Health 101

Consider this:

Over 40% of all the antibiotics produced in the world are fed to animals, to increase their rate of growth and prevent bacterial diseases because of the terrible conditions under which they are raised and the wrong diet they are on..Cattle are free range foragers

Antibiotics given to animals can produce serious problems in humans. Over time they will destroy the "friendly" bacteria, which are needed by the body for our protection.

Female hormones fed to cattle are the culprits behind the increases in female disorders like severe hot flashes,painful menses, breast lumps and cancer of uterus and breast, not as so often is suggested the consumption of anim al fat or saturated fats in general.

There is an argument that meat is hazardous to our health because we humans have a relatively long digestive system.

Carnivorous creatures have a short digestive system (approx.3 times the length of their body), to prevent the meat from rotting in the digestive tract and thus poisoning the bloodstream.

In humans on the other hand the digestive tract is twelve times the length of the body. The human anatomy of the digestive system does not appear to be well suited to a diet of red meats .According to some the meat rots before it is digested and expelled. I am not completely sure whether that is any different from the regular processes of break down and decomposing.

This argument fails to note several human physiological features which clearly indicate a design for animal product consumption.

First and foremost is our stomach's production of hydrochloric acid, something not found in herbivores. HCL activates protein-splitting enzymes. Further, the human pancreas manufactures a full range of digestive enzymes to handle a wide variety of foods, both animal and vegetable.

While humans may have longer intestines than animal carnivores, they are not as long as herbivores; nor do we possess multiple stomachs like many herbivores, nor do we chew cud. Our physiology definitely indicates a mixed feeder, or an omnivore, much the same as our relatives, the mountain gorilla and chimpanzee (who have been observed eating small animals and, in some cases, other primates).

Physiologically we are Not Carnivores, but neither are we Herbivores!

In other words there is something to be said for a moderated approach. Recent research in the UK indicated that a complete vegan diet may not be something you want to depend on Vegan followed over a seven year period showed a significant brain shrinkage. But there is more: "The 'carnivore connection' postulates a critical role for the quantity of dietary protein and carbohydrate and the change in the glycaemic index of dietary carbohydrate in the evolution of insulin resistance and hyperinsulinaemia."

You can read all about it in the European Journal for Clinical Nutrition.

the New England Journal of Medicine reports on a six year analysis of more than 88,000 women. Those who ate animal fats were nearly twice as likely to develop colon cancer. Women who ate meat as part of the main course every day were two and a half times as likely to develop the disease.

However many of the reseach done at the time quite often was strongly biased against a diet based on animal products. What this means is that they were designed to find cause and effect through mostly epidemiologial studies. Those kind of studies show that certain things happen concurrently, from which one can then only really draw one conclusion: that they happen at the same time. Overzealous researchers, often with their own agenda are eager to make causal connections which may not necessarily be there at all. Other variables not tested or questioned could and often do play a role of more or lesser importance. The simple fact that the diets contained other foodstuffs that may have constituted a variable of considerable influence , may not have been reported. A diet in refined carbs, gluten and wheat bran covered with lectins (a natural occurring toxin on wheat) is now known to be highly questionable, The meat cooked in polyunsaturated vegetable oils adds another questionable value.

Fact remains that our ancestors did quite well on a diet that heavily favoured meats and saturated fats and our present day health problems did not arrive on the scene until some major shifts had happened in the processing of our grains etc.

By now most people are aware of the detrimental effect of transfats in our diet."Margarine was made out of animal fat before 1915. Hydrogenated vegetable shortening (Crisco) was introduced in 1911. Before that our intake of trans fat was very low, coming chiefly from dairy and meat (not the same as synthetic trans fats).Hydrogenated vegetable oil wasn't widely eaten until 1920.During the 1930s the use of hydrogenation worldwide took a quantum leap forward, as production increased greatly.

