Meatless Mondays: A Healthier You, a Healthier Planet

[Quick Start Test Smith]

Oh my gosh, Bissen! I LOVE sandwiches! I can't believe I didn't think of buckwheat bread... I'm Googling recipes now!

[Rikke Olsen]

It's SUPER difficult making a sandwich bread with high content of buckwheat. They get very dense and crumbly. You absolutely need some kind of binder; I'm experimenting with eggs, psyllium husk and rice/potato starch.

I still haven't found the right blend, but I'll keep experimenting! Another issue is that it easily gets very sticky and doughy on the inside.

Low GI, gluten free bread is HARD!

[Joshua Naterman]

I'm experimenting with buckwheat bread. It's a challenge, but I'm on it.

Cos let's face it - sammiches are handy and toast is delish

I hear fresh ground flax seed and arrowroot starch work really well. I haven't experimented with buckwheat bread yet, but using real butter and egg in buckwheat pancake mix with buckwheat flower seems to make a fairly sturdy pancake that could definitely double as sandwich material. I'm not sure you could store it for very long, certainly not like you could store a loaf of bread I don't think, but my girlfriend rolls them up in aluminum foil and they last her through the day... they are fairly quick to cook, so if there is time you could do stuff like that.

I hear that true gluten-free bread is a real trick to pull off... That makes me think that crackers or crisp breads are possibly a smarter way to go, but I might be wrong.

[Rikke Olsen]

Yeah, pancakes/crepes are easy to make, but a real loaf is super hard.

I recently came across buckwheat and buttermilk flatbread, though.

[Joshua Naterman]

Do share! I love flatbread

[jl5555]

A recent Food Arts magazine article has a very cool article on bread-making, specifically scandic bread-making focusing on rugbrød. http://www.foodarts.com/news/features/15955/the-baker-in-the-rye

There is some interesting discussion in that article that should help you somewhat. Also, I wouldn't hesitate to contact some of the bakers mentioned in the article, I'm sure if they were approached by a "gymnast" with specific dietary needs they'd be hip to help.

It's SUPER difficult making a sandwich bread with high content of buckwheat. They get very dense and crumbly. You absolutely need some kind of binder; I'm experimenting with eggs, psyllium husk and rice/potato starch.

I still haven't found the right blend, but I'll keep experimenting! Another issue is that it easily gets very sticky and doughy on the inside.

Low GI, gluten free bread is HARD!

[Rikke Olsen]

Oh, as a Dane, I'm very, very familiar with rugbrød, and my mother has baked it quite a few times, especially when I was a child. It's very different from regular sandwich bread, and doesn't really go well as a sandwich.

Also, I think I'd have more luck finding the perfect formula for a my own bread, than to get in touch with Claus Meyer or Camilla Plum

However, I have thought of trying making an actual sourdough buckwheat bread... but I'm really not that experienced of a baker, and I don't even own an oven; I usually use my parents' when I visit them.

[Larry Roseman]

Since my wife's been away, I have eaten meatless (save fish) for 3 days almost non-intentionally She's been cooking dishes with some form of meat almost every night. I think my body just wanted a break. Can't say I feel any better or worse, but the plates are easier to clean.

Favorite "recipe" so far: noodles (buck or whole wheat) with sauteed tofu, tuna, mushrooms and spinach, cottage cheese, tomato sauce, Italian spices, garlic powder, cheese and pepper sauce - nuked or mixed on stove until hot. Nice and gooey.

Wouldn't elevate it to dish status, but tasty nonetheless....

[Larry Roseman]

Since my wife's been away, I have eaten meatless (save fish) for 3 days almost non-intentionally She's been cooking dishes with some form of meat almost every night. I think my body just wanted a break. Can't say I feel any better or worse, but the pots 'n pans are easier to clean.

Favorite "recipe" so far: noodles (buck or whole wheat) with sauteed tofu, tuna, mushrooms and spinach, cottage cheese, tomato sauce, Italian spices, garlic powder, cheese and pepper sauce - nuked or mixed on stove until hot. Nice and gooey.

Wouldn't elevate it to dish status, but tasty nonetheless....

