Become Vegetarian

Many people become vegetarian or vegan for ethical reasons, but there is also a long list of astounding health benefits that result from this dietary change. A common worry is vegan protein, but sources are plentiful in fruit protein and vegetable protein and can be read about in depth here (link coming soon). A vegetarian diet is linked to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, less heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and obesity.

Although it is generally agreed upon that minimized meat consumption is linked to these benefits, research such as that done in The China Study written by T. Colin Campbell, links disease to excess protein intake, does a good job of confirming it. Few people actually know why eating animals contributes to failing health; the reasons might surprise you, and finally inform you.

Meat then and meat now

A popular argument that attempts to convince people not to become vegetarian is that our ancestors were hunters and gatherers. Whether or not this is true, the animals they ate and the animals people now eat are drastically different foods.

Not too long ago cancer was a disease that afflicted the elderly but now we have entire cancer hospitals dedicated to children. Yet, hundreds of years ago we ate meat so why are we so sick now? If eating meat is part of our problem and to become vegetarian is the proposed solution, then why has disease only dramatically increased so recently?

What did your dinner eat?

Great thanks to an ever-increasing population to feed, the improvement of farming techniques, the discoveries of pesticides, antibiotics, and vaccines, in addition to other factors, the way we raise animals for food has drastically changed within the last two hundred years.

Instead of allowing animals to graze in the sunlight and eat fresh grass, animals are factory farmed in cramped, large numbers and kept in dark stalls and fattened with inexpensive, modified, government funded grains and soy. This creates a sick, stressed animal with little nutrients to be passed on. These animals are also often given hormones such as rBGH to keep the milk flowing (which has been linked to cancer in humans) and antibiotics to combat unsanitary living conditions, which has contributed to the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These factors top the list of reasons to become vegetarian.

Become vegetarian: It's hard to know what you are getting

Do not be misled by the label "organic”, as this only means the animal was fed organic grains and soy in a dark, cramped stall. It is a start in a healthier direction and is good because most organic meat is also hormone and antibiotic free, but in the larger scheme of things, it hardly makes a difference in the quality of your meat.

When you eat a steak you are eating whatever that cow ate. Many people become vegetarian after hearing the horror stories of what farm animals are fed. It is not uncommon for an animals diet to include same species meat, sick or diseased animals, feathers, hair, skin, blood and yes even bubblegum as described in a shocking article by Jo Robinson, founder of Eat Wild . Click here to read the full article.

Animal feed can also legally contain road kill, euthanized cats and dogs, and intestines. As shocking as it may be, I think some of us are no longer surprised at the lengths some will go to save a buck.

Although common sense dictates bubblegum and diseased flesh are not nutritionally sound picks for the diet of any living thing, most people are not aware of what an animal should be eating to ensure their optimum health, and consequently, ours as well.

Animals are meant to have a certain diet. Cows are designed to eat grass, and fowl like to graze for bugs, but on many farms these animals rarely see sunlight.

If it is too hard for you to become vegetarian and you insist upon eating meat, at least buy it from a reputable, local source that sells grass-fed, free range meat, and even then, (depending on how well you know the true origin of your food) how do you really, really know what you are getting?

It should be understood that much of the legality that is involved with terms such as "organic" and "free range" is just a play on words. For something to be labeled organic, only 95% of the ingredients must be organic, and "free-range" means the animal has to have "access to the out of doors". The keyword is access, as legally the animal does not ever have to go outside. All this uncertainty in what we are truly eating is enough reason to become vegetarian or even vegan.

Why grain-fed meat causes disease

So what is so unhealthy about animals eating grain anyway? You may have heard a little snippet somewhere or another about all the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids hype. These have been branded the "good" fats and are essential, which means our bodies cannot produce them, they must be obtained from our food. However, they must be consumed in amounts that allow a balance between the two.

In Dr. Graham's book The 80/10/10 Diet, he informs us that recommendations suggest the ideal ratio for these fatty acids in ones diet is between 1:1 and 4:1 (omega-6 to omega-3). Yet, the typical American diet has a ratio ranging from 10 to 30:1. (The 80/10/10 Diet is an excellent read on vegan protein) This extreme lack of balance between the two is a significant contributor to disease and poor health. So where have we been getting our heaping servings of omega-6s?

That's right, grains and grain-fed meat, which is what comprises the gist of the American diet. Cereal, bagels, pancakes, waffles, eggs, and pastries for breakfast, turkey sandwiches and pizza for lunch, and steak, chicken, fish, and heaven forbid a vegetable for dinner. In this light, is it any wonder we are sick?

It is interesting to note that fish have been praised for their high omega-3s to the extent that people now even take fish oil supplements. The reason why they have high omega-3s is because fish eat plankton. However, many fish nowadays are farm raised and fish like tilapia and catfish are often raised on corn. Thus, you should be careful of the fish you choose. Wild caught is usually better.

On the other hand, grass-fed meat is full of omega-3s, thanks to the chloroplasts of green leaves. In fact, 60% of the fatty acids in grass are omega-3s. Grass-fed beef is lower in fat and higher in vitamins and minerals with as much as four times more vitamin E than grain-fed beef and as much as twice the amount that you receive in a supplement. With all this seemingly great nutrition you might be debating why to bother to become vegetarian, but the rabbit hole does go deeper.

So why become vegetarian?

If grass-fed meat seems so healthy why should you bother to become vegetarian?