Rizek et al. (1974) estimated that in the period from 1937 to 1972 per capita annual consumption of trans fatty acids increased by 81%, from 6.3-11.4 gm. During the same period per capita consumption of vegetable oils and fats increased by only 64% (from 36-59 gm).

Death from coronary heart disease was rare until 1925. It peaked in the 1950s, remaining high through the 1970s and diminishing only due to modern medical interventions. Coincidence? I don't know, but I would consider it suspect.

You can read more about this on Stephan's blog (PhD Neurobiology) the second column

Suggestions for a Healthier Diet

We can do with a lot less meat, and it is certainly worth the extra trouble to get it locally from a farmer or butcher you can trust.

Pasture fed beef is a pretty wholesome food and a renewable resource, raised and sold locally it has a fairly small carbon foot print.

Change to Olive oil (virgin=cold pressed) and in stead of ready made salad dressings switch to Apple Cider or Balsemic vinegar and olive oil with your own choice of herbs and spices.

Don't use olive oil for baking and frying. It cannot handle high temperatures. Better use canola oil or lard. Yes, I know it is saturated fat, but beware of the polyunsaturated fats (PUFA's) most of them are high in the fairly unstable Omega-6's which can cause a lot of free radical activity, and consequently inflammation and then a rise in LDL cholesterol to fight it.

Request locally produced beef and wherever feasible locallly produced fruits and vegetables. If you find the selecion of apples at your local grocery too limited ,try the local orchard (Grills' Orchards in the Quinte area -no this is not a paid message), they have a wonderful variety all through the winter.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. It seems that it may even keep you out of the hospital ( heart disease ! )

Apart from Vitamins, apples contain pectin, a soluble fiber which is extremely important in our whole metabolic process. It slows down food absorption after meals, removes unwanted metals and toxins.

It is valuable during radiation treatment and lowers blood cholesterol, lessening the risk of heart disease and gallstones.

Pectin is also found in carrots, beets, bananas, all members of the cabbage family, green beans, oatmeal, potatoes...

And don't even think about Organic being any better:

So-called organic dairy "industry leaders," including two of the largest organic dairy companies in the US for instance, Horizon Organic (a subsidiary of Dean Foods and a supplier to Wal-Mart); and Aurora Organic (a supplier of private brand name organic milk to Costco, Safeway, Giant, Wild Oats and others), are purchasing the majority of their milk from feedlot dairies where the cows have little or no access to pasture, and have routinely been imported from conventional farms, where the animals have been weaned on blood plasma, fed genetically engineered feed, slaughterhouse waste, and poultry manure, and injected or treated with antibiotics, according to research carried out by the organic watchdog group, the Cornucopia Institute. Together, these corporations control up to 65% of the organic dairy market. !!!!

But regardless:

"Twice as many men in Northern Europe died from coronary heart disease as those in Southern Europe, in spite of starting out with

equivalent levels of the major risk factors." (Northern European countries consume the highest per capita rates of milk and dairy products.)

Note: Cheeses contain only half the lactose of milk, hard and old cheeses have substantially less again.

Proteins?

Often the meat and dairy mafia like to confuse people with misinformation about essential protein that you can only get from meat or dairy products.

The truth is protein is formed from quite a number of building blocks called amino acids. There are about 22 of these amino acids. Your body can make 13 of these. The other ones are calle essential amino acids. They must be supplied in your diet. All of them except for 3 are plentiful available in all foods. The three critical ones are lysine, tryptophan and methionine. The amino acids that come from plants are exactly the same as the ones from meat and dairy. Legumes (beans, peas ,etc are high in lysine. Grains are rich in methionine and tryptophan but low in lysine.

You also find methionine in bell peppers, spinach, sesame seeds, brazil nuts and peanuts, and fish.

Tryptophan is also available from peanuts, poultry, barley, brown rice, and soybeans.

A good source of Tryptophan is also Oats, which by the way has many other healthy benefits. Almonds are a good source of Tryptophan as well.

