Time for some red meat?

I learned an odd little tidbit today. After reading yet another official scolding about the evils of red meat (“saturated fat and cholesterol in beef, pork and lamb are believed to play a role in the risk of coronary heart disease,” etc.), I amused myself researching cholesterol and was startled to find this:

Poultry and poultry products tend to have more cholesterol than many other animal products. A 3-1/2-oz. serving of chicken breast without skin has about 85 mg of cholesterol, which is more than a similar-size serving of ham, pork tenderloin, most kinds of fish and lean ground beef, according to the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. Chicken liver has about 60 percent more cholesterol than beef liver. One whole egg has about 212 mg of cholesterol, nearly seven times the amount in a cup of whole milk.

I knew about eggs, but I’ve been reading for years about how much healthier chicken is than so called “red meat” that I guess I just assumed it was lower in cholesterol.

Silly me.

Another interesting issue is the definition of “red meat.” Is pork included? Depends on whom you ask.

To some, pork is “white meat“:

Given nutritional concerns, meat producers are eager to have their products considered as “white”, and the United States National Pork Board has positioned their product as “Pork. The Other White Meat“, alongside poultry and fish; however, meats which are red when raw and turn white on cooking, like pork, are sometimes categorized by the United States Department of Agriculture as red meats.^[2] This categorization is controversial as some types of fish, such as tuna, are red when raw and turn white when cooked; similarly, certain types of poultry that are sometimes grouped as “white meat” are actually “red” when raw, such as duck and goose. The debate is mainly one of semantics as nutritionists consider all meat from mammals to be “red meat” while this is not the case in other fields such as husbandry, biology, genetics, physiology, etc.^{[citation needed]}

In Israel, where Jewish dietary laws are popularly practiced, forbidding the consumption of pork, the usage of the word “hazir” (“pig” and also “pork”) is taboo, and “white meat” is the accepted way to refer to pork.^[3]

Mammals have red meat and birds have white meat. And white is better? So why does venison have fewer calories, more protein, and less saturated fat than chicken?

Does white always have to be better?