Obesity Can Be Caused By Chemicals in Foods

In Tuesday’s article I discussed some of the dietary reasons for the increased rate of obesity in most countries around the world, and especially in the U.S.

I said how some of the main culprits are sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and an increased reliance of fast foods.

And in yesterday’s article, I showed you how Kellogg’s is trying to fool the public into thinking that a breakfast cereal that is laden with sugar and junk is a food that can boost your immune system.

No wonder obesity is, according to the World Health Organization, a global epidemic! With friends like these, who needs enemies!

But there’s another category of foods that can lead to weight gain and obesity – the chemicals in your food, even if those chemicals don`t contain a single calorie.

To understand this, you’ll need to realize that the liver is your primary detoxification organ. Your liver is also your primary fat-burning organ. Therefore, the more unnatural chemicals you consume on a regular basis, the more time and energy your liver needs to spend detoxifying you. But, the more your liver is consumed with the role of detoxification, the less time and energy it will have for burning fat.

For instance, it’s safe to say that pesticides are poisons: their primary purpose is to kill living organisms, and most non-organic foods are laden with pesticides.

Now, these pesticides don’t transform into non-toxic, safe entities once inside the body.  As the pesticides enter the body, the body’s defense mechanisms send signals that poisons have entered.

How does your body deal with a poison?  By attempting to neutralize it. This means your body attempts to render the poison harmless, and then remove it , generally through normal elimination channels, such as through your colon. Your colon is the primary organ used to eliminate toxins from the body, and the liver is the organ most often responsible for rendering poisons harmless.

But what happens when people eat unnatural chemicals on a regular basis?

Then the liver becomes overwhelmed with the need to detoxify all of those chemicals and poisons, and the poisons start backing up into the blood.

Your liver is also the great warehouse of the body, and so it also stores toxins and poisons that it was unable to neutralize. It does this to keep those poisons out of your bloodstream and from circulating in your body.

This can be taxing on the liver – it can be overwhelming trying to detoxify all of the chemicals being consumed on a daily basis; in addition it is trying to store all the poisons that it wasn’t able to neutralize.

Some estimates are that three fourths of the average person’s liver is used to store toxins that the liver was unable to render harmless.

No wonder that for so many people losing weight is virtually impossible: Their primary fat burning organ is overwhelmed with another task, and it’s become only half functional.

Not only will this lead to weight gain and an inability to lose weight, it can also lead to diabetes, because the liver plays a vital role in the uptake of blood glucose, and if the liver is not fully functioning, its ability to do the work it needs to do with blood glucose can be severely impaired.

And guess what? Like obesity, diabetes has reached epidemic proportions.

So what to do about it? A couple of things.

The first is to try and stop consuming chemicals in your diet on a regular basis. This generally means giving up processed foods as best as possible, and eating organic foods as much as possible. Plant-based foods, particularly vegetables, are very liver friendly.

This will prevent many new chemicals from entering your body, and is a tremendous step in the right direction. But what about those poisons already stored in your liver and circulating in your blood?  Sometimes it takes more than changing your diet to clear out the accrued chemicals residing in the liver.

That is why over the years there have been a number of natural/herbal approaches that have been developed to cleanse the liver.

Milk thistle, vitamin C, selenium, beta carotene, vitamin E, and N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) are all powerful antioxidants which are helpful in liver detoxification.

The amino acid SAM-E plays an important role in liver health, in addition to helping with depression. Cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and cabbage in the diet have been shown to enhance liver detoxification. Besides using them as foods, you can also juice with them.

The B vitamins, including riboflavin and niacin, also are helpful in liver detoxification.

Coffee enemas, used in Gerson Cancer Therapy, is also something that can detox the liver.

Where’s the Protein? Where’s the Beef?: Part 2

I will now continue from yesterday’s article, which was Part 1 of this two-part series. In that article I discussed what are our protein needs on a daily basis, and that we can meet all our needs with a diet of no or less meat.

I left off talking about foods from the vegetable world that are good sources of protein. Interestingly, I said that 100 calories of spinach contains more protein than 100 calories of steak.

