The Vegetarian Myth

Over the past two decades, I've tried to get vegetarians, and especially vegans, to rethink their diet. I've told them that humans are adapted to eat eggs, fish, shellfish, and meat; that if they didn't eat these foods, they were threatening their future health and well-being. I don't think I was at all successful, perhaps because I've never been a vegetarian myself. I hadn't been a true believer. And vegetarianism/veganism is a belief system.

Then I read Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth: food, justice, and sustainability. It is a clarion call to vegetarians and vegans from a former vegan who followed their dietary tenets religiously for 20 years,and in the process destroyed her health and probably reduced her lifespan.

But this book is not just for vegetarians. It is written for all of us because it is about food and what our diets, no matter what we eat, are doing to the soil of the Earth, which is also the soul of the Earth.

Lierre Keith is a passionate writer who makes you feel her pain and despair.  She desperately wanted the vegan lifestyle to be the salvation not only for herself, but for Earth and all its living organisms.  But after 20 years, and near death, she finally realized that her diet was killing her.  And when she began to really study the process of food acquisition, Keith also realized that the vegan diet was killing the Earth.  Instead of being Earth's salvation, it was Earth's doom.

This may sound overly dramatic, but once you read her book and digest all the research she has done, you will realize that I have only stated the basic facts.

As a biological anthropologist, I can state that we have known since at least the mid-1980s that the origins of agriculture began a destructive process which is only accelerating.  Humans are not meant to live on a grain-based diet.  When grains are the primary source of nutrition, health is compromised.  Just this week (6/18/2011), another study was published detailing the decline and fall of health with the rise of agriculture: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110615094514.htm

Keith approaches the reader as a fellow traveler who wants to do the right thing, and who guides the reader to see the truth even when it conflicts with deeply held beliefs.  The major divisions of the book are directed at Moral Vegetarians, Political Vegetarians, and Nutritional Vegetarians.  She concludes the book with a plea to Save the World. 

As a Moral Vegetarian, Keith states that, "...I had bet my whole moral system--and built my whole identity--on the idea that my life did not require death."   Factory farming of animals is a terrible, destructive process.  But so is destroying marshes, grasslands, and forests to grow more grains.  What about all the killing of those ecosystems to provide the wheat and corn and soy for the vegan's diet?  What about the destruction of topsoil?  Is that really morally better than eating eggs and fish?

"Find a small wild spot somewhere, the edge of a parking lot, the tree outside your window, and watch.  Really watch.  This is what you will see:  everything is eating and then being eaten, and through it all life endures.  This is no hierarchy, only hunger.  And it's through our hunger that we participate in the cosmos, in an endless cycle of life, death, and regeneration."

Political Vegetarians believe that their diet will preserve resources to feed the world's hungry.  If there are no cows to feed, then more people can be fed.  They believe things like: "...a 10-acre farm can support 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn and only two producing cattle."  Keith responds, "Set aside the fact that a diet of soy, wheat, or corn will result in massive malnutrition--along with fun stuff like kwashiorkor, pellagra, retardation, blindness--and ultimately death."  Such a farm will also destroy the soil.

"It is not my project to try to feed every human being that we can produce while we chew the planet to the bone.  I'm not asking, How many people can be fed? but a very different question: How can people be fed?  Not, What feeds the most people? but What feeds people sustainably?  We need a full accounting.  The absolute bottom line is: what methods of food production build topsoil while using only ambient sun and rain?  Because nothing else is sustainable." [italics in original]

As for Nutritional Vegetarians, "The first myth of the nutritional vegetarians--that we aren't meant for meat--is another fairy tale filled with inedible apples."  This myth is the result of research on foraging populations misclassifying all gathered foods (primarily collected by women) as plant foods.  Much of what was gathered were actually animal foods: fish, shellfish, "insects, grubs, reptiles, small mammals."  The plant foods were primarily nuts, fruits, berries, and tubers.  Grains?  Not so much.

As Keith points out, citing the extensive analysis of the physical and dental health of foraging populations done by Weston Price in the early 20th century, populations eating a traditional foraged diet were extremely healthy.  When they switched to a grain-based Western diet, their health, and especially that of their children, declined.  "Of course the food with the most minerals are marine foods, which is why the healthiest people Price found were coastal-dwelling fishing peoples."