And this is definitely worth perusing:

For 30 years, Dr. Krauss — an adjunct professor of nutritional sciences at the University of California at Berkeley — has been studying the effect of diet and blood lipids on cardiovascular disease. He points out that while some studies show that replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats lowers heart-disease risk, this doesn't mean that saturated fats lead to clogged arteries. "It may simply suggest that unsaturated fats are an even healthier option," he says. (However if you check even further you may discover that maybe unsaturated has a dark side)

But there's more to this story: In 1980, Dr. Krauss and his colleagues discovered that LDL cholesterol is far from the simple "bad" particle it's commonly thought to be. It actually comes in a series of different sizes, known as subfractions. Some LDL subfractions are large and fluffy. Others are small and dense. This distinction is important.

A decade ago, Canadian researchers reported that men with the highest number of small, dense LDL subfractions had four times the risk of developing clogged arteries than those with the fewest. Yet they found no such association for the large, fluffy particles. These findings were confirmed in subsequent studies.

Link to heart disease

Now here's the saturated-fat connection: Dr. Krauss found that when people replace the carbohydrates in their diet with fat — saturated or unsaturated — the number of small, dense LDL particles decreases. This leads to the highly counterintuitive notion that replacing your breakfast cereal with eggs and bacon could actually reduce your risk of heart disease.

Men, more than women, are predisposed to having small, dense LDL. However, the propensity is highly flexible and, according to Dr. Krauss, can be switched on when people eat high-carb, low-fat diets or switched off when they reduce carbs and eat diets high in fat, including the saturated variety. "There's a subgroup of people at high risk of heart disease who may respond well to diets low in fat," says Dr. Krauss. "But the majority of healthy people seem to derive very little benefit from these low-fat diets, in terms of heart-disease risk factors, unless they also lose weight and exercise. And if a low-fat diet is also loaded with carbs, it can actually result in adverse changes in blood lipids."

You can check the whole article by MSNBC here

http://www.coconutoil.com/ray_peat_unsaturated_oils.htm

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/about-cholesterol-and-health.html

The Evolution of a Myth

"Along with the unjustified and unscientific saturated fat and cholesterol scares of the past several decades has come the notion that vegetarianism is a healthier dietary option for people. It seems as if every health expert and government health agency is urging people to eat fewer animal products and consume more vegetables, grains, fruits and legumes. Along with these exhortations have come assertions and studies supposedly proving that vegetarianism is healthier for people and that meat consumption is associated with sickness and death. Several authorities, however, have questioned these data, but their objections have been largely ignored.

As we shall see, many of the vegetarian claims cannot be substantiated and some are simply false and dangerous. There are benefits to vegetarian diets for certain health conditions, and some people function better on less fat and protein, but, as a practitioner who has dealt with several former vegetarians and vegans (total vegetarians), I know full well the dangerous effects of a diet devoid of healthful animal products. It is my hope that all readers will more carefully evaluate their position on vegetarianism after reading this paper. " Stephen Byrnes, PhD, RNCP

Some vegetarians have claimed that livestock require pasturage that could be used to farm grains to feed starving people in Third World countries. It is also claimed that feeding animals contributes to world hunger because livestock are eating foods that could go to feed humans. The solution to world hunger, therefore, is for people to become vegetarians. These arguments are illogical and simplistic.

The first argument ignores the fact that about 2/3 of our Earth's dry land is unsuitable for farming. It is primarily the open range, desert and mountainous areas that provide food to grazing animals and that land is currently being put to good use .

Furthermore the argument that cattle are inefficient converters of energy conveniently glosses over the fact that cattle produce more than food, they also convert gras into manure and thus improve the soil instead of depleting, which is what cash cropping does.

That's not to say we would approve of feedlots.... or pig factories..... or chicken or egg factories.

With corporate hog factories replacing traditional hog farms, pigs are being treated more as inanimate tools of production than as living, feeling animals.

You don't want to know too much about how the porkchop came to be and how much animal cruelty was involved and the total environmental cost. You can check here to find out more about factory farming