Another powerhouse protein food is the grain quinoa. Quinoa is not only high in protein, but it is also a complete protein, meaning it contains all nine essential amino acids. Vegans and vegetarians concerned with protein intake should incorporate this healthy grain into their meals.

Quinoa is also a good source of magnesium, iron, copper, phosphorous and is well-endowed with the amino acid lysine, which is essential for tissue growth and repair.

Cooked soybeans are another good food, and they rank 10th on the World’s Healthiest Foods Containing Protein List beating out eggs, all dairy and most meats. In the nutritional community, soybeans are regarded as equal in protein quality to animal foods. One cup of soybean provides approximately 57.2% of the daily value for protein for less than 300 calories and with only 2.2 grams of saturated fats.

Studies have also shown that soy helps reduce cholesterol levels while consumption of animal proteins makes cholesterol levels rise. Soy is also rich in iron, magnesium and omega-3 fatty acids.

Soy can also be found in a variety of forms such as soy milk, soy yogurt, soy cheese, soy ice cream, tempeh, meat substitutes, miso, soy protein powder and tofu.

Other foods that are excellent sources of dietary protein include mustard greens, artichokes, corn, lentils, nuts, seeds, hot cereals and other beans.

Now, let me switch gears a little and go back to a theme that I touched on two days ago with my article about the vegan bodybuilder Kenneth Williams. As I said in that article, a common misperception is that to be an athlete you have to eat a meat-based diet and that there’s no way you can be vegan/vegetarian.

Well, consider the following list of current vegan and vegetarian athletes: Prince Fielder (MLB), Tony Gonzalez (NFL), Mac Danzig (Martial Arts), Pat Neshek (MLB), Scott Jurek (Ultra marathoner), Brendan Brazier (Iron man), Kenneth Williams (Body Builder), Christine Vardaros (Cyclist). Other vegan and vegetarian athletes include: Peter Brock, Carl Lewis, Salim Stoudamire, Ricky Williams, Ed Templeton, Bill Pearl (former Mr. Universe), and many other Olympians, world record holders and top athletes.

Most athletes take protein powders, and vegan and vegetarian athletes can also supplement with soy, brown rice and hemp protein powders.

Finally, I want to say a word about protein consumption in general. As I mentioned in yesterday’s Part 1, Americans eat way too much protein.

According to U.S. RDA calculations, the average person in America consumes 100 to 120 grams of protein per day, with the majority of it coming from animal sources. As I reported in yesterday’s article, the U.S. RDA states that an individual on a 2,000 calorie diet only needs 75 grams of protein – that means that the average American is consuming an excess of 25 to 45 grams of protein per day.

An excess of protein, particularly animal protein, is exceptionally harmful to the body. This was the findings of The China Study, and I talked about the findings of this landmark study in an earlier article.

I’ll sum it up again: The China Study examined the relationship between the consumption of animal products and diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, obesity and other degenerative diseases.

The authors of the study concluded that based on long-term scientific studies, diets high in animal proteins from both meat and dairy are strongly linked to heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes. The authors recommended a whole food, vegan diet as a means to minimize and/or reverse the development of chronic diseases.

Excess protein, especially coupled with America’s sedentary lifestyle, can also be taxing on the kidneys. Animal proteins are inherently stressful on the kidneys, but overages will cause the kidneys to underperfom. When the kidneys are not operating optimally, the risk for premature aging or developing kidney stones sharply increases.

Bone health is also effected by excessive protein consumption. Excess protein consumption causes calcium to be leeched from the bones, which may then cause osteoporosis, acid reflux, obesity, plaque build-up in the arteries, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and arthritis.

So there you have it. If you are eating vegan or vegetarian, or you are eating not much animal-based foods, the next time someone asks you how can you be getting enough protein, you’ll have plenty of ammunition to counter back.

Where’s the Protein? Where’s the Beef?: Part 1

Yesterday’s article was about vegan bodybuilder Kenneth Williams, and his busting of the myth that in order to build muscle and be an athlete you need to eat animal protein.