Lierre Keith concludes her book with a radical plea to change the world.  This may be the most difficult chapter of the book since it requires the most of reader.  Keith does not believe that small, incremental change will be able to solve the food production problems.  It will require massive, radical change.  Since even small changes disturb most individuals, I have grave doubts that the radical changes Keith wants such as the end of agribusiness, the revival of small family farms, eating locally, and massively reducing the human population, will occur until we are left with no choice.  At which point, it probably will be too late for us.

I strongly urge everyone to read this book.  If nothing else, it should make you think about dirt, our precious topsoil, in a whole new way.

Eat for Health: A Review

Dr. Joel Fuhrman (Eat for Health) is one of the major proponents of a predominantly vegetarian diet he calls nutritarian. At first blush, his diet is very similar to that which I have long promoted: eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and tree nuts while eliminating dairy and grain-based foods. Dr. Fuhrman also allows very limited amounts of eggs, fish/shellfish, and poultry, but would essentially eliminate red meat. It is at the level of protein intake that Dr. Fuhrman and Dr. Fuller differ. Dr. Fuhrman wants proteins to be essentially vegetable-based, while Dr. Fuller knows that humans also need animal-based proteins.

Both of us recognize that humans are primates and that chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. Therefore, we both look to the chimpanzee diet for guidelines as to what our ancient ancestors ate. However, Dr. Fuhrman seems to conflate the diet of the gorilla with that of the chimpanzee. He also ignores a major difference we have with our fellow apes and the implication that has for human diets: our much larger brains.

Gorillas eat a lot of leafy vegetation; they are vegetarians. Chimps eat very little leafy vegetation. The major components of the chimp diet are fruits and nuts, but they also eat as much animal-based protein as they can find: ants, termites, eggs, monkeys, bush pigs, etc. Dr. Fuhrman combines the gorilla’s leafy diet with the chimp’s fruits and nuts and concludes that this is the proper diet for humans. In the wild, generally the only time chimps eat leaves is when they eat meat (except for certain unpalatable leaves eaten to remove intestinal parasites). Chimps and humans do not have the same ability that gorillas have to process large quantities of leafy vegetation through their guts.

Archaeological evidence shows that hominin (humans and their ancient ancestors) brains did not begin to enlarge until animal-based protein (primarily fish/shellfish and water fowl eggs) became a larger component of the diet. These foods are excellent sources of omega-3 fatty acids, necessary for proper brain growth, development, and function. Some plant-based foods such as tree nuts and flax seeds do provide omega-3 fatty acids, but research shows that these are not a good source: humans (and other mammals) cannot efficiently convert the plant-based fatty acids into the forms required for use in the brain. With the development of agriculture and an increasing reliance on plants in human diets, the size of human brains has actually decreased over the past 10,000 years.

In chapter 13 of Eat for Health, Dr. Fuhrman has an entire section inveighing against eating fish and shellfish because of mercury contamination. Mercury is a problem in large, long-lived fish. However, it is not a problem in shrimp and sardines, and other small, short-lived varieties. Is it worth relegating fish and shellfish to a very minor part of your diet if it also means that you are not providing your brain with enough omega-3 fatty acids?

Overall, Dr. Fuhrman’s book is full of good advice for those who are overweight and have chronic health problems. However, his nutritarian program is too close to that of a vegetarian/vegan if you want to have an optimally functioning brain. A few modifications will bring Dr. Fuhrman’s plan into line with Dr. Fuller’s Premier Nutrition Plan [http://www.anthrohealth.net/AHNews%20V6N7.htm]: a plan that keeps you healthy and brainy.

Flexibility for Life

When I was 32 I realized that I was not as flexible as I had once been. This disturbed me because at that time my grandmother was having increasing difficulty moving. Her shoulders were becoming stiff and inflexible. She needed a knee replacement. My grandmother was only 75. I loved her dearly, but I didn’t want to have the same problems with my body. From that point, I put together a series of joint movements I call Flexibilities; and I began doing them every morning when I first arose.

Over the next several weeks, I noticed that not only was I becoming more flexible, but I felt less achy and stiff when I awoke each morning. Doing the movements in the morning meant that I felt loose, alert, and ready for the day ahead. I walked a little taller with a bounce in my step.

Through the intervening years, I’ve continued to do the flexibilities each morning. On those days that for some reason I do not do the movements, I feel a little off. I’ve also found that if I do not do the flexibilities first thing in the morning, I am less likely to do them at all that day.

