"So you really don't eat meat?" - reply to a friend's e-mail

Hi Shelby,

>have a question! so you really dont eat meat????

That's correct! I really don't like meat, most people think they do, but go ahead and give yourself a test. Try eating it raw? If you don't like it that means you probably like worchester sauce, steak sauce, cheese with spices, and a myriad of other flavorings.

Anatomically we do not have the build to catch our prey. Every natural meat eater, omnivores included, (we are frugivores - fruit eaters), have the speed, musculature, claws, and teeth to catch their prey. A hungry meat eating animal wouldn't think twice about chowing down on some road kill on the side of the road. Sure, maybe you've actually picked up some road kill (although, I kind of doubt it), brought it home and cooked it, but again you're having to alter the food to make it taste good. I don't have to do anything special to make a pineapple palatable, nor an orange, nor white corn, nor romaine lettuce, etc...

Animal protein requires an inordinate amounts of acid to break it down. This means that your body has to work extra hard to digest it. That high level of acidity makes the rest of the body extra acidic also. To neutralize this problem calcium, which happens to be extremely alkaline, is leached from the bones to keep you from dying. The long term result of this is fragile and in many cases osteoporotic bones. That means using x-rays they can see pores in your bones, from all the calcium you've lost. That's why in countries like Africa where they can't afford to eat meat, because it isn’t subsidized, osteoporosis is unheard of. It's also why some of the best distance runners in the world are from there, their bones are strong enough to take that level of abuse. In fact, scientists can even measure how much calcium you're losing from your bones. When calcium is lost it winds up in your urine, this is called protein induced hypercalciuria. In other words, when you eat too much protein, we find excessive levels of calcium in your urine. After a single meat meal, the amount of calcium lost through your urine can be measured quantitatively.

Natural meat eating animals have a short digestive track and 10-120x times as much Hydrocholoric Acid in their stomachs. That means they can break down meat before it rots. Humans cannot do that, which means the average meat eater is poisoning their body with rotting flesh. If we were natural meat eaters our bodies could digest meat in hours rather than the 2 or more days it usually takes. I have a bowel movement after every meal, that's the way it should be. That also means that my entire meal is fully digested before I start the next one, what a concept!

Natural meat eaters have a well developed pleasure response to a bloody carcass, almost no humans share that trait. This is the reason that when you buy meat at the store the blood has been removed, we find it disgusting. A meat eating animal would find it arousing and want to suck it all up. Harvey Diamond tells a joke about this “Take a carrot and rabbit and put it in the crib of a baby, if the baby eats the rabbit and pets the carrot, I’ll buy you a new car.”

Don't body builders have to eat meat to be big? Well if they want to have excess body fat then, yes, but if muscle is their goal then absolutely not. Have a look at the photos of just a few vegans: http://www.veganbodybuilding.com/?page=galleries

Don't we need to get our protein from animal foods? Absolutely not. In fact, animals contain too much protein and wreak undue stress on their kidneys and livers. Recently born babies are growing faster than you and I could ever hope to and still mother's breast milk is only 4.5% of calories from protein. Adults aren't rapidly building new cells, we loose a couple of hairs, sluff off a little skin, and even that adult is a body builder they still will only gain about 1-2lbs of muscle a month. That’s hardly what I’d call significant growth. Wouldn't a body builder need to eat more to add that 1-2lbs of extra weight? Well what is a 2lb muscle gain added on to a 150lb male? A 1.3% increase in weight, hardly seems significant any more does it? Of those 2lbs of muscle 3/4 are water, leaving 1/2 a pound of protein that needs to be consumed over the next month. Sounds pretty easy to me when that man will probably consume 3 meals a day and at least a pound at each. He will intake at least 90lbs of food over the next month. Surely in 90lbs of food we can come up with 1/2 lb of protein! The USRDA is currently recommending 8% of calories from protein, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends 10%, and the ANHS (American Natural Hygiene Society) recommends 8%. So whether you think we need 4.5% (undoubtedly the most accurate figure) or 10%, that's a hell of a lot less than the 70% of calories from protein typically found in animal foods.

The book “A diet for a New America” lists a chart containing the concentrations of about 80 different plant foods.