Here is a thought: If nutrients from plants can be passed from a cow to us, why not just go straight to the source and eat the plant? If the vitamins, minerals, and fats from the plants are what we are really after then why do we waste our time and energy going through the middle man?

Vegan protein sources are abundant and used incredibly more efficiently than meat by the body when they are in raw forms. Fruit protein and vegetable protein are greatly overlooked, but this raw food protein is exactly what our bodies need.

Sure, a nice steak tastes good when it is cooked and seasoned and adds variety to ones diet, but there is a price to be paid. Just because a food is healthiER does not make it healthy and just because grass-fed meat is better for you than grain-fed meat does not make it an ideal food for humans. Much like the cow, we are also meant to eat a particular diet.

What are we biologically meant to eat?

When a human eats meat they typically eat a piece of the muscle or an organ, cook it, and mask its true taste with condiments.

On the other hand, when a carnivore consumes its prey it eats the meat raw and doesn’t leave anything behind. Carnivores eat blood, guts, marrow, cartilage, organs and other animal parts that we would not find very appetizing.

There are many differences between meat eaters and humans. Click here to read how our nails, teeth, stomach acidity, intestinal length and much more is all different.

We are creatures designed to eat fruits and vegetables. Meat is acidic, leaves behind waste and is difficult to digest. Even grains are not suited for us, as the birds who eat them have a pouch in their throats or gullets where the grains can germinate and become digestible. Even cooked grains still give us problems to digest, (not to mention the overdose of omega-6 fatty acids that cause so many health problems) and hence the wide range of digestive problems, such as celiac disease, that people experience.

Vegan protein is easily used by the human body and such sources have the perfect ratio of omega fatty acids. A person could eat a raw food diet comprised entirely of fruits, vegetables, and a small amount of seeds, and never lack for any nutrients.

Humans are often compared to the apes with who we share a lot of genetic material. These creatures eat a diet predominantly consisting of greens, fruit, and bugs. Only when these foods are scarce will they eat eggs or other animals. Otherwise it is very rare, but many of us, on the other hand, rarely eat greens and fruit. If we lived in the wild without running water to wash our food we would also perhaps be eating bugs.

Why the Eskimos thrived on meat

We do not eat meat like nature intended (that is assuming nature intends we eat it at all). In order to fully understand health and disease you have to understand that the body must maintain the PH of its blood.

Flesh from animals is very acidifying in the body and bones contain the alkaline mineral calcium to neutralize the acid, but unlike a true carnivore that eats the bones as well as the flesh of the animal, humans only eat a cut of the animal’s muscle, which creates a problem.

In order to neutralize the acidity in meat, the body is often forced to rob its own bones of their precious store of calcium. It is then not surprising that we suffer from a host of maladies such as osteoporosis, brittle bones, kidney stones, and arthritis.

My favorite example that demonstrates the significance of this is an example of the Eskimos. Sapoty Brook wrote a book called eco-eating in which he discusses that the Eskimos traditionally ate the bones of fish in addition to the flesh. Such bone chewing is a rarity now, and because of this, their calcium intake is lower and their rate of bone loss is 15-20% higher than other North Americans.

Also of importance is the fact that the traditional hunter-gatherer Eskimos ate most of their meat raw. Raw meat is far less acidic than processed and cooked meat. High acidity helps kill bacteria and prolong shelf life in stores.

There are even examples of a raw meat diet curing disease (although the benefits of continuing such a diet long term are questionable). Protein is denatured when cooked and is a large factor in why The China Study found cooked meat and pasteurized dairy to be linked to diseases such as cancer. Just watch what happens if you put a strand of your hair (which is made of protein) over a kitchen burner. A raw meat diet supplies the body with enzymes and unheated protein. But, in the case that by chance a raw meat diet is unappealing, to become a vegetarian would be a viable option.

One meal a day keeps the doctor away

In addition to the condition of the meat humans now consume, it is the way in which we eat it that is also of great significance.

First, we eat too much, too often. The healthiest of people and cultures subscribe to one meal a day. Yet, in cultures where disease runs rampant, you see people eating three enormous meat based meals a day in addition to snacks. This gives the body no time to rid itself of the toxins and by products produced from meat, and waste is piled up in the body in the form of waste.

From waste I do not mean actual chunks of food; this sort of image confuses a lot of people because they cannot imagine how their body would be so inefficient as to leave behind pieces of their prime rib. Examples of waste from meat are urea and uric acid (as well as a much longer list of toxic byproducts) and these are stored in the body as acid, and it is this acid that causes disease.

To add insult to injury, the amount of protein we manage to consume from eating so much, so often is beyond our needs. The China Study researches and confirms the link between protein and disease and actually says that cancer can be "turned on and off" by eating more or less protein. This is a shocking revelation that should urge people to become vegetarian.

Compassion lives within us

As a people, most of us feel sympathy for other living things and do not like to witness the suffering of another living creature. It has been said that if we each had to slaughter our meal we would all be vegetarians. As it turns out, the turnover rate for jobs at the slaughterhouse is quite rapid.

We have been conditioned since childhood to eat meat without consideration of where it came from. Many have become vegetarian once they are exposed to the cruelty and pain defenseless animals are subjected to for the sake of the momentary and fleeting pleasure of our palates.

There is no humane way to kill another living creature. We each know what it is to suffer, and although it may be buried beneath the rubble, we can learn to feel the compassion that lives within us.

"The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?" -Jeremy Bentham

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