I wrote this article not necessarily to encourage you to become vegetarian or vegan as much as to show you that eating animal foods is not the key to feeling strong and vital, and that you can do the same (actually better) with a diet of less or no animal foods, because there are health issues inherent with a diet that stresses animal foods.

As I pointed out in the China Study article, a diet high in animal foods is detrimental to the health.

Also, a diet high in animal foods is not conducive to living a
Low Density Lifestyle.

Protein is synonymous with strength, and so it is assumed that in order to build strength and be an athlete, you need to eat protein, and since it is assumed that meat is the best source of protein, the thinking is that you need to eat meat to achieve your goals.

It is also thought that if you don’t eat meat, or don’t eat enough meat, whether you are an athlete or not, you will not get enough protein and therefore become protein deficient.

One of the most common questions anybody who doesn’t eat animal foods gets is “where do you get your protein?”

Like carbohydrates and fats, protein is one of the essential building blocks of the body. It is an essential nutrient needed by the body in order to function properly. Protein’s primary function is to build and repair muscles but it also keeps the immune system functioning properly and is involved with the synthesis of hormones and enzymes.

Protein may also be used as an energy source when there has been insufficient carbohydrate consumption.

Protein is made up of 20 building blocks, known as amino acids. Amino acids are classified as essential and non-essential amino acids. Essential amino acids are not created in the body and therefore must be consumed through dietary protein.

How much protein do we need? There are two ways to calculate total protein needs. The U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.4g of protein for every pound of healthy weight (or approximately 0.8g per every kilogram of weight). For example, a man who weighs 150 pounds needs approximately 60g of protein per day (150 x. 0.4 = 60).

Alternatively, protein can be calculated based on total caloric intake. Generally, 15 percent of total caloric consumption must come from protein. For example, on a 2,000 calorie diet, 300 calories must come from protein. To determine the number of grams needed, divide the resulting number of calories by 4. Thus, on a 2,000 calorie diet, 75 grams of protein must be consumed.

Since one ounce equals about 28 grams, the body actually needs very little protein to function properly – we need less than three ounces a day of protein.

As I said above, protein is commonly associated with animal foods – meat, eggs and dairy products – but these foods are not the only sources of protein nor are they necessarily the best sources for protein. Protein is found in every food. Fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds and legumes all contain protein.

It is impossible to become protein deficient eating a well-balanced vegan diet, largely due to the fact the body needs very little protein to perform. For example, one cup of black beans contains 15.2 grams of protein (roughly 30.5% of the daily value for protein), plus approximately 74.8% of the daily value for fiber. The total calories for a cup of black beans is only 227 calories and there is virtually no fat. Similarly, 100 calories of spinach contains more protein than 100 calories of steak.

Spinach also delivers a boost of fiber, anti-cancerous properties and iron for only a small amount of calories and no fat. Steak on the other hand, which not only provides less protein and no fiber, also contains saturated fat and harmful cholesterol.

I will be back with tomorrow with part 2 of this article. So tune in tomorrow…

Can You Build Muscle Without Meat?

There’s this belief that to build muscle you have to eat meat, and to build lots of muscle, you have to eat lots of meat.

“There’s no way you can be a pro bodybuilder without meat. I’ve never heard of anyone who doesn’t eat protein,” says Dexter “The Blade” Jackson, who last year won the premier international bodybuilding championship, Mr. Olympia.

Jackson routinely bookends a day of steak and chicken eating with 10 egg whites. (”My metabolism is very special,” he notes.) Meat is such an obvious delivery device for protein that bodybuilders often use the two words interchangeably.

But can someone become a bodybuilder without going this route? Is it a myth that if you don’t eat meat that it’s impossible to build muscle?

“I can’t think of any reason why muscle can’t be built on a vegan diet,” says nutrition professor Marion Nestle, the author of What to Eat. Going vegan, she explains, should have no effect on the performance of normal athletes, provided they eat a balanced diet.

Kenneth Williams is a prime example of the fact that not eating meat and building muscle are not mutually exclusive. He’s a professional body builder who five years ago made the switch from a full-blown meat eater to a vegan.

Now 41 years old, he’s currently 6 feet and 190 pounds. He took the last four years off from body building, but is now back in full training mode and hopes to gain another 25 pounds. And he’s doing it all on a diet of fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, legumes, and lots of soy protein.

