Last weekend was a tough time in my blogging career since, as many of you noticed, my blog was infected with malware. I’m grateful to my web host and especially to Jack Norris for helping me navigate through the ordeal.

In fact, if I couldn’t go whining to Jack every time I have a problem with my blog, I don’t think I could even have a blog. So if you find any of the material here helpful or interesting, please consider making a donation to Vegan Outreach. Or you could buy yourself some treats from Pangea through Jack’s blog since it generates a little bit of income for him while also supporting a vegan business.

And while you’re over in his neck of the woods, take a peek at Jack’s new online resource PeaCounter. This is a nutrient analysis website that puts the bulky USDA food database into a user-friendly format. You can look up individual foods or calculate your daily intake of whichever nutrients you like. If you want to know whether you’re getting enough zinc or magnesium or calcium, this is an easy way to find out.

In other news, a new study from researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that red meat is associated with a shorter lifespan, adding to the evidence that eating lots of red meat is probably not too good for you.

I’ve written before about why a focus on red meat isn’t a good message for veganism, and this study reinforces my belief about this. The researchers concluded that replacing red meat with other sources of protein would reduce risk for chronic disease and early death. The best protection was seen when people ate nuts instead of meat. But this study also found that replacing red meat with poultry was more protective than replacing it with legumes.

Now, I don’t believe at all that eating chickens is better for you than eating beans. This is just one study, after all, and it’s the type of research that shows associations, not cause and effect. But, we can’t pull what we like out of this research and ignore the rest. There is no reason to expect people to decrease their total intake of animal foods based on this particular study when it doesn’t suggest a benefit of doing so. Instead, it encourages a consumption pattern that could increase animal suffering.