficient. Indeed, by confining and feeding the animals rather than allowing them to roam and graze, farmers can use valuable pastures to plant and harvest crops.

Even livestock feed has been "engineered" to cut costs and make animals fatter faster. Among its more creative ingredients: waste paper, paper grocery bags, old phone books, newspapers, computer paper, corrugated cardboard, and plastic hay (a kind of artificial roughage). The obvious problem is that this stuff is nutritionally vacant garbage. Beyond that, inks on the recycled paper materials contain cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls and other petroleum-based compounds, which cannot be separated out. These toxins are stored in the animal's fatty tissues, and when you eat the meat, they get passed along to you.

If that doesn't spoil your appetite, perhaps this will: Some livestock feed contains poultry litter, a bizarre combination of manure, feathers, and old hen-house bedding that's glued together with molasses and grain. According to the manufacturer, "Cows love it." Of course, the cows may be enticed by the artificial flavors and aromas that are often added.

Antibiotics: Artificial Health

For the farmer, confining cattle and controlling their feed has definite financial advantages. But it also creates problems. Most notably, the combination of overcrowding, poor nutrition, and lack of exercise encourages the spread of disease among the animals.

These days, antibiotics are used to keep herds--and profits--healthy. In fact, more than 5,000 tons of antibiotics, fully half of the amount manufactured in the United States, are added to livestock feed each year. More than 70 percent of beef cattle and beef calves receive daily doses of the drugs over the course of their lifetimes.

The antibiotics given to animals are identical to the antibiotics given to humans. Still, farmers don't need prescriptions to get them. While many farmers scrupulously adhere to the recommended dosage levels and withdrawal times (they're required to discontinue antibiotic use a certain number of days before taking their livestock to market), others overdose their cattle in an attempt to compensate for the unhealthful conditions created by overcrowding, filth, poorly heated and poorly lit barns, and lack of fresh air and activity. Sick animals may be given even larger doses of antibiotics and perhaps illegal drugs in a desperate attempt to keep them alive for delivery to the slaughterhouse.

Beefed-Up Production

Fighting disease isn't the only reason for using antibiotics. In 1949, Thomas Jukes, then the director of nutrition and physiology research for the pharmaceutical company Lederle Laboratories, made a discovery that would change the meat industry forever. He found that all farm animals, including cows, grew much faster when they ate antibiotic-laced feed.

Folks in the meat industry picked up on the financial significance of Jukes's discovery almost immediately. With antibiotics, they could get meat to market quickly. The drugs would not only keep the cattle disease-free but also have them ready for slaughter in a relatively short amount of time. As a result, farmers could raise more cattle and earn more money.

Many scientists feared that such widespread use of antibiotics would have a tremendous biological impact down the road. They speculated that bacteria would develop immunity to antibiotics, rendering the drugs useless.

Of course, time has proven the scientists right. You've probably heard news reports about the emergence of "superbugs"--antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Should one of these superbugs find its way into your body, the resulting infection can be very difficult to treat.

When you eat meat that contains antibiotics, you're dosing yourself with the drugs. This reduces the effectiveness of antibiotics in general.

Because of the frightening rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the rapid decline in antibiotic effectiveness, the countries of the European Economic Community--including France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom--have agreed to ban the routine use of antibiotics in livestock feed. Will similar action be taken in the United States? Probably not, if the powerful pharmaceutical- and meat-industry lobbies have their way.

Steroids: Cattle on the Fast Track

In addition to antibiotics, meat often contains an array of natural and synthetic hormones. These compounds, which have received the Food and Drug Administration's stamp of approval, are given to cattle and other livestock to make them grow faster. For example, diethylstilbestrol (DES), a sex steroid hormone banned from use in humans, reportedly produces a 15 to 19 percent increase in weight (mostly fat) and a 7 to 10 percent improvement in feed efficiency (that is, weight gained per pound of feed) in beef cattle. These figures translate to more money for farmers, as they're spending less to fatten up the animals over a shorter amount of time.