In 2004, before he went on his hiatus from body building, Williams did the same thing most every other body builder did: eat lots of meat-based protein. But then one night in 2004, Williams had what he called “the awakening.” He was fixing a meal of two pieces of fried chicken, rice, and salad, but for some reason, he couldn’t stop glaring at the chicken.

“I was thinking about all the killing and the destruction going on in the world. And I looked down at that chicken and said, ‘I’m eating death, and I don’t even know why.’” He scraped the meat off his plate and went back to sleep a changed man.

He had never heard the word “vegan” before. All he knew was, “The spirit told me, ‘Nothing from an animal. You don’t eat nothing from an animal until you find out what’s going on.’” He entered the 2004 Natural Olympia, which is the one of the pharmaceutical-free-bodybuilding circuit’s premier contests, to prove a point to his meat-loving gym buddies.

In a feat that he claims “shocked the world,” Williams placed third in the novice division of the Natural Olympia in 2004, becoming a major figure in the exceedingly minor subculture of vegan bodybuilding.

So far, just a few vegans have infiltrated the elite levels of professional sports, such as Kansas City Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez, the former Atlanta Hawks guard Salim Stoudamire, and Ultimate Fighting Championship bruiser Mac Danzig.

Williams is on a mission to inflate his body into a bulging rejoinder to the myth that you can’t build muscle on a plant-based diet.

“If you think of a vegan,” he says, “you think of someone who is skinny and frail, who has issues. A tree hugger. Smells funny. I’m putting the breath of life back into people. I’m out to save lives.”

Williams generally eats between 210 and 250 grams of protein a day—what you’d find in about 2.5 pounds of lean top sirloin. He eats six or seven meals daily, and a few mornings before the most recent Natural Olympia, he prepared his second breakfast: a shake of water, 50 grams of soy protein, and three supplement powders made by HealthForce Nutritionals, his sponsor.

He has three of these a day, supplementing a diet of tofu, red and black beans, nuts, lentils, and leafy greens like kale.

The point of this article is that even if you have no intention to become a professional body builder and enter the Natural Olympia, there are many ways to build muscle, and it’s a myth that eating lots of meat is the only way.

As Williams shows, there are great sources of protein from vegetable sources, so there’s no way you can become protein deficient if you eat no meat or less meat.

The reality is that most people, particularly Americans, eat far too much protein.

If you recall, that’s the point I made when I wrote the article about the China Study and what their findings were. They precisely said that a diet high in animal protein is very detrimental to the health.

The Drugging of Livestock

There are many reasons to consider cutting down or cutting out eating meat. Over the course of this series I’ve talked about the health and environmental ramifications of a meat-based diet.

And of course, cutting down or cutting out meat consumption plays a key role in living a Low Density Lifestyle.

But one of the detrimental health ramifications that I haven’t mentioned to this point is the fact that livestock – chickens, pigs, and cattle – are fed antibiotics on a routine basis. They are fed the drugs not to stop illness but to encourage rapid growth, by promoting weight gain or more efficient feed consumption.

This is a public health nightmare, because the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock can lead to the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans, because it causes the development of bacteria that are immune to many treatments.

70 percent of antibiotics used in the United States is given to healthy chickens, pigs and cattle annually – a total of twenty-five million pounds of antibiotics per year fed to these animals. This is eight times more than the amount used as human medicine.

The FDA reports that 2 million Americans contract bacterial infections during hospital stays annually, and “70 percent of the infections are resistant to at least one antibiotic.”
This is the price that Americans pay for the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock.

With that in mind, in July the Obama administration announced that it would seek to ban many routine uses of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans.

In written testimony to the House Rules Committee, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner at the FDA of food and drugs, said feeding antibiotics to healthy chickens, pigs and cattle should cease. And Dr. Sharfstein said farmers should no longer be able to use antibiotics in animals without the supervision of a veterinarian.

In July, Congressional hearings were held to discuss a measure proposed by Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the Rules Committee. It would ban seven classes of antibiotics important to human health from being used in animals, and would restrict other antibiotics to therapeutic and some preventive uses.

