For better or worse, my parents trained me to be a good eater. I was forced to eat at least one bite of everything my mom made, and if I unwisely took more than I could eat, I had to eat the leftovers for breakfast. Hence, I am generally able to eat anything that's put in front of me. Every day that I've been with my host family I have finished everything they've given me, except once.

Kazakh people love meat. They think that it keeps them warm in the winter, has 10 times more vitamins per kilogram than vegetables, makes the men strong and gives all people energy. Kazakhs continually poke fun at vegetarians, who, if what they believed were true, would all be lying dead in the gutters, finished off by the cold after a miserably malnourished life. I enjoy eating meat, but if left to my own devices, eat it only a couple of times a week. On the day that I was unable to finish my meal, my host family inexplicably decided to give me a bowl of meat chunks for breakfast, for lunch, and for dinner. I gladly ate the tasty first bowl, and grudgingly picked my way through the second, but when the third came at dinner, I could not abide it. Fortunately, my Kazakh parents don't make me eat unfinished food for breakfast, but they did imply that I would not be very healthy as a result.

With the disclaimer that I'm no nutritional expert, their thinking in regards to meat is pretty backwards. Just this week, I heard of two men dying from heart attacks, one was 52, and the other was in his thirties. According to the World Health Organization, ischaemic heart disease causes 28% of the deaths in Kazakhstan, where the average life expectancy for men in 2004 was 57 years. The comparable figures for the United States, not exactly the most heart-healthy place on our little spaceship, are 21% and 75 years. Admittedly, a great deal more goes into life expectancy than diet, but when the leading cause of death is heart disease, high cholesterol is a leading cause of heart disease, and meat is a high cholesterol food, a non-zero part of the 18 year difference in life expectancy can certainly be attributed to diet.

The Kazakhs generally scoff when I try to lay out the reasons that meat isn't as healthy as their grandparents taught them, but my case was strengthened this week by unfortunate circumstances. My counterpart's father was in the hospital for two weeks. In America, you're lucky to make it out alive if you've been in the hospital for two weeks, but Kazakhs treat the hospitals more like hotels. At any rate, Gulzhan's father had some issues with his heart that didn't sound life-threatening but warranted attention. The attention? Cut all meat out of his diet.