[WitnessTheFitness]

Looks like Meatless Monday has really caught on this past year. Got endorsed by Oprah, and put into practice by the city governments of LA, Washington DC, and SF, and a huge number of university cafeterias. According to a poll by the American Meat Institute, nearly 20% of people are following Meatless Monday now. I'm really surprised at the success

[Larry Roseman]

Looks like Meatless Monday has really caught on this past year. Got endorsed by Oprah, and put into practice by the city governments of LA, Washington DC, and SF, and a huge number of university cafeterias. According to a poll by the American Meat Institute, nearly 20% of people are following Meatless Monday now. I'm really surprised at the success

I should add that after meatless for a 4 days, my gold crown fell out, got an eye infection and a bad cold with a lot of muscle soreness. I do not say that it's related, although a fried chicken dinner seemed to help.

I'm bad.

[WitnessTheFitness]

Ouch, that's quite the list of ailments. But the lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels balanced it out, right?

Has anyone seen the documentary Forks Over Knives? Watched it last week, after a friend told me they cut down their meat consumption by half the moment they saw it. Basically it's about the rise of meat and dairy consumption in America, and the diseases that exploded when we dramatically doubled our consumption to 600lbs of dairy and 260lbs of meat a year per person after fast food and factory farms entered the picture. Scary stuff, but the nutritional science behind it was really interesting.

[Quick Start Test Smith]

I don't consume any animal products besides meat and a tiny bit of butter for my buckwheat waffles. I actually would be a vegan if I could afford enough vegetables to actually satiate me (also if I could bear drinking protein powder ALL the time). Vegetables are very expensive around here... As it is, I don't eat too much meat because I use protein isolate instead a good bit of the time. Maybe sometime...

[Larry Roseman]

Ouch, that's quite the list of ailments. But the lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels balanced it out, right?

Has anyone seen the documentary Forks Over Knives? Watched it last week, after a friend told me they cut down their meat consumption by half the moment they saw it. Basically it's about the rise of meat and dairy consumption in America, and the diseases that exploded when we dramatically doubled our consumption to 600lbs of dairy and 260lbs of meat a year per person after fast food and factory farms entered the picture. Scary stuff, but the nutritional science behind it was really interesting.

Will look for it. I find that my dairy goes up when my meat eating goes down. To me, it's a bit like a campfire -

after eating meat I feel very close to the fire, poultry comfortably warm, dairy (and fish) on the outskirts and vegetables outside of it's warmth. I like vegetables, tofu and the like but too much leaves me feeling a bit cold on the inside. Know what I mean?

[Razz]

Still think this topic is a big joke. Eating animal products is essential to human health, just choose your sources wisely and it's perfect for both you and the environment.

[Philip Chubb]

Still think this topic is a big joke. Eating animal products is essential to human health, just choose your sources wisely and it's perfect for both you and the environment.

+1. There are so many topics on this board about eating at exactly the right times and amounts of calories. I am wondering when people actually do the eating and training.

[Joshua Naterman]

Ouch, that's quite the list of ailments. But the lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels balanced it out, right?

Has anyone seen the documentary Forks Over Knives? Watched it last week, after a friend told me they cut down their meat consumption by half the moment they saw it. Basically it's about the rise of meat and dairy consumption in America, and the diseases that exploded when we dramatically doubled our consumption to 600lbs of dairy and 260lbs of meat a year per person after fast food and factory farms entered the picture. Scary stuff, but the nutritional science behind it was really interesting.

I believe I have seen this. It is the one about living conditions of the animals, right?

If so, the "nutritional science" is really pointing to the hazards of eating meat and dairy that comes from disgusting living conditions and feed that is not what the animals would eat in nature.

Edit: This is a different documentary. I'll have to watch this before being able to have any useful comments regarding "Forks over Knives" (End edit).

There's nothing, that I am aware of, that links any disease to meat or dairy itself (but I haven't seen Forks over Knives yet).

Obviously I'm excluding enzyme deficiencies and specific allergies, because those are personal deficiencies and not infections. Of course there IS data suggesting that red meat consumption is correlated with a small decrease in lifespan, but not a decrease in quality years of life. There is also no control for lifestyle or whether the meat is sourced from well-raised animals or feedlot prisoners, or any number of environmental factors ranging from pesticide content to lord knows what else.

Just saying.

By the same token, I think it's a mistake to say that eating animal products is essential to human health. There are quite a lot of healthy vegetarians out there, as well as many who are not healthy.

