Saturday, September 25, 2010

[Discussion] Meat, Protien & Sugar

The following is a discussion about meats, proteins and sugars between myself and some other people. Join the discussion by leaving your own thoughts, research, links and experiences.




A common misconception is that meat is the best source of protein.



Consider the following animals: gorillas, cows, giraffes and elephants. All of them are raw food vegetarians! While you probably aren’t aiming to have their body types, they are great examples of how large and strong a living creature can be on a raw plant-based diet.

It's important to realize that we are not like any and every other animal on the planet, but one of the common animals we use for testings (mice) require more protein for their body mass than we do.

While animal products contain large amounts of protein, they are also high in cholesterol and saturated fat, which can lead to heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

The raw plant-based diet is low in fat, free of cholesterol, loaded with enzymes and full of fiber. You don't see elephants cooking their greens first, and you don't see gorillas chowing down on bacon. You also don't see chronic disease among the animal kingdom except for in household pets and other domesticated animals.

What does this tell us about lab-made food vs. nature made food?

~ Raederle Phoenix






Response from qutequte:

I just watched a Chinese Traditional Medicine documentary today about peptide ulcers. The powdered medicine given to patients are derived from herbs. All plant properties: no meat.

If people think they can get well largely due to meat, they’re wrong!

Bill Clinton is an excellent example; He thinks going off meat (I think he still eats honey and drinks milk) will save his life. He will outlive the “2 more months to live” that’s been given to him by conventional doctors.

~ qutequte




Response from Patty:

Always interesting, though I have to wonder how you can compare the diet of animals to humans? We have different needs than animals and some meat proteins are probably to our benefit rather than avoiding meat altogether?

I’m not a big meat eater, but I am also not a vegetarian. I am still one who thinks moderation is key in all food groups, though I could eat more fish and veggies.

~ Patty






Even though I'm the one who started this discussion in the first place, I think meat isn’t the debate people should be having.

It’s sugar that causes meat cravings. It’s sugar that is addictive. It’s sugar that pulls calcium out of the bones. It’s sugar that’s in everything. Sugar is what has all the money and does all of the lobbying. Sugar advertising is much more insidious and sneaky. Sugar is what is marketed at children.

Even when people “go raw” they still cling to agave, honey, xylitol, stevia or whatever is being marketed as a “healthy” sweetener. There are no healthy sweeteners. While meat may or may not be extremely bad for you, I can say without a single doubt that refined sugars are extremely horribly bad for you. I just don’t think meat holds a candle to the damage caused by sugar.

~ Raederle Phoenix






Response from qutequte:

You asked a very good question Patty.

Why compare animals’ diet to human’s?

All animals that are fed with corn feed, all of them suffer from gastric and peptide ulcers. More antibiotics. More superbugs formed (MRSA). And humans eat them.

Also, much of science around food and medicine, are all based on food experiments on lab rats, mice and rabbits (because they reproduce faster than other mammals). A rat requires more protein and iron than humans, and yet they are used in the scientific experiments we base much of our understanding on!

All meat contains bad cholesterol. Meat has both good and bad fat but it isn’t the fat that is the real problem.

How do you moderate meat when you know that frying and cooking meat is cancerous; even when cooked right?

How much is “too much” meat? Do you know your body’s tolerance to meat or anything toxic, like a meter?

And can you stand the thought of calves ripped from their mothers and murdered before they even had the chance to drink milk from their mothers?

I avoid fish for three reasons.

Firstly because many of them are polluted and thereby really unhealthy.

The second problem is many fish, like Chilean seabass, are going extinct. Clams, Longtail Tuna, Yellow-banded scad, Yellowtail fusilier are all going extinct in Malaysia.

The third problem with fish, is that many of them are farm-raised (affects not very different from farmed cattle, pigs, chicken, etc).

To me, meat offers little nutrition to balance out the animal protein and fat the human body doesn’t need. The only thing that I am now looking at is Vitamin B12 which cannot be absorbed by the body (found in algae and Spirulina). I will have to look further into this.

~ qutequte




Raederle says:

From what I've read, fresh truly wild meat wouldn't be anything like what most people think of when they think of "meat." The meat that is sold in stores is from raised animals who are fed garbage diets, given shots, and all sorts of unnatural things that don't occur in the wild. Even when you buy "free range" meat, you're only paying for an animal that got a slight fraction more exercise, and is thereby leaner.

I wasn't a vegetarian before I went raw. I don't have an ethical problem with killing and eating animals. Animals kill and eat each other. That's natural survival of the fittest.

I do have a problem with penning up hundreds of animals in close quarters, letting them get diseased, malnutrition-ed and under-exercised. That alone could be considered torture.

The first thing I cut from my diet, before anything else, was high fructose corn syrup. It makes the negative side effects linked to meat look tame by comparison.

However, that said, if you want to keep improving your health over time, eventually you'll come to the conclusion that you either don't want meat in your diet at all, or that you want it in tiny portions few and far between from a carefully researched source.




Ela says: "I totally agree with you about the sugar thing - and everyone is so addicted that it's very hard even to have a sensible discussion about it."




Let's hear your thoughts and opinions! Post a comment below.

PS: Vote on my polls! There are some at the very bottom of the page.

