PETA grilled on its “chicken little” cancer clucking
You know I’d rather eat a pound of nails than defend any part of the fast-food or mainstream restaurant business, but fair is fair
According to a recent article on NewsTarget.com (not a tier-one source, but a place I occasionally get something interesting from), a group called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is suing fast-food giants McDonald’s, Burger King, and Chick-fil-A – as well as major mainstream restaurants Applebee’s, Chili’s, TGI Friday’s, and Outback Steakhouse. Their transgression, according to the PCRM:
Selling grilled chicken products that are laced with a carcinogenic compound.
Now, this sounds like it could be a big deal – a real public health crisis, right? And indeed, a cursory reading of the PCRM’s charges seems enough to get anyone’s dander up. The credible-sounding group claims that samples of grilled chicken from each of these restaurants tested positive for a chemical called PhIPm, one of a group of cancer-causing compounds called HCAs.
Seemingly bolstering their argument is the fact that HCA has been officially recognized by the U.S. government as carcinogenic-and that the state of California has listed PhIPm in particular as a cancer-causing chemical for more than a decade
Sounds open and shut, doesn’t it? Time to slap on the warning labels or enact bans, right?
Not so fast. First off, the NewsTarget piece – which is based solely on a PRESS RELEASE from the PCRM – fails to specify:
- How much PhIPm is in the average piece of grilled chicken (there’s at least a trace of something that may cause cancer in just about everything you can eat, drink, breathe, or wear)
- How much PhIPm is considered “unsafe” – and by whose measure
- How much restaurant-grilled chicken would you have to consume to increase your risk of developing cancer
As if this didn’t raise a red flag for you, consider this: The PCRM’s president claims that because of these HCAs, the seemingly healthier grilled chicken selections are actually “as bad for (people) as high-fat fried chicken.”
As anyone with half a brain knows, it isn’t the fat in chicken (or even the frying grease, if it’s pure lard) that causes problems for the heart and arteries – it’s all the flour and breading they coat the yard-bird in that’s deadly, especially once it soaks up what most restaurants use for frying: Vegetable oil that’s loaded with killer trans-fats!
That’s why, to the truly medically educated (such as, say, a country doctor like me), the PCRM’s sky-is-falling rhetoric about grilled chicken doesn’t pass muster. If it doesn’t ring true to you, either, you’re smarter than the average bear. Besides this, you’ve got a good nose for propaganda Because guess what? Despite its earnest-sounding name, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (which is made up of less than 5% actual doctors) is nothing more than a front group for PETA – that’s right, the militant animal-rights fringe that would outlaw meat, leather, animal testing, hunting, and fishing. Protecting animals is their real agenda, not responsible medicine, a balanced diet, or your health.
That’s why they’re clucking about carcinogenic grilling – because healthy chickens are more important to them than healthy people!
Bottom line: MEDICALLY (not politically) speaking, you’re far less likely to develop cancer or other diseases from eating restaurant grilled chicken – even from fast-food joints – than if you eat what the PETA crowd would feed you: Tofu this, soy that, fattening grains and artery-clogging vegetable fats instead of butter and lard
If you really want a good cancer scare, do a little digging into what these things will do to you, especially the soy products.
Truthfully reporting what they’re distorting,
William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.