Animal products, particularly liver as it is the primary B vitamin and iron store, which are the two things that vegetarians and especially vegans are extremely susceptible to deficiency in, are a good part of the overall diet. You don't need much, I mean 4 ounces of liver gives you enough B vitamins for 8-10 days. You have that once per week and you're fine, at least until you're 45-60 years old and running low on intrinsic factor... at that point you need sublingual tablets or b12 injections.

The logistics of how many people we have, how many animals there are, how much space we need to raise enough for everyone to get what we would believe is an ideal amount, all have no bearing on health. Try to remember that we started eating animals when there were less than 10 million humans on the planet, and that this continued until the middle ages when there were still less than 100 million.

Industrialization is what allowed for the population boom that has in turn created a situation where we no longer have the space, at least with current methods, to raise meat with a natural lifestyle in quantities sufficient to feed everyone.

That is bad math, not bad nutrition. There is a serious difference in my opinion.

[Joshua Naterman]

I forgot to mention one very, very important thing:

The single biggest change in our diets is that we eat fewer plants, not that we eat more meat. Meat consumption may have doubled, but plant consumption has dropped through the floor. I'm not talking about grains, but leaves.

The single biggest positive change anyone can make in their lives is to eat lots, and I mean lots, of leaves.

If you watch documentaries on nearly all indigenous tribes, you'll find a commonality: With the exception of the Inuit, who live in places where leaves are relatively hard to come by, everyone eats TONS of leaves. More accurately, 3-5 lbs per DAY. Per day!

Are you eating 3-5 lbs of leaves per day? 3-5 lbs of veggies even?

Your best bet, in my opinion, is to get organic frozen spinach. 2 lbs costs 4 dollars, and is probably over 5x more than you currently eat.

Obviously, if you have any heart problems (atrial fibrillation, if you take Warfarin(coumadin) or if you clot more easily than normal, you need to contact your physician to find out if eating more greens is right for you. There are other conditions and medications that can also cause problems when combined with lots of leafy greens due to the high vitamin K content.

If it is safe for you to eat greens, PLEASE eat them with fat! Olive oil, butter (my favorite), whatever.

The easy way to cook them is to dump a bunch of frozen leaves in a pan,add 3-4 oz of water, and cook on medium heat with 1 tablespoon (15mL) of butter or olive oil. They heat up quickly, and as soon as they are warm all the way through you should just eat them. This takes less than 10 minutes.

You can also steam the whole package in a covered pot with a steam basket, and I find that 10-14 minutes is the right time to do this for. Time starts, and veggies go in, when the water is rapidly boiling. I find that reducing heat to 80% of maximum is enough to keep anything from frothing over.

[Rik de Kort]

Are you eating 3-5 lbs of leaves per day? 3-5 lbs of veggies even?

Your best bet, in my opinion, is to get organic frozen spinach. 2 lbs costs 4 dollars, and is probably over 5x more than you currently eat.

Are we talking pre-cooked weight here?

[Joshua Naterman]

Yes. It's a lot, I know. It makes sense though, since it seems that we're designed to have higher fiber diets than we do: Estimates that I am familiar with are that pre-industrial humans, and more accurately pre-agricultural humans, got something like 80-100 grams of "fiber" per day. That's about right for the level of leafy vegetable intake that seems to be fairly common among indigenous peoples that are isolated from industrialization. They eat meat too, and sometimes a lot, but the big thing I see that has changes is the leaves. And other veggies too, of course, but the leaves just have so much in them and are so abundant most of the year that it's hard not to think that they play a major role in our metabolisms.

[WitnessTheFitness]

Still think this topic is a big joke. Eating animal products is essential to human health, just choose your sources wisely and it's perfect for both you and the environment.

That it is essential to human health is what we always hear through the meat and dairy industries' marketing campaigns, and by our food culture that are created in part as a result of that advertising-- but when you look at the facts and figures, denying that over consumption of meat and dairy contributes to multiple types of disease, most notably heart disease, is like denying that smoking contributes to lung cancer. It's just that overwhelmingly established of a connection at this point, and acknowledged by every credible medical and nutritional organization, with some of the largest, most comprehensive nutritional studies in history on its side. I've no doubt you can find random small studies saying that consuming huge amounts of dairy and meat has no adverse health effects, but I also guarantee that for every one you find you'll find more than five times as many studies saying that they do, and the ones saying they do will be the most comprehensive ones.