5 comments:

  1. Rats are short lived and lifespan studies can provide some useful information on, for example, eating habits and longevity that may generalize to other species outside of the laboratory:

    http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/41/6/1332.pdf

    This one suggests underfeeding in youth is a significant predictor of longevity.

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  2. I am currently 100% raw, and I consider myself to be in the best health of my life. A lot of people think I'm too young to be caring about healthy eating, at 15. Apparently you are supposed to be on the verge of death before you turn to healthy eating and healthy living.

    Even when I ate home-cooked organic food, I still consider myself healthier now, because I am eating pure and not 'dead' food. (Seriously, when you put your food in a microwave, it comes out looking murdered).

    @raederle, I didn't have a problem with eating and having my meat killed before I was Raw either.

    Now I've seen the way animals are used to produce food, and I just don't feel it is right.

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  3. I am totally with you that sugar is a greater bane than meat in terms of health. The evidence that humans ate meat during their evolution is inarguable. Of course, that isn't to say that everyone should eat meat now - and the factory farming situation is a complete debacle. But it is uncontroversial that meat was a part of humans' traditional diet, whereas refined sugar definitely was not.

    I live in Alaska, where hunting and fishing for wild game and fish in relatively pristine environments is part of the culture. Almost all the meat I feed my husband is meat or fish that we have harvested in the wild.

    Personally, I don't choose to eat meat at this time because having been vegetarian almost my whole life, I haven't found that it feels good in my body (I did some experimenting a year or two ago).

    I wish that people would vote with their dollars and only buy meat from sustainably, humanely-raised animals and wild-caught fish from clean waters. Put the factory misery to an end!
    love
    Ela

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  4. Meat IS the best form of protein. It's the only source that contains all the essential amino acids; no single plant contains all the essential amino acids humans need.
    Gorillas eating meat is up for debate (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100305-first-proof-gorillas-eat-monkeys-mammals-feces-dna/). Elephants and giraffes are herbivores, and have different nutritional requirements than humans and other omnivores. Animals in nature do, in fact, develop chronic diseases if they live long enough. But nature is a cruel mistress, and animals usually dying young is the widely, scientifically acknowledged reason those diseases are not commonly observed. We'd cut back on a lot of diabetics if we just killed everyone shortly after they reached sexual maturity.
    Raw food is harder to digest, requiring more energy. Most anthropologists agree that the development of human culture coincided with the taming of fire as a tool for cooking meat, which made meat easier to digest. That cooked meat provided more energy for early Homo's large brains, allowing more "down time" away from the hunter/gatherer cycle for forming social bonds and culture.
    Eating raw foods is a luxury. Humans would not be where they are today if we had stayed with a raw food diet historically. Easy production and access to simply digestible, cooked foods containing all the necessary nutrients for human life is a primary factor for our increased lifespans and society. We have these chronic diseases because now we live longer, thanks to the development of a world where tribal groups don't spend all day collecting roots, tracking prey, and dying in their 20's. See also Disposable Soma, the leading (admittedly not universally accepted) theory on aging.
    If you want to talk about sugar, let's talk about the sugary layer of pseudo-science that Vegans and raw foodies often use to coat their arguments , derived from unvetted internet sources that border on conspiracy theory . I'm glad you have the luxury to eat raw foods, and I'm glad it makes you happy and feel healthier, but if everyone converted to that diet then the whole world would come to a grinding halt as everyone invested their primary energies to food preparation. Good luck getting a new Civilization game if that happens.

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  5. Anonymous, I invite you to look at the testimonials page. Thousands of people world wide are discovering how much healthier and happier they are on a raw diet. Meat has been commonly believed to be the best source of protien, but now there is a strong argument that fresh green leafy vegetables are better because they contain incredibly high levels of enzymes (which are amino acids) and these amino acids are what are used to build muscle and carry out chemical reactions throughout the body. There are many successful atheletes who are on an entirely raw diet and report that they started building muscle faster when they started drinking green smoothies made from fresh green vegetables. I've even experienced personally that it's easier to build muscle since I've started eating entirely raw. Not only do I have more energy to work out, but my muscles are not as sore after the same length work out, and I'm building muscle more effectively than I ever have before in my life. How can something be "easier to digest" if the essential amino acids (live enzymes found in non-cooked foods) are not present in what you're eating? The reason why so many people don't digest their food when it's not cooked is because they don't chew it enough. That can be alliviated by adding many smoothies to one's diet. Another problem is that too many raw foodists eat too much dried fruit, and agave, which is why some raw foodists still are not healthy. The raw foodists who eat weeds and herbs and vegetables out of their own gardens experience a level of health far, far, far beyond the par of what we think of as "normal." I have an article about chewing food on this blog, as well as testimonials from raw food athletes, as well as a video of people who reversed their diabetes by going raw, as well as doctors who express their firm belief that sugar is the bane of human existence, as well as an article about enzymes and how they work and why they are important. If you have any further thoughts after checking those out, I invite you express them.

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What brings you here? What are you thoughts? Do you consider yourself a raw foodist? Approximately how much of your diet is raw? Do you consider yourself healthy? What would you like to see more of on this blog? Will you be back? Is this too many questions?