Based on this chart, the concentrations of protein from the plant kingdom are as follows:

Fruits have approximately 1-16% (I'm only aware of pineapple and apples that contain below 5%)

Vegetables have 6-49%

Grains have 8-31%

Nuts and Seeds 8-21%

So I ask you if you're eating a variety of foods how could you possibly not come up with 10% of calories from protein on a plant-based diet? Answer: unless the only two things you're eating are apples and pineapple you virtually wouldn't be able to do it.

Don't animal proteins contain all 9 essential amino acids and aren't plant foods lacking in one or more? Absolutely not, Gary Null, PHD. proved that all foods contain all nine essential amino acids just in different proportions at the institute of applied biology, decades ago. So it behooves everyone to eat a variety of foods, but animal foods aren't the least bit necessary. The very person who came up with the idea of combining foods to make complete proteins, Frances Moore Lappe wrote a second edition of her book after further study completely contradicting her original hypothesis. What is her dietary choice today? Vegetarian.

Isn't there a disease called protein deficiency and aren't people suffering from it? The world health organization studies epidemics and doesn't have any disease directly relating to protein deficiency. They do have a disease called merasmus (wasting away) which means you're not just deficient in protein, but also every other nutrient under the sun. I'm not starving myself, I look and feel great. So why do people think they need more protein, especially body builders? Simple, a combination of advertising and ignorance.

Is there anything else wrong with eating animal protein? Sure there is! Animal protein also contains a chemical called prostaglandin 2, which is known to irritate the vaginal lining in women causing painful PMS. In other words vegan woman are easier to deal with and lead happier lives. Thanks to their diet, vegan women also don’t suffer from cottage cheese thighs, meaning the area surrounding their vaginas is also considerably more appealing.

Plant fats are liquid at room temperature, this means they can flow freely through our veins. Animal Fats, are solids at room temperature meaning they clog your veins. This is really bad news for men, because it means their exponentially more prone to erectile dysfunction if they eat meat. When you combine that with the fact that vegan men also have a lower body mass index, it also means they look better naked. Personally, I’m proud to be a vegan hottie. It also means it's more work for either sex to simply move, which is why virtually all world class endurance athletes are vegetarians. Just to name a few Dave Scott, the only man to win the Ironman 6 times, Sixto Linares 24-hour triathlon record holder (swam 4.8 miles, cycled 185 miles, and ran 52.5 miles), or Paavo Nurmi who has 20 World Records in distance running. There’s also this lady named Ruth Heidrich. Ruth ran every day and had even completed 3 marathons by the age of 37. 37 was also an age for her, because it’s the year she was diagnosed with breast cancer, osteoporosis, and to make matters worse her cancer had spread into the lining of her lungs. Being a brave and open minded woman she decided to take Dr. John McDougal’s advice and consume a vegan diet. Ruth didn’t just get over her cancer and osteoporosis she got stronger. A lot stronger, she went on to complete 6 Ironmans, and consistently wins at the Senior Olympics. In 1999 she was voted one of the 100 fittest people on the planet. I’m not going to argue that recognition, swimming 2.4 miles, then running a marathon, and then biking 112 miles all without stopping is something I can’t even do. Animal fats, listed as saturated fats on food labels, also cause those unsightly varicose veins, heart disease, and diabetes.

The Framingham heart study looked at 30,000 individuals over a 30 year period and what they found is that no one with a cholesterol level below 150 has ever had a heart attack. What's the cholesterol level of the average vegan? One…twenty…five! In other words if you are a vegan you are heart attack proof. (See Bruce Friedrich's Vegetarianism in a Nutshell, 5 bucks total at Audible.com).

Now what’s that about diabetes, I thought that was caused by excess sugar consumption? That does have a lot to do with it, but it isn’t the whole story. When you eat enough sugar, your body will release sufficient insulin, to let your blood sugar feel normal again. Fat blocks the body's ability of your body to sense its own insulin levels. If you have to much fat blocking that process, you won’t even be aware that you've eaten too much. So said fat-laden person continues eating to feel a normal insulin level, which actually winds up being really high. Over time this excess insulin/sugar consumption problem escalates into the condition we know as diabetes.

What about cancer? Cornell University in conjunction with the British and Chinese government conducted a landmark studying with 5,000 entrants. The New York Times called this “China Study”, the Grand Prix of nutritional studies. They took 50 people from 100 counties or 100 people from 50 counties (sorry can't remember which) and measured everything they could about their current lifestyle and family's history of disease. When it came time to measure their diets they actually had a scientist stay with each person for two days and record every single thing they ate. It took them 2 years to compile their results the first time they did it and they've done the same study twice and gotten the same exact results. What they found was that as you increase your animal food consumption so do you increase your risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis. The results had such a high correlative value that the difference between eating 99% plant food and 100% plant food was still statistically significant.