When we eat meat that contains hormone residues, we upset the delicate balance within our endocrine systems. The endocrine system produces its own hormones to regulate numerous bodily functions, including metabolic rate, sexual and reproductive activity, growth, and even mood. When the system is out of kilter, it opens the door to disease.

Even seemingly minuscule amounts of the hormones fed to cattle can upset the human endocrine system. Consider that these compounds produce measurable effects on living cells when present in parts per trillion. That's like one grain in a ton of sand or one drop in 7,000 gallons of water.

Scientists and government officials now acknowledge that any amount of hormone over and above what is normally present in a healthy person has the potential to cause cancer and other serious health problems. In women, for example, elevated levels of the hormone estrogen have been linked to cancers of the breasts, ovaries, cervix, and endometrium (the lining of the uterus). They've also been implicated in high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke.

The DES Debacle

Despite their proven health risks to humans, hormones are still being given to livestock. As is so often the case, a public health crisis may be necessary before any substantive action is taken to ban these compounds.

An incident involving the sex steroid hormone DES illustrates this point perfectly. In 1966, Arthur L. Herbst, M.D., then a gynecologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, discovered a very rare cancerous tumor in the vagina of a 15-year-old girl. This particular type of cancer, called clear cell adenocarcinoma, has a 50 percent mortality rate. Over the next three years, six more cases turned up--all in girls of about the same age.

Dr. Herbst and his colleagues determined that the mothers of all but one of the girls had been taking DES while pregnant to prevent miscarriage. Subsequent investigation revealed that other sex steroid hormones were causing the same problem. By 1980, the doctors had identified 429 cases of clear cell adenocarcinoma. In 243 cases, the patients' mothers had received DES during pregnancy. In another 57 cases, the patients' mothers had taken some other form of hormone therapy.

Despite mounting evidence implicating DES and other sex steroid hormones in the development of cancer, DES remained a staple ingredient in livestock feed. In fact, prior to 1979, the hormone was being consumed by 85 percent of all livestock in the United States. That year, the Food and Drug Administration finally outlawed the use of DES in feed. But the hormone was never recalled, so farmers continued to use the remaining supply. Few were penalized for violating the ban--a clear message that the government wasn't taking it all that seriously.

As the general public caught wind of the effects of DES, farmers gradually switched to other hormones. Unfortunately, the alternative compounds caused similar problems, including imbalance of the endocrine system and increased risk of cancer.

Treating animals with hormones remains a widely accepted practice within the U.S. meat industry. Hormone pellets are routinely implanted in virtually all cattle, their cost offset by the increase in pounds of beef produced. Still, no one can say for certain that we won't have another hormone-induced public health disaster 20 to 30 years down the road.

Why hasn't the federal government taken a more aggressive stand against the widespread use of sex steroid hormones? The answer involves a dangerous combination of bureaucratic red tape, powerful pharmaceutical- and meat-industry lobbies, and an uninformed public.

Perhaps we could learn a lesson from the countries of the European Economic Community, which prohibit the use of all sex steroid hormones in meat production. These countries recognize their obligation to protect the public food supply. The United States needs to do the same--or risk the proliferation of hormone-related illness in the general population as well as tens of thousands of hormone-related cancer deaths each year.

Ineffective Inspection

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) does administer an inspection program that--ostensibly, at least--safeguards consumers against drug-tainted meat. But an inspector's stamp of approval (which, incidentally, was a toxic blue dye until a few years ago) doesn't mean that a particular carcass is absolutely, 100 percent antibiotic- and hormone-free. Remember, both antibiotics and hormones are perfectly legal for use in raising cattle. The inspector simply checks to make sure that residues of these substances are within USDA limits.

The inspection program has its problems. For starters, staffing is woefully inadequate: One inspector per large plant is the norm. Suppose a plant processes 500 head of cattle per hour. To keep pace, the inspector can devote only about seven seconds to each carcass. It's not humanly possible to perform adequate testing in that amount of time.

For this reason, only about 1 percent of all carcasses undergo testing for excessive antibiotic and hormone residues. Of course, by the time the tests are sent to a laboratory, analyzed, and returned to the inspector, the carcass is long gone--processed, packed, and perhaps even eaten. A questionable carcass may be impounded, but trying to trace it back to a particular herd or farmer is virtually impossible.

Then, too, concerns have been raised about the objectivity of the inspection process. While inspectors are USDA employees, they work side-by-side with slaughterhouse and packing-house employees. Critics contend that this arrangement compromises an inspector's ability to make decisions that could have a negative impact on his "co-workers." Rejecting the number of carcasses required to truly protect public health and safety would adversely affect the economic status of the plant as a whole.

In fact, inspectors reject only 0.5 percent of beef carcasses each year. If inadequacies in the inspection process were addressed, that number would likely rise much higher--say, 10 to 15 percent.

Until this happens, consumers have no guarantee that the meat they're eating is truly safe. It's like playing Russian roulette each time you step up to the supermarket meat display: You have no way of knowing how much antibiotic or hormone a particular cut contains.

All That, Plus Fat

With all this talk about antibiotics and hormones, we must not overlook the fact that most meat supplies a mother lode of saturated fat and cholesterol. Both substances have been identified as causes of atherosclerosis (hardening and clogging of the arteries), heart attack, high blood pressure, cancer, and other life-shortening degenerative diseases.

Remember, only foods of animal origin contain cholesterol. Foods of plant origin do not. So a person who eschews all meats and dairy products and instead builds his meals around grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables effectively eliminates cholesterol from his diet.

Scholarly studies have shown that this eating style, called veganism, can dramatically reduce your risk of developing the sorts of diseases described above. It can also improve your odds for living a long, healthy life. I've used veganism as the basis for my Anti-Aging Diet for these and many other reasons.

Changing Your Meat-Eating Ways

Going meatless has definite advantages in terms of health and longevity. But if you're accustomed to having meat on your plate at most meals, you may be wondering: "Can I really give it up for good?"

In a word, "Yes." I, and millions of vegans like me, can tell you that going meatless is not just okay, but great. We get to have our cake (longer, healthier lives) and eat it (fabulous foods), too.

Admittedly, the transition to veganism may take time and effort--but perhaps not as much as you think. Making the switch took me a while. But I did it, and I'm glad. You can do it, too.

I can honestly say that I don't miss meat. And I feel good about feeding my body nutritious foods that support Renewal. Knowing that I'm gaining extra decades with my grandchildren means a whole lot more to me than missing out on a few steaks and burgers.

If you're not quite ready to say goodbye to beef, then please keep your intake to a minimum. Eat only very small portions of the leanest cuts, preferably from organically raised cattle. In fact, I suggest that you relegate all animal-derived foods to condiment status. That way, you can gradually wean yourself from them until you finally give them up altogether.

Healthier Body, Healthier Planet

In this chapter, I've encouraged you to eliminate meat from your diet for some very personal reasons--namely, your own health and longevity. But going meatless has more global implications as well.

Raising livestock to feed a meat-hungry populace is a large-scale anti-environmental activity. It consumes vast amounts of land--in fact, 85 percent of this country's agricultural land supports the livestock industry in some capacity--and erodes soil. It pollutes water and air with the pesticides and fertilizers used to grow feed. It even depletes the ozone layer.

With the soybeans that we raise for livestock feed, we could provide meals for starving people around the world. No human would have to go hungry. Instead, we're exporting our dangerous dietary habits, including our penchant for meat and fast food, to developing African, Asian, and South American countries.

The carnage has even spread to the tropical rain forests, where approximately 200,000 square kilometers of trees, an area about the size of Pennsylvania, are destroyed each year to make room for grazing livestock. And as the rain forests shrink, so, too, do the populations of animals, birds, insects, and other creatures that reside there. One species becomes extinct every hour, decimated for no other reason than to feed our appetite for steaks and burgers.

We can persist with our short-sighted, wasteful, environmentally dangerous dietary habits, or we can do our world a world of good. The choice is ours--and yours--to make.

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Many folks have substituted chicken for beef in their diets, thinking that they're doing their hearts (and the rest of their bodies) a favor. Sorry to say, that's not the case. Sure, chicken looks healthier than beef. But as the next chapter explains, it has nutrition problems all its own.