But really, we can even ignore all the studies and science and just take a look at the societies around us. With heart disease as the number one killer in America--a diet related disease--killing people left and right, costing America half a trillion dollars in medical costs per yer, clearly something is wrong. Is it pure coincidence that developed societies which consume the most meat and dairy also have the highest rates of many forms of cancer and disease? If milk is so good for our bones, why do societies with the most milk intake have the highest rates of osteoporosis? You can line up the major diet-related diseases on a graph, and line up the consumption of dairy and meat with them, and you'll get nearly a perfect correlation. No kidding, when I did this for a project in my statistics class the correlation coefficient was so close I just stared at my calculator screen thinking, "Sweet Jesus"

Of course correlation doesn't equal causation, so maybe all those are mere coincidences and can be explained by other factors, right? Except when we do look at the science itself, we find that it's not merely an impossible coincidence.

Now, I'm not saying meat and dairy are unhealthy on their own. I think moderate levels of consumption are perfectly healthy--but in societies like America, where we consume 600lbs of dairy and 250lbsof meat every year, "moderate" to us is like Bill Gates considering spending a hundred million on a house to be a moderate amount of cash.

I'll talk a lil' about Forks Over Knives to tie into my response to Josh: Forks Over Knives is about the studies the physician Caldwell Esselstyn, and the nutritional biochemist Colin Campbell. In 1983 Campbell was a director of a joint study with Cornell University, Oxford University, and China's Academy of Preventative Medicine. This "China Study" is widely regarded as the most comprehensive nutritional study ever conducted, a 20 year project that the New York Times summed up nicely as "the Grand Prix of epidemiology." The study itself is way too detailed and long to talk about in depth here, so I'll just post the summaries and conclusions. If you're interested check out the book about it, or the documentary. The Wikipedia article has nice summaries too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study_%28book%29

The study examined mortality rates from 48 forms of cancer and other chronic diseases from 1973–75 in 65 counties in China, and correlated them with 1983–84 dietary surveys and bloodwork from 6,500 people, 100 from each county. It concluded that counties with a high consumption of animal-based foods in 1983–84 were more likely to have had higher death rates from "Western" diseases as of 1973–75, while the opposite was true for counties that ate more plant foods in 1983–84. The study was conducted in those counties because they had genetically similar populations that tended, over generations, to live in the same way in the same place, and eat diets specific to those regions.

The authors conclude that people who eat a plant-based/vegan diet—avoiding animal products such as beef, pork, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, and milk, and reducing their intake of processed foods and refined carbohydrates—will escape, reduce, or reverse the development of chronic diseases.

More important than the words of a study, though, is how that information can be applied to the real world, which is where the cardiologist Caldwell Esselstyn comes into the documentary. He carried out a twenty year study--longest of its kind--with his patients that suffered from heart disease, some of them so severely that their prognosis was they would die within a year, to see if reducing meat and dairy consumption could treat their heart disease. The results?

Cardiac events: The 17 patients in the study had 49 cardiac events in the years leading up to the study, and had undergone aggressive treatment procedures. Several had multiple bypass operations. After beginning the eating plan, there were no more cardiac events in the group within a 12-year period.

Drop in cholesterol levels: After 5 years on Dr. Esselstyn’s plant-based diet, the average total cholesterol levels of his research group dropped from 246 milligrams per deciliter to 137 mg/dL (Above 240 mg/dL is considered “high risk,†below 150 mg/dL is the total cholesterol level seen in cultures where heart disease is essentially nonexistent.) This is the most profound drop in cholesterol ever documented in the medical literature in a study of this type.

Angiogram evidence: Angiograms taken of the participants in the study show a widening of the coronary arteries, and thus a reversal of the disease.