Cows milk is probably natures most misunderstood food and I say that, because some people actually think it should be consumed by someone other than baby cows. I’m reminded of a Calvin and Hobbes sketch where Calvin has his head underneath a cow and is staring at it her udders imaging himself drinking from a nipple. Calvin thinks to himself “Something is wrong with this picture”. Well Calvin was right, cows milk is for growth. Unfortunately, it’s also for the growth of cows meaning it’s capable of turning a 90 pound calf into an 800-1100 pound baby in less than a year. Thankfully, it’s not that reactive on humans or most people might have figured it out by now. Cow’s milk contains IGF-1, insulin like growth factor which oddly enough also matches a growth hormone in humans. The problem is we’re adults and not even cows, so not only are we not supposed to be rapidly growing, but we’re not supposed to be growing as rapidly as cows do. In other words milk contains a level of growth hormones that is not only excessive, but entirely unnecessary. Well what happens, will I get man boobs? Yes, but only if you are a man. Thankfully everyone can share in the benefits on IGF-1, because it just so happens to be known as the number one marker for cancers. In other words if you have a lot of IGF-1 we not only know you drink too much milk, we also know that you are already developing cancer that one day will grow into a nice big lump. Whether you get that lump in your prostate, breasts, or armpits is just part of the fun of drinking milk.

Milk also tastes a bit like glue. In fact I learned that Elmer’s glue actually contains casein a protein from milk. So one day just for kicks, I stuck some on my tongue and there was a surprising resemblance. That thick hard to swallow coating feeling helps make glue. When you put casein together with starch from grains you’ve got a powerful glue. It’s so strong they use it on glass bottles to keep the label on. Milk is so useful not only can you glue a label on the outside of a glass bottle with milk, but you can also fill the inside of the bottle with it too. A lot of people like dairy products and grains together and they get that same wonderful glue forming in their bodies. That’s right, milk causes constipation. Scientists at the University of Palermo were able to constipate babies, man these guys are good. I’m lucky if I can just get them to laugh. So any ways all the scientists had to do was wait 2-3 days after giving the infants casein and they didn’t have to change diapers as frequently. In other words if you feed your baby cow’s milk you won’t have to change little annie as often, of course when you finally do change her it might be a putrefactive nightmare, but at least you can procrastinate.

What about the four food groups or the food pyramid why do they contain animal foods? Well they certainly don’t contain them for any health-based scientific reason. They do contain animal foods, because our food and drug administration is a puppet organization for industry. The food industry has paid them to include the foods their most interested in selling. In an independent study sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration to figure out how honest their own employees were, they found out that ¾ of all their food inspectors were in collusion with the very companies they’re supposed to be policing. What about the disease foundations? Well, I don’t care which one you choose, the cancer society, the heart foundation, etc.., etc… they all have virtually the same position statement “eat more fruits and eat more vegetables”. They are just total cowards, because they fail to tell the public that they need to cut some things out of their diet also.

Why would these health organizations that are non profits have such a weak message? Well the National Cancer Society has it written in their charter that the day a cure for cancer is found they have to disband. I’m guessing their executives are enjoying their six to seven figure salaries, private jets, and lavish lifestyles a little too much to let that cat out of the bag. They’re also sponsored by drug companies who’d much rather sell you a costly (in many cases 3-300,000% profit) drug rather than letting everyone know they should just eat cucumbers. Well why don’t the drug companies just refine cucumbers and sell that? Patents, we have something in America called patent medicine, if you don’t have the patent, you’ll have gobs of competition. So scientists are hard at work making up chemicals our bodies have never worked with before on the outside chance that what they come up helps mask the symptoms of a particular disease, without killing you in the next 5 years. All drugs have side effects, as anyone who’s ever gotten a prescription has read. The only side effects you can expect from eating extra cucumbers is that your butt will look a whole lot cuter from the side.

Grains have an extremely long shelf-life and are very cheap so what’s the biggest chunk on the food pyramid? You guessed it grains. Personally, I don’t even eat grains, they’re not palatable raw and therefore do not match our evolutionary needs. You could be in a field of wheat and starve to death or in a fruit orchard and eat yourself silly (See Dr. Douglas Graham’s “Grain Damage