IT IS difficult to say anything about diet because everyone gets terribly upset and says, "Oh but.." And of course no one wants to directly damage the livelihood of those in the meat trade.

But now we have some strong evidence. This week the World Health Organisation placed processed meat (for example bacon and sausages) in the same carcinogenic category as cigarettes and alcohol. The WHO also placed red meat this week in the category of, "probable carcinogen".

This all seems extraordinary because surely humans were built to eat meat in good quantities? Or so we have been led to believe. But are we? It is intriguing to imagine back to the earliest days. To those who roamed the African plains near the Olduvai Gorge where some of the earliest human remains have been found.

You have to imagine that lifestyle. Probably living in extended family groups of a reasonable size and needing to go out and hunt for food virtually every day. With no metal, no vehicles, no agricultural systems, and no corner shop to fall back on, the earliest humans were on their own trying to catch something edible on a regular basis.

I would hazard a guess they may not have been very good at it. They probably missed most of the time because the antelopes could run harder and faster and the lions were uncatchable. These latter probably regarded humans as easy meat themselves anyway.

So, you see my argument. The earliest humans probably did not eat a lot of meat. They did eat some. First of all there was the difficulty of catching it and then there was the question of sharing it out in small pieces amongst the extended family group. For the very young, the elderly, and those frail or ill could not hunt themselves. Surely early humans likely lived on a very mixed diet of seeds, berries, fruits, with some meat included but in bite sized chunks?

Hence we come onto the modern world whereby people who live in the areas of the world with the highest concentrations of centenarians have predominantly plant based diets.

So meat eating surely has to be reconsidered. It's the amounts that have to be looked at. No one really needs vast steaks nor huge amounts of processed meats? For excess protein taken into the system is either lost through the system or builds up over time to generate that carcinogenic effect eventually. Also, and fancy recipes not withstanding, there is no escaping the fact that meat is really,"dead flesh".

Processed meat is just that too. It's processed. Meaning that as a final product it is a long way removed from the raw fresh flesh it started out as when first caught. Surely humans were designed to eat small amounts of fresh meat only? Anything else is courting ill health down the line as the World Health Organisation's report so clearly shows.

Elizabeth Smith

Dursley