The recession is having one positive effect. The national cholesterol is going down.
More than half of Americans have cut back on meat, many becoming "recession-bred flexitarians," says Gourmet magazine--people who use meat as a condiment not as a meal anchor.
Even the doyenne of taste and nutrition, Martha Stewart, broadcast a vegetarian Thanksgiving show last week.
A small drop in meat exerts big consequences on your health says Katherine Tallmadge of the American Dietetic Association because red meat is the "primary source of saturated fat, which can boost levels of bad LDL cholesterol and inflammation."
It is no doubt the reason death from heart attacks goes down not up during recessions as Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro reports.
Unfortunately, it also has a big effect on meat producers for whom the droves of flexitarians are equivalent to Atlanta and all its suburbs going vegetarian. And that's before you consider the effect that the swine, sorry H1N1 virus has had on the pork industry.
To address the low demand emergency, the Washington DC-based National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) has a kind of Cash for Clunkers plan.
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