These drugs are penicillins, tetracyclines, macrolides, lincosamides, streptogramins, aminoglycosides, and sulfonamides, along with any other drug used to treat bacterial illness in people.

The legislation is supported by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Pew Environment Group, and the American Medical Association, among other groups, but opposed by farm organizations like the National Pork Producers Council. The farm lobby’s opposition makes its passage unlikely, but advocates are hoping to include the measure in the legislation to revamp the health care system.

Of course, we know how famously well legislation to revamp the health care system is faring. It’s been watered down many times by interest groups – primarily the insurance and drug companies – who have much to lose if the status quo is upended.

The use of antibiotics for “purposes other than for the advancement of animal or human health should not be considered judicious use,” Dr. Sharfstein said in his written testimony. “Eliminating these uses will not compromise the safety of food.”

Much of Dr. Sharfstein’s testimony summarized information that has been widely accepted for years by medical groups.

Robert Martin, a senior officer at the Pew Environment Group, which has paid for an advertising campaign to support the measure, said the prospects for the measure’s passage were improving.

Meat and the Environment

Bill Maher

“But when it comes to bad for the environment, nothing — literally — compares with eating meat. The business of raising animals for food causes about 40 percent more global warming than all cars, trucks, and planes combined. If you care about the planet, it’s actually better to eat a salad in a Hummer than a cheeseburger in a Prius.” – Bill Maher

In the last article, I discussed Paul McCartney’s campaign for Meat Free Mondays.

In the article, I said how Sir Paul wasn’t emphasizing not eating meat one day a week for health reasons, but for the negative impact that eating meat has on the environment.

In 2006, the United Nations reported that livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Some of meat’s contribution to climate change is intuitive. It’s more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people.

Some of the contribution is gross. “Manure lagoons,” for instance, is the oddly evocative name for the acres of animal excrement that sit in the sun steaming nitrous oxide into the atmosphere.

And some of it would make Bart Simpson chuckle. Cow gas – interestingly, it’s mainly burps, not farts – is a real player.

Here is what the U.N. had to say. This is the news release from the U.N.’s news release service announcing the report, dated Nov. 29, 2006:

Cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent, than transportation, and smarter production methods, including improved animal diets to reduce enteric fermentation and consequent methane emissions, are urgently needed, according to a new United Nations report released today.

“Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems,” senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official Henning Steinfeld said. “Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”

Cattle-rearing is also a major source of land and water degradation, according to the FAO report, Livestock’s Long Shadow–Environmental Issues and Options, of which Mr. Steinfeld is the senior author.

“The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level,” it warns.

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 per cent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 per cent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 per cent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year, the report notes. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tons in 1999/2001 to 465 million tons in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tons.

The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector. It provides livelihoods to about 1.3 billion people and contributes about 40 per cent to global agricultural output. For many poor farmers in developing countries livestock are also a source of renewable energy for draft and an essential source of organic fertilizer for their crops.

Livestock now use 30 per cent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 per cent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 per cent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 per cent of pastures considered degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution from animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops.

Beyond improving animal diets, proposed remedies to the multiple problems include soil conservation methods together with controlled livestock exclusion from sensitive areas; setting up biogas plant initiatives to recycle manure; improving efficiency of irrigation systems; and introducing full-cost pricing for water together with taxes to discourage large-scale livestock concentration close to cities.

Sir Paul McCartney Says: “Go Meat Free on Mondays”

What the China Study Says About Eating Meat

I told you in yesterday’s article about several studies that showed the downside of eating meat, including a recent one concluded in the U.S. that studied 500,000 people.

Today I will tell you about the landmark study that sealed the deal for once and for all about the dangers of a diet top-heavy in animal foods.

This study was reported in the best-selling book, The China Study.

The China Study, published in 2005, was written by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., and his son, Thomas M. Campbell II, and is the definitive report about the detrimental effects of eating meat.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell is a professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University and one of the directors of the China Project, which was the study that “The China Study” reported on.

