It takes skill to produce a fine stove-top steak. E.M. Burton explains.
Early this March, Dr. Walter Willett, chair of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, published a study that followed over 100,000 people for more than two decades. As noted in the March 24 L.A. Times story “How rare should red met be?” Dr. Willett found “the amount of red meat they ate was linked to a rise in premature death.” Willett notes, “We looked at total mortality. We did see a linear, step-wise increase in risk of dying prematurely with higher red meat consumption. It does appear that the data are quite strong.”
He added, however, “When you get down to maybe one serving of meat or less per week the risk gets pretty low.”
As yet, there is no data being gathered to chart CrossFit athletes’ meat consumption to test the impact of diet combined with 20-plus-years of high-intensity functional movement. Until such time as we have the results of such a study, when cooking for my family I keep the red-meat consumption to the lower part of the protein list, after chicken and fish.
However, there are times when life calls for steak, and you should know how to pan-sear a steak to perfection on top of a stove.