In addition to doing the joint movements, I do two other things to aid joint health. Each day with my breakfast (blueberries and bananas, tomato salsa omelet, and grapefruit juice) I take a vitamin D3 supplement. Vitamin D3 is vital for skeletal and muscle strength (and many other aspects of health). For lunch I eat water-packed sardines. Sardines are a super food: they are a great source of protein, calcium, vitamin D3, and omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acids help reduce joint inflammation (along with many other benefits).

Following this program for over two decades, I have great flexibility, no signs of osteoarthritis, and good overall health. Two research studies provide support for my anecdotal experience.

The first, published about one year ago by UC San Diego researchers, found that flexing joints prompts chondrocytes (cartilage cells) to produce a lubricating substance that keeps the joint surfaces smooth. The more the joint was flexed, the greater the percentage of chondrocytes that produced lubrication, keeping the glassy surface of the joint smooth. Joints that are not flexed produce very little lubrication resulting in an erosion of the smooth cartilage and, eventually, the pain of osteoarthritis.

The second study was published earlier this month in the American Journal of Physiology. These researchers in Texas and Japan found that an individual’s degree of flexibility could be positively correlated with that individual’s degree of arterial flexibility. That is, the most flexible adults had the best arterial condition and the lowest risk for having a heart attack or stroke. Those adults with the greatest joint stiffness were at highest risk of suffering from a heart attack or stroke.

Do you want to live a longer, healthier life? Then you need to add daily flexibilities to your routine. If you would like a PDF copy (for $3.00) of my Flexibilities booklet which includes photos and directions for each movement, click here. http://www.anthrohealth.net/ahflexbooklet.htm

Seasonal Immunity

Labor Day has passed. Students should all be back to school now. The days are getting shorter. The leaves are beginning to change color. It is time to think about how to forestall illness.

Wow. What a downer, associating Autumn with illness; but, unfortunately, that’s the way it is. What’s the connection? Sunshine, or the lack thereof. More specifically, it is the reduction of UVB radiation striking the Earth as its angle relative to the Sun limits our exposure.

Now, what does reduced exposure to UVB radiation have to do with increased levels of illness? Isn’t UVB radiation a bad thing? As regular readers of my blog and newsletter know, no, UVB radiation is actually necessary to maintaining good health.

The cells of your immune system contain Vitamin D Receptors (VDR). This means that the optimal functioning of your immune system requires optimal levels of vitamin D in your blood. If your immune system is not optimized, you are more likely to become ill. Viruses and other pathogens will have relatively free rein in your body because your defense system is sub-par.

Unprotected skin exposed to UVB radiation activates the vitamin D system, increasing blood levels of vitamin D. However, numerous factors inhibit this natural system including: over-protection of the skin (see my blog “Dermatological Purdah”); dark pigmentation at high latitudes; old age; and life spent indoors. Current estimates are that the majority of Americans have sub-optimal levels of vitamin D and are, therefore, at high risk for having a sub-optimal immune system.

If Americans aren’t getting enough vitamin D the natural way, then they will have to use supplementation. The current US recommended levels are much too low to optimize vitamin D levels. Dr. Cannell, physician and vitamin D researcher living in California, recommends that children receive 1000 IU of vitamin D3/day for each 25 lbs of weight. He takes 5000 IU/day during the winter months. The minimum recommended dose for adults, according the Canadian Cancer Society, is 1000 IU/day, year-round. Dr. Vieth, Canadian vitamin D researcher, recommends a minimum daily dose of 4000 IU/day during the winter months.

As a child, teen, and young adult, I caught pretty much every pathogen that passed by me. It wasn’t until years later, when I began my research on vitamin D, that I realized that I suffered from sub-optimal levels of vitamin D. My two big fixes for the problem were to eat sardines every day and to move to Arizona. While this did work, after several years I ended up moving back to the Midwest to be near my family. The move resulted in having to tinker some with vitamin D supplementation to achieve optimization. What appears to work for me is this: every day I eat a can of sardines. In addition to providing several hundred IU/day of vitamin D, I also get a good dose of omega-3 fatty acids, calcium, and protein. However, in the Midwest, sardines do not provide enough vitamin D. Therefore, during the summer months, I take 2000 IU/day of vitamin D3. [I just do not get out enough in the sun during the summer to optimize my vitamin D levels naturally.] In the autumn, I increase this to 3000 IU/day, then to 4000 IU/day, and finally, during the depths of winter, to 5000 IU/day. While this does not prevent every cold, I am far, far healthier than I was during my previous sojourn in the Midwest.