The China Project is a survey of death rates for twelve different kinds of cancer for more than 2,400 counties and 880 million (96%) of China’s citizens, conducted jointly by Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine over the course of twenty years.

The book examines the relationship between the consumption of animal foods and illnesses such as cancers of the breast, prostate, and large bowel, diabetes, coronary heart disease, obesity, autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, degenerative brain disease, and macular degeneration.

The authors conclude that diets high in protein, particularly animal protein (including casein in cow’s milk), are strongly linked to diseases such as heart disease, cancer and Type 2 diabetes.

The authors recommend that people eat a whole food, plant-based diet and avoid consuming beef, poultry and milk as a means to minimize and/or reverse the development of chronic disease.

In the book, Dr. Campbell stated that “several studies have now shown, in both experimental animals and in humans, that consuming animal-based protein increases blood cholesterol levels. Saturated fat and dietary cholesterol also raise blood cholesterol, although these nutrients are not as effective at doing this as is animal protein. In contrast, plant-based foods contain no cholesterol and, in various other ways, help to decrease the amount of cholesterol made by the body.”

He also stated that “these disease associations with blood cholesterol were remarkable, because blood cholesterol and animal-based food consumption both were so low by American standards. In rural China, animal protein intake (for the same individual) averages only 7.1 grams per day whereas Americans average 70 grams per day.”

He concludes by stating that “the findings from the China Study indicate that the lower the percentage of animal-based foods that are consumed, the greater the health benefits—even when that percentage declines from 10% to 0% of calories. So it’s not unreasonable to assume that the optimum percentage of animal-based products is zero, at least for anyone with a predisposition for a degenerative disease.”

The authors state that autoimmune diseases are more prevalent among people who consume a diet high in animal protein, particularly cow’s milk.

They also state that the consumption of animal protein, especially cow’s milk, result in higher concentrations of Calcium in the blood, which inhibits the process by which the body activates Vitamin D in the kidneys to a form that helps repress the development of autoimmune diseases.

Dr. Campbell then goes on to list various diseases that are linked to a diet high in animal protein. These include:

Autoimmune Diseases

Brain Diseases, including cognitive impairment, demential and Alzheimer’s.

Breast Cancer

Colorectal Cancer

Diabetes

Eye Diseases

Heart Disease

Kidney Stones

Metabolism and Incidence of Obesity

Osteoporosis

In concluding the book, Dr. Campbell stated that one of the biggest impediments to wholesale dietary changes in the U.S. “are powerful, influential, and enormously wealthy industries that stand to lose a vast amount of money if Americans start shifting to a plant-based diet.”

And so, there you have it. The most definitive study ever done on the profound detrimental effects of eating a diet that emphasizes animal food.

Why Red Meat isn’t Good For You

In the last 50 years in the U.S., red meat consumption has more than doubled. Where at one time, eating red was a luxury for most Americans, it is now the staple part of their diet.

I talked in yesterday’s introductory article to this series on meat eating that a diet that includes a high consumption of meat is not one that will allow you to be healthy or help you live a Low Density Lifestyle.

One of the largest studies ever conducted in the U.S. on the disastrous health effects of a diet high in red meat was published in the spring of 2009.

The study, appearing in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine, studied over 500,000 Americans over a decade long period.

The study found that men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of the two leading causes of death, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods.

The study was directed by the government agency, The National Cancer Institute, and involved 322,263 men and 223,390 women ages 50 to 71.

During the decade, 47,976 men and 23,276 women died, and the researchers kept track of the timing and reasons for each death. Red meat consumption ranged from a low of less than an ounce a day, on average, to a high of four ounces a day, and processed meat consumption ranged from at most once a week to an average of one and a half ounces a day.

The increase in mortality risk tied to the higher levels of meat consumption was described as “modest,” ranging from about 20 percent to nearly 40 percent. But the number of excess deaths that could be attributed to high meat consumption is quite large given the size of the American population.

Extrapolated to all Americans in the age group studied, the new findings suggest that over the course of a decade, the deaths of one million men and perhaps half a million women could be prevented just by eating less red and processed meats, according to estimates prepared by Dr. Barry Popkin, who wrote an editorial accompanying the report.

