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April 15, 2010
Health Thoughts on Vegetarianism
Hi ,
Vegetarianism has been around for a long time. In fact you could say that the creation of modern civilization began as a shift away from the hunter-gatherer meat-eating lifestyle to the growing plants for food (agrarian) lifestyle. On the other hand, the development of the large human brain is the direct result several million years earlier of moving from only foraging for plant foods to scavenging meat and bone remains left after the kills by larger carnivorous animals. So the question remains, which lifestyle is healthier?
Modern scientific studies have essentially told us almost nothing. Amassing all the studies on life span and meat eating verses only plant eating finds no superiority of one over the other. The choice primarily affects what disease you will die of. Vegetarianism does decrease death from ischemic heart disease (hardening of the arteries) but increases the likelihood of death from other causes. Issues like not smoking have a much greater impact on life span than vegetarianism.
The more common question I get from patients is "How can I stay healthy on a vegetarian diet?" To answer this question we have to look deeper than the scientific studies. All studies suffer from a huge blind spot. They assume that all people are the same. To scientific large population studies, people are just statistical entries on their data sheets. They deny the reality of individual differences. These folks must not get out much. Any of us can go to the mall and see that people are all different...and close study will show that everyone's body chemistry, metabolism, and genes are different.
For example, 30% of Americans have an autoimmune reaction to gluten containing grains. These reactions will eventually kill you. If you are part of that 30% and want to be a vegetarian, you will have to do it without eating most of the packaged foods you find in a grocery store...no bread, no pasta, no crackers, no cereal, no cookies, no 6000 other foods.
Can you be healthy on a vegetarian diet - absolutely! Is it easy - no. There are a lot of good reasons for wanting to be a vegetarian, from philosophical/religious reasons to ecological/political reasons. A certain percentage of the people have metabolisms that will leave them healthier with a vegetarian lifestyle, just as there are some people that absolutely must have meat several times a day. Most of us can swing either way and our system will adapt to what we feed it (within certain reasonable boundaries.)
Are there universal reasons for not eating meat? Yes, if you are talking about the meat found in your typical grocery store. That reason is toxins. Modern animal, fish, and poultry raising methods involve massive overcrowding which produces lots of infectious disease and stress hormone disorders. Farmers counter this with massive and continuous doses of antibiotics and hormones. These toxins are still in the foods you get in the stores. The feeds they use are unnatural to the animals and produce abnormal and unhealthy meat. (When did fish learn to eat corn?) (Cows don't even eat grain normally in the real world.)
Unfortunately, studies about the health or lack of health in eating meat have all been done with people eating this kind of toxic meat. I suspect that studies done on people eating healthy naturally raised meats would show very different results. No such studies have been done.
The same problems exist with studies on the health or lack of health with vegetarian diets. No effort has ever been made to study only people whose bodies are designed to do well on vegetarian foods using healthy vegetarian foods.
Generally the vegetarians I know eat primarily sugary/starchy crap rather than vegetables. Humans were never designed to eat grains, and never ever designed to eat sugar (or honey, or any other high carbohydrate sweetener) as a food. Soybeans are also not a food; they are toxic (unless they have been fermented.) Yet these are exactly the foods modern vegetarians in this country eat. This is what really gets studied when a university decides to measure the health of vegetarians.
As you can see, I sit the fence on the health benefits of vegetarianism. There are simply no real studies of what benefits are possible with a truly healthy vegetarian diet.
What does a healthy vegetarian diet look like?
1. Eat a tremendous variety of vegetables, seeds, herbs, spices, and nuts every week. These should be 60% of your diet.
2. Eat fermented vegetables daily to support the health of your gut - an especially vulnerable area for vegetarians.
3. No more than 10% of your diet can be from grains, and they must be whole, soaked or sprouted, and prepared in a low glycemic manner. (The biggest health issue of vegetarians is blood sugar imbalances caused by eating too many grains/starches/sugars.)
4. Legumes must be soaked, sprouted, or fermented (to remove toxic anti-nutrients). This is especially true of soy.
5. Fruit should be fresh, whole, and only 2-3 pieces per day (10% of diet.) (Dried fruit is too high in sugar.)
6. No more than 2 teaspoons of any kind of sugar per day. Use Stevia, Erythritol, Lo Han, or Xylitol for sweetening.
7. No junk food - no chips, rice cakes, granola, dried fruit, crackers, bread products, bakery products, candy, or anything in a package with a load of carbohydrates, sugar, or inflammatory seed oils in it.
8. Use olive, coconut, avocado, or nut oils - not seed oils. (Seed oils promote inflammation.)
9. Eat either eggs, raw dairy, or supplement with protein powders (40 to 50 grams of hemp, buckwheat, rice, or pea protein - not soy) to give you sufficient protein - your body is made of protein and fat, not carbohydrates.
10. Supplement your diet with B vitamins (especially B12) and plenty of sunshine (or vitamin D). (You likely will also need omega 3 oils from some source that is already converted to EPA and DHA. We don't convert ALA well to the needed DHA form.)
Following these ten guidelines will empower you to be healthy while choosing a vegetarian lifestyle. . I use the same guidelines for meat eaters except that in guideline 9, clean natural meat replaces the use of protein powders. Meat eaters also rarely need the extra vitamin B12. Always be sure to constantly "check in" with your body to see how it is doing with any diet you are following. We are all different, and our dietary needs are different. Plus our needs change constantly. Let go of dogma and respond day to day with what your body says it needs.