After a lifetime of devoting himself to treating heart disease, he found that it wasn't quadruple bypass surgeries, or fifty bottles of pills everyday, that were curing people. It was nature's medicine: diet. So why, when milk and meat are reported by Got Milk commercials and the like to be nature's perfect food, is it wrecking havoc on our bodies? Well, makes a lot of sense when you remember homo sapiens are not carnivores. Atherosclerosis (the bad thing that happens to our arteries from cholesterol) only affects herbivores, not carnivores. A lion with heart disease from saturated fat and cholesterol? Doesn't exist. A lion can gulp down gazelle as much as he wants and isn't going to need a quadruple bypass surgery. But us? Well, despite what some people think, we're not carnivores, and eating 600lbs of dairy and 250lbs of meat like an average American screws our health over big time. Just to get out the myth that we're carnivorous out of the way, I'll quote a publication by the doctor William C. Roberts:

Although most of us conduct our lives as omnivores, in that we eat flesh as well as vegetables and fruits, human beings have characteristics of herbivores, not carnivores (2). The appendages of carnivores are claws; those of herbivores are hands or hooves. The teeth of carnivores are sharp; those of herbivores are mainly flat (for grinding). The intestinal tract of carnivores is short (3 times body length); that of herbivores, long (12 times body length). Body cooling of carnivores is done by panting; herbivores, by sweating. Carnivores drink fluids by lapping; herbivores, by sipping. Carnivores produce their own vitamin C, whereas herbivores obtain it from their diet. Thus, humans have characteristics of herbivores, not carnivores.

To paraphrase a funny speech by Gary Yourofsky: Stick a bowl of fruit and a bunny rabbit beside a hungry three year old child. If the kid instinctively grabs and kills the bunny rabbit, and eats it, fur, flesh, meat, tendons, organs and all, instead of just grabbing and eating the strawberries, you have yourself a carnivore. Not going to happen.

Did early humans living in climates not abundant with plant food need to adapt and eat meat to have a steady food source and survive? Definitely. But this is 2012, not 10,000 BC, and we can absolutely thrive without meat in our diets in this day and age.

That meat is necessary in the diet for health is simply a myth. What nutrient exists in meat that doesn't exist in plant-based food? B12 is what people always answer, but so many meat and dairy alternatives are heavily fortified with synthetic B12 that it's impossible for a vegetarian or vegan to be deficient unless they're completely clueless, or just has a godawful diet. Every other nutrient exists in plant-based foods, which makes sense when you realize that the reason that meat has so many nutrients in the first place is because those animals are eating plants, or eating other animals that eat plants, and then it enters their body. Plants are the origin of it all. So for vegetarianism, instead of getting your nutrients by eating a body that ate and processed plants to get the nutrients,you go straight to the source and just eat the plant itself. No need for the middleman. Pretty logical, right? Plants are nature's true golden food. Way more nutrient dense than meat, low saturated fat, no cholesterol, high in antioxidants, phytochemicals, dietary fiber, you name it.

When a vegetarian has a nutrient deficiency, it's because their personal diet has problems, not because vegetarianism itself does. If someone does even 10 minutes of research on it, and picks fairly healthy foods, then they'll have 0 deficiencies. The reason you can get a vegetarian with health issues is because they either A) did zero research B) simply don't care about their food choices C) they're one of those people who went vegetarian as a method of losing weight, and are simply using it as an excuse to eat less types of food. So they suffer from nutrient deficiencies in the same way someone starving themselves does.

Now, what many people who are into fitness then say is, "Plants may be healthy for normal people, but for people who want to become muscular and strong they have to eat meat." They say that meat has higher quality protein, etc. And sure, meat milk and eggs are powerful sources of protein, but the world of plant-based foods has awesome protein sources too, more than enough to build just as much muscle mass and strength as any steak. Take a look at NFL players who are vegetarian, the vegan bodybuilders who won Mr. Universe, the reigning world champion welterweight boxer who is vegan, the vegetarian MMA fighter Jake Shields, the vegetarian who won the wrestling competition in India, any of the many veg fitness models, or Carl Lewis, the vegan runner with 9 Olympic gold medals to his name, who broke all the world records during his time.

TL;DR version of all of that: Meat and dairy might be healthy in moderation, but our insane consumption rates in America and much of the West are not moderate, and are resulting in many serious diet-related diseases that could be prevented by consuming less. There is no nutrient in meat and dairy that is not present in the world of plant foods, and that it is necessary to eat meat and drink milk to be healthy is a myth perpetuated by those industries. Embrace your inner herbivore

I'll save the post about the environmental issues of animal agriculture for tomorrow, 'cause that's so much data that it'll take a long time to write up and I'm gonna fail my midterm tomorrow if I don't go study But here's a report from a few weeks ago by the United Nations Environment Programme that gives a good summary of the issue for those interested: http://na.unep.net/geas/getUNEPPageWithArticleIDScript.php?article_id=92

[Philip Chubb]

It's just that overwhelmingly established of a connection at this point, and acknowledged by every credible medical and nutritional organization, with some of the largest, most comprehensive nutritional studies in history on its side. I've no doubt you can find random small studies saying that consuming huge amounts of dairy and meat has no adverse health effects, but I also guarantee that for every one you find you'll find more than five times as many studies saying that they do, and the ones saying they do will be the most comprehensive ones.

