WHO says I can’t eat meat?

I might have to give up this reviewing gig. What is the point of reviewing restaurants if you cannot have a medium rare steak?

Look, I am no spring chicken. Yes, yes, I know my picture above makes me look all young and chubby and handsome like Julius Malema but I am really quite long in the tooth. So you will forgive me if I make so bold as to say that I have picked up one or two morsels of wisdom along the way.

For example, I have no doubt that the old sage was right when he said power corrupts. And he was even more on the money when he said absolute power corrupts so much you can actually start believing the nonsense that no-one will mind when you build yourself a R246m mansion in your home village on taxpayers’ money.

So you will believe me when I say that I am not one for changing my diet now. Which is why I got a bit concerned when I read that the venerable World Health Organisation (WHO) wants me to give up red meat.

Yes, folks, all those glorious visits to the Grillhouse in Rosebank, Jo’burg, have to come to an end. Really. No more shisanyama either. No visits to Neh in Alexandra township. I might have to give up this reviewing gig. What is the point of reviewing restaurants if you cannot have a medium rare steak?

My lovely wife, who often harangues me about the prospect of gout and so forth, read the Reuters report out to me: “Eating processed meat can lead to bowel cancer in humans while red meat is a likely cause of the disease. WHO experts said the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the WHO, put processed meat such as hot dogs and ham in its group 1 list, which already includes tobacco, asbestos and diesel fumes, for which there is ‘sufficient evidence’ of cancer links.”

No more Vienna sausages, my lovely wife chortled, poking my beer boep. I wasn’t concerned. I can live with that.

Then she got to the killer line: “Red meat, under which the IARC includes beef, lamb and pork, was classified as a ‘probable’ carcinogen in its group 2A list that also contains glyphosate, the active ingredient in many weedkillers . . . The IARC found links mainly with bowel cancer, as was the case for processed meat, but it also observed associations with pancreatic and prostate cancer.”

I immediately got on the blower to my friend Frans Mojela. “Let’s go eat meat. For tomorrow we die!”

A friend had said Crawdaddy’s in Pretoria serves good steak, so we rushed off to sample some.

I had chosen Crawdaddy’s with care. Though the long menu offers everything from chicken to Eisbein to fish and some inventive burgers (“Magic Mushroom Burger” sounded interesting), the online menu pointed to their 1 kg rump steak, boasting: “Be prepared to roll up your sleeves — this is what made us famous.”

I wimped out, though. I only went for the 400 kg version, with vegetables, while Frans went for the oxtail.

The occasion called for red wine, but it was a hot day in Pretoria, so the Hermanuspietersfontein No 7 sauvignon blanc came in handy. It was so nice we had two bottles.

Two people can go to the same place and have very different experiences. I enjoyed my medium rare steak immensely. Frans, on the other hand, thought his oxtail was just not good enough. I told him not to order that – it was too hot for oxtail. His starter, a salmon carpaccio, was stale, he moaned. We shared some giblets in tomato sauce. I thought they were really tasty. He demurred.

We agreed on one thing. Service was excellent. And we had fun talking about meat. And that’s all that matters really.