While this dosing schedule works for me, you will need to develop one individualized for your own set of variables. Also, if you are on any medications, you will need to discuss it with your physician. Do not wait until the leaves have all fallen to begin optimizing your vitamin D levels. It takes a few weeks to achieve optimization. If you want to have the best chance to avoid the season of colds and flu, you need to begin now. Here’s To Your Health!

Brain Power

US News and World Report just published an article on “America’s 10 Brainiest States.” Degree of braininess was based on population surveys concerning the following indicators of brain health:

· Eat a Healthy Diet:
o Low saturated fat and cholesterol
o Five or more daily servings of fruits and vegetables
o Daily intake of omega-3 fatty acids, especially from eating fatty fish
o Breast feed infants

· Exercise at least 30 minutes each day.
· Watch your weight.
· Do not smoke.
· Sleep around 7 - 8 hours each night.
· Mental Stimulation:
o Read every day.
o Play mentally challenging games.
o Learn new things.
· Get involved:
o Volunteer
o Join clubs
o Stay in touch with family and friends

State rankings were based on the analysis of these factors. You can read more about the methodology of the study here: http://www.lifesdha.com/brainindex/About--i-lifesDHA--i--Index-of-Brain-Health.aspx (Washington, DC was included as a state for the purposes of this research.)

According to the researchers, the top 10 brainiest states/polities are: District of Columbia, Maryland, Washington (state), Vermont, Connecticut, Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maine, and New Hampshire. The 10 lowest-ranking states are: North Dakota, South Carolina, Indiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Louisiana.

I found this distribution rather intriguing and wanted to explore it further, so I compared this ranking of state brainpower with the map of the Electoral College distribution from the 2008 Presidential Election.

All of the top 10 brainiest states are Blue States. All of the lowest ranking states, except for Indiana, are Red States. Further examination showed that of the top 25 brainiest states, only 7 (Georgia, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, and Alaska) are Red States. The other 18 are Blue States. And of those 7 Red States, all are in the West except for Georgia.

Now, as we know, Correlation does not equal Causation. But it is an intriguing distribution worthy of further thought.

A correlation that, in this case, does equal causation is that the indicators of brain health listed above match with the AnthroHealth Way to Health and Well-Being about which I’ve been writing since 2002. http://www.anthrohealth.net/aharchives.htm

So keep eating those sardines!

The Brain Health research website also includes a brief on-line survey you can take to see if you are living a brain healthy lifestyle: http://www.lifesdha.com/50-States/View-All-Rankings/tabid/330/Default.aspx

I want to hear what you think about the Blue State/Brainy State correlation, so please add comments to this blog.

Don’t Drink It!!

New research has been published stating that drinking milk will help prevent coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke. Oh, please! That is like saying that red meat is heart healthy. Milk is loaded with saturated fat. Leave a glass of milk sitting on the counter and watch the clumps of fat appear. Saturated fat is NOT good for you.

Why would these researchers conclude that it is? Well, I did a little sleuthing and found out (surprise, surprise) that at least one of the researchers, Dr. Ian Givens, is associated with the British Dairy Industry [Centre for Dairy Research]. http://www.feedforhealth.org/default.asp?ZNT=S0T1O734

Givens et al. state that compared to men (in Britain) who did not ingest any dairy products, those who did drink milk or eat other dairy products were healthier. This research evidently has yet to be published in a journal, so I do not know how the study was conducted.

However, since the vast majority of adults in the world cannot process dairy products past weaning age due to lack of the enzyme lactase, it seems highly improbable that those adults who drink and eat saturated dairy fat (primarily those of northern European ancestry) would have less CHD and strokes than does the rest of the world’s populations.

On the up side, not all fats are bad for the heart. Omega-3 fatty acids found in fatty fish such as salmon and sardines are good for the heart. And the brain. [See my blog Vegging Out below.] And, according to new research, the eyes: eating foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids helps prevent age-related macular degeneration and blindness. http://ajp.amjpathol.org/cgi/content/abstract/175/2/799

So, forget the milk and cheese. They don’t do a body good. Instead, add sardines, salmon, and even walnuts to your diet if you are really interested in helping your heart and preventing strokes.

Salud!