Did these studies note the difference between grass fed meat and concentration camp meat?

Deficiencies? Try basic omega-3s. Yes I know about ALA and I also know about how small the conversion rate is. Especially ALA to DHA.

It's not the insane consumption rate that is the issue. It is the type.

[Joshua Naterman]

Warning: This is a typical long post from me. I try not to do these so much anymore because they take up everyone's time (yours and mine) but I feel like there are times where basic facts need to be injected into a polarized debate, and since I could care less about whether someone is 100% meat or 100% veggie I feel like I can be reasonably objective here. I would also like to point out that Meatless Monday is a great way to reduce the demand for meat without causing any issues at all to any of us. I think we would all be very hard pressed to prove, or even believe, that humans always had meat every day in large quantities. One day per week of no meat is absolutely easier on the planet, and won't harm any of us.

Now, on to the post!

Alex, I think it is somewhere in the middle because BY WEIGHT (not by calorie, necessarily) we are definitely supposed to be eating more plant matter than animal matter. Having said that, 2 lbs of meat per day is sufficient for everyone walking the planet, including NFL linemen. That's almost 200g of high quality protein, and that's enough to support over 300 lbs of lean mass according to all of our research so far. That's simply a regression from where nitrogen balance occurs (1.2 to 1.4g of protein per kg bodyweight) and is like this: 200g protein / 1.4 g per kg bodyweight = 316 lbs. when dividing by 1.2 it's 366 lbs. That is JUST the protein from the meat alone, and does not include what will be present in all the other food an athlete should be eating. Protein is heavily biased towards lean mass maintenance, so we're not going to include body fat over 8-9% of total weight because adipocytes just don't have much of any protein turnover. Most of the turnover is in lean mass. Blood cells, bone cells, muscle cells, organs, etc.

That's just to point out facts. The truth is that smaller people need much less. At my size, 223 lbs at the moment, I only need 141 grams protein, at the most, to maintain myself. And that's assuming a very lean body. Keep that in mind.

It doesn't mean I won't build muscle a bit faster with something more like 200g per day, but the rest will come from other sources. All I'd need is a few lbs of veggies (take your pick, it won't matter) and a few cups of milk and I'll be over that no problemo!

Alex makes a very, very good point about controlling for sourcing. This is not done.

Now, a few practical words about what you just said regarding physiological differences of herbivores vs humans.

Fact: Sources from this century, and from the 1990's instead of the 1880's more specifically, quote the human intestinal tract (from mouth to anus) as being around 8.5 meters long on average. Other numbers are 7.6 meters.

Since the average person is 1.776 meters in america, we can do some very simple math and say that 8.5 / 1.776 = a ratio of 4.78 to one.

EVEN if we took the maximum length from 1889 documents, 12 meters, and divided by 1.776 we get 12 /1.776 = 6.76 times body length.

Now, I admit to not being a math genius, but I am very certain that this puts us smack in the middle of herbivore and carnivore physiology. Of course, so do our teeth but that's a separate issue that we're all very familiar with I think (Cuspids? pure herbivores don't have them).

If we put ourselves on a sliding scale then, with 3 being pure carnivore and 12 being pure herbivore, we're 2.8-3.8 points from being carnivores and what, 5.2-6.2 points away from being pure herbivores?

You are living in a bubble of non-science (yes, that's a slant pun with nonsense) if you think that vegetarianism doesn't have a few glaring nutrient deficiency problems. B12 and iron are the major ones, though you can do a lot to offset the iron with enormous greens intake (which you should have anyways regardless of diet, assuming you don't have medical conditions that preclude such food) along with citric acid to be a reducing agent for the iron.

Protein? Not a problem. Energy? Can actually be a problem if relying on whole food sources and also have a high level of activity. Of course, this is also why there are proportionally fewer obese vegetarians. It's just very difficult to get a huge excess of energy because of all the chewing involved unless you are chugging oils. In some sports it's almost impossible to get enough without the oils.