To prevent premature deaths related to red and processed meats, Dr. Popkin suggested in an interview that people should eat a hamburger only once or twice a week instead of every day, a small steak once a week instead of every other day, and a hot dog every month and a half instead of once a week.

In place of red meat, nonvegetarians might consider poultry and fish. In the study, the largest consumers of “white” meat from poultry and fish had a slight survival advantage. Likewise, those who ate the most fruits and vegetables also tended to live longer.

The results mirror those of several other studies in recent years that have linked a high-meat diet to life-threatening health problems. The earliest studies highlighted the connection between the saturated fats in red meats to higher blood levels of artery-damaging cholesterol and subsequent heart disease, which prompted many people to eat leaner meats and more skinless poultry and fish. Along with other dietary changes, like consuming less dairy fat, this resulted in a nationwide drop in average serum cholesterol levels and contributed to a reduction in coronary death rates.

Elevated blood pressure, another coronary risk factor, has also been shown to be associated with eating more red and processed meat, the researchers reported.

Poultry and fish contain less saturated fat than red meat, and fish contains omega-3 fatty acids that have been linked in several large studies to heart benefits. For example, men who consume two servings of fatty fish a week were found to have a 50 percent lower risk of cardiac deaths, and in another study of 84,688 women, those who ate fish and foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids at least once a week cut their coronary risk by more than 20 percent.

Choosing protein from sources other than meat has also been linked to lower rates of cancer. When meat is cooked, especially grilled or broiled at high temperatures, carcinogens can form on the surface of the meat. And processed meats like sausages, salami and bologna usually contain nitrosamines, although there are products now available that are free of these carcinogens.

Also, a diet high in red meat was linked to an increased risk of prostate cancer in a study of 35,534 men; the study also found that those who consumed at least three servings of fish a week had half the risk of advanced prostate cancer compared with men who rarely ate fish.

Another study, which randomly assigned more than 19,500 women to a low-fat diet, found after eight years a 40 percent reduced risk of ovarian cancer among them, when compared with 29,000 women who ate their regular diets.

The Meat of the Issue

An important core element of living a Low Density Lifestyle is diet and nutrition.

The more of a whole foods diet you eat – with an emphasis on whole grains, legumes, fresh vegetables and fruit – the healthier and happier you will be.

And you’ll be well on your way to living a Low Density Lifestyle. That’s because the foods listed above are lighter, less dense, easier to digest and eliminate, allow for a better energy circulation, and don’t cause inflammation to occur in the body.

You’ll notice that one of the food groups I didn’t mention above is meat. And when I say meat, I mean meat in all its forms – beef, pork, poultry and fish.

Now the reason I didn’t include the category of meat in my food listings above is not because I believe that to live a Low Density Lifestyle you have to be vegetarian or vegan. You can be a vegetarian/vegan and live a Low Density Lifestyle very easily.

Yet on the same hand, eating meat and living a Low Density Lifestyle also are doable. The key is that meat consumption has to be in smaller proportion to the rest of the food you eat.

Americans in particular eat way too much animal food. For most Americans, it is the staple food of their diet.

Eating this way is the quickest way to damaging your health and getting a one-way ticket to a High Density Lifestyle.

A high-meat based diet will lead to heart disease, cancer, colon problems, arthritis, and countless other chronic and degenerative ailments. There are no shortage of studies to reinforce this.

So what I’ll be doing over the next few weeks in this series is presenting the case against eating lots of meat, along with telling you many other things about the world of meat and non-meat eating.

Stick around because you’ll learn a thing or two.  It’ll help you on your quest to live a Low Density Lifestyle.

And for full disclosure: I am not a vegetarian. I don’t eat much animal food, and I don’t eat beef or pork. I eat some poultry and some fish, but not a lot. I can go a week or a few weeks without eating any animal foods, then on other weeks I may eat animal foods once or twice in the week.

And the poultry I eat is not given antibiotics, steroids, or growth hormones; and the fish I eat is not farm-raised.

I’ll talk about this during this series.

I also don’t eat dairy food, but that’s best left for another series.

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