Good Journey,
David
Guest Article:
Why I am a Carnivore
by Gypsy Andrews
After 15 years of not eating meat, save for the occasional sashimi splurge, I decided to become a carnivore. Having grandparents who raised their own Angus beef and chickens and a dad who fished and hunted pheasant, deer, quail and the occasional rattle snake during my early childhood, meat-eating was not unfamiliar to me. My initial decision to go veggie began in high school for various ethical reasons and became the lifestyle of choice for me (and for my two children years later.) My daughter, now 15, is still a vegetarian while my 6 year old son took the flesh-eating plunge with me.
Looking back, I understand now that I struggled with blood sugar issues all during my vegetarian years. When I was an older teen/young adult, my mom made sure to bestow her 70's era wisdom upon me and taught me about food combining to create complete proteins. I quickly found that I had to look outside of the box of most American foods and look to various multicultural sources for wholesome foods. Cooking for myself at age 17 was not something I was prepared to do, especially when I wasn't doing the shopping. This was probably the beginning of my blood sugar irregularities: not having the right foods available nor prepared in a pinch when I needed to eat. This led to a lazy diet of everything bready, soy-based and cheesy. Occasionally I would consult the cookbook my family grew up with called: The Natural Healing Cookbook. From it I learned a little about whole foods nutrition, but still didn't get the part about eating regularly and looking at how much of each type of food I was consuming. I figured if I felt full, life was good (and nothing is more filling than grains!)
My blood sugar issues compounded when I had my first child at 21. I craved meat from time to time (hence the sushi splurges), but remained steadfast to my personal commitment. My daughter was raised on soymilk formula as an infant, and later - vanilla rice milk, high carbohydrate foods and lots of soy. My diet depleted my body. I experienced extremes of low energy where I felt like my mind was syrup and I was walking through Jell-O to get anywhere. I was a sugar junkie, and I had no idea I was raising my daughter in the same pattern.
At age 27, life took a turn as I underwent a work-related repetitive strain injury. Little did I know that my physical health and vitality wouldn't begin to return for another 10 years. I had already struggled with depression since my teens (a common side effect of excess carbohydrate consumption) and it compounded severely at that time. Chronic pain became a lifestyle, and I found little I could do to bring ease. Mostly I stopped complaining about it. Over the course of the last decade I have watched myself go from an agile, active person to someone who keeps her movements very limited so as not to create further injury (which happens from everyday things like sitting in a chair, cleaning house, standing at the stove to cook, even laying horizontal in a bed.)
It wasn't until 6 years ago that I remember even hearing the word "blood sugar." I had given birth to my son, who was a 10 and a half pound baby due to my gestational diabetes. Not once during my pregnancy did my nurse midwife tell me I was eating too many carbohydrates or that my choice of vegetarian foods was the cause for my temporary condition. Her "nurse" title meant that her focus was on sending me for multiple fasting blood draws where I had to drink between 1-3 Orange Crush's to check my blood sugar levels and on scaring me that my baby might go into a coma after birth because of the potential blood sugar drop he would experience after being cut off from my blood supply. Thank goodness I had a great chiropractor to support me and to inform me so that I could confidently refuse to cooperate with some of her unnecessary medical demands. I continued my vegetarianism throughout the 2.5 years that we breastfed and continued to suffer more physical discomfort than ever after my body was nutritionally zapped from growing another life from my already depleted store of nutrients.
After beginning to work for my chiropractor I finally allowed myself to explore the cookbook Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, (a friend had suggested it years prior , but being identified as a vegetarian, I had no interest in a book that featured meat and bone stock). Some three years later, I find myself a struggling omnivore. Struggling because 1. Quality meat is expensive 2. Having had chronic IBS and probably gluten sensitivity since childhood, I struggle with gut balance and restoration 3. From so many years of non-meat eating, I have low levels of hydrochloric acid in my stomach 4. I'm still a sugar addict in the form of carbohydrates, refined or not.
That said, I am able to do a lot of things physically that I hadn't been able to for a long time. When I follow a diet of slow/low cooked meats, raw dairy, bone stock and plenty of veggies, abstaining from root veggies and high sugar fruits, crackers, pasta, brown rice- even sprouted bread... I do great! I see the connection so clearly now that I am what I eat. I know exactly what to expect when I throw all of my hard-gained wisdom out of the window and eat to satisfy mood or taste buds instead of for optimal health. I value that I get to choose how to eat (vegetarian, omnivore, humanely, organically, etc.) And I'm very blessed to finally, after 37 years, to be exposed to the information I needed to help get my life and balance back.
Experience Ellen's Life Coaching Process during her Free Health Exam
Discover your true health status
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Trim Challenge
April is for stabilizing my body at its new weight and rebuilding muscle lost over the long winter period when I barely made it out to the gym.
Muscle building makes weight loss easier as the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn just doing nothing. Next to the brain, your muscles burn the largest percentage of calories in your body. But muscle building needs plenty of protein, and I had been doing a low protein diet every other day to decrease the work my liver had to do so it could focus on eliminating toxins.
The main thing I am noticing as I have been eating fully every day this last week is that my digestive system really does not like that much food, even though my mouth does. Finding my sweet spot for consumption with optimal digestion will likely also be a focus this month.
David
Ouestions - if you have questions of a health or growth nature we could discuss in this newsletter, or if you have comments or ideas about a future newsletter focus please email me at:
david@fairoakshealth.com
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