Overall nutrient exposure? Much greater, but again that has nothing to do with the lack of meat. It has everything to do with the presence of lots of veggies, which meat eaters should ALSO have.

Dairy... Dairy, dairy. Look. Milk from sick cows is a terrible idea. No one is arguing that. However, the argument of "how many adult animals drink milk besides humans" is retarded for two reasons: One, it suggests that our digestive tract and immune systems somehow undergo severe transformations that make dairy toxic to us. Two, it completely ignores the basic logistics of feeding adults.

Let's say you have a cow. This cow has a calf. If that calf keeps drinking milk forever, and that cow has another calf, it now has to eat for 3 cows. Another calf makes 4 cows. 4 Adult cows (eventually, if they all keep drinking). Not only is that an enormous burden on the mother, who somehow has to consume enough food to make enough energy for her AND enough energy to make enough milk for 4 other animals her size. I'm sure you can see how this is completely unsustainable.

The sourcing of the milk, and by that I mean the treatment of the animals (hormones, food, conditions, etc) giving milk is going to be the source of negative health outcomes.

Finally, a word about carnivores. How long does a lion live? How long does a wolf live? How long does ANY pure carnivore live?

Answers:

Lion: 10-14 years in the wild, perhaps 20 in captivity.

Wolf: 6-10 years in the wild, up to 16 in captivity.

POLAR BEARS: 20-30 years.

Interesting. Are you aware that, in the average human who has a halfway healthy omnivorous diet (NOT the sugar junkies, processed food addicts or victims of trans fats) and develops heart disease that we typically don't see symptoms for at least 40 years? Sometimes much longer.

Carnivores don't live long enough to die of cardivascular diseases, and that's pretty much a fact. Same reason that, even today, there are a crapton more people over the age of 30 having heart attacks unrelated to genetic heart disorders than under the age of 30.

We're talking about a HUUUUGE ratio, and together this information does a lot to weaken the idea that meat contributes heavily to our CVD.

Furthermore, the main fatty acid substituent of arterial plaques is palmitic acid. I want you to go around and check how much palmitic acid is in meat.

I have, and I couldn't find any cut that had more than 1 gram per 4-6 ounces of meat. That's less than 5% of total fat.

However, and this should catch your attention, do you know what excess carbohydrates are turned into? Palmitic acid. It is the base from which all other long chain saturated fats are built. The #1 source of palmitic acid in our diets is conversion from EXCESS carbs.

This seques nicely into why nutrient timing (so to speak) is important for long-term health as well as body composition, but I won't write more than I already have in this post.

[Joshua Naterman]

The short version, for those who don't want to read all the above, is simply that you can't say that meats cause the problems when you pile on tons of veggies as well.

We know the truth already, which is that refined foods that cause large carbohydrate surges are a huge part of CVD development (sugary or not). If you already have a bunch of fat in your system from any source, meat or olive oil or whatever, then all the excess fat from the carb surge along with the inflammation that comes from having EXCESS carbs regularly (in absorption curve terms, not necessarily daily limits, which again points to the health utility of nutrient timing and understanding absorption) will absolutely combine to form a situation that will kill you from the inside.

It is, however, a giant mistake to think it's meat's fault or dairy's fault. The fault is in diets that have unhealthy animals producing the meat/milk, refined foods that provide most of the carbs, an enormous deficit of plant matter (the general population of America doesn't eat anywhere near enough plants) and combining it all with what SHOULD BE a healthy amount of fat in a natural diet (but is harmful because of the effects due to absorption characteristics of the crap diet).

That is what is killing us, and those studies actually support these statements.

I think that deciding meat is the problem when you are losing meat AND increasing vegetables is ridiculous. Talk to any statistician about that and they'll tell you this: You just created two independent variables, and that means you have a built=in confound.

Now, the studies are great and they prove that modern diets are killing us as well as there being a surefire way to reverse CVD in the vast majority of people (and prevent it in the first place). They just don't prove that meat has anything to do with it.

[Quick Start Test Smith]

Hi Josh,

Are you writing a book on nutrition? I think you've hinted at it in the past, but after reading your posts today, I really think you've refined your writing and presentation style into something very potent and understandable for the average layman.