WITH so little positive news on the junk food front, I am happy to be able to report that cheeseburgers have been found to combat cancer in mice. A dietary tale
of mice and cattlemenI know. Many of you didn't even know that mice considered cheeseburgers a serious part of their diets. But apparently they do. And it turns out that cheeseburgers have a compound called conjugated dienoic linoleic acid, or CLA, that fights cancer.
The information comes from a completely unbiased source: the National Cattleman's Beef Association. The association has absolutely no reason to promote cheeseburgers as a cancer-fighting agent other than the fact that cheeseburgers are made from beef, which technically comes from cows and the promotion of which is the Cattleman's Beef Association's entire reason for existing.
But, hey, if anyone's going to do research on cheeseburgers, why not people who really know cheeseburgers? And who knows cheeseburgers better than the guys who kill the cows?
Besides, everyone else in the health community is busy dumping on cheeseburgers, complaining about the huge amounts of fat, salt, gristle, calories and everything else needed to make a really tasty cheeseburger. Picky, picky, picky.
According to an article in a recent beef association newsletter, "The Beef Brief," cheeseburgers are chock-full of a compound that more and more studies financed by beef producers prove miraculously inhibits cancer.
SO far, the burger research has been limited to mice. But I'm sure the experiments soon will work their way up the food chain to larger rodents, eventually even to those who hang out at major national burger joints.
"Growing numbers of studies with animals suggest that avoiding beef is not a positive step in avoiding certain types of cancer," the newsletter said.
Now, that's one of those inside-out, backward sentences graduates of technical journalism schools learn to write so they can get jobs with large corporations. But if you shake it real hard it actually says: "Animal studies show that eating beef helps avoid certain types of cancer."
They don't say it that way because all the anti-beef people will jump all over them. Not to mention a glaring hole in the study, which is that eating beef does absolutely nothing to improve the health of the cows involved.
BUOYED by this happy news about cheeseburgers, I scanned the rest of the newsletter to see what other good things were happening in the beef world.
Well, the beef industry hasn't stopped global warming or brought peace to the Middle East, but, man, it is kicking butt in other areas.
For instance, a cattle-farming family in Virginia is protecting an important trout-fishing stream. And wildlife populations on cattle farms and ranches have increased 62 percent during the past 10 years. And the American Heart Association even gave the the Cattleman's association a "Champion of the Heart" award for helping fight heart disease and strokes.
I didn't see any mention in the newsletter concerning former beef industry spokesman and actor James Garner's heart attack a few years ago. Or the recent heart attack of Dave Thomas, who heads up the giant Wendy's burger franchise. But I'm sure that was just an oversight.
While some people would say the newsletter is merely pro-beef propaganda, I see it as a valuable additional avenue of food information.
No one actually believes that eating cheeseburgers is going to extend your life. But it is comforting to those of us who have a steady hankering for cheeseburgers that our junk food of choice is not completely evil. After all, 8,000 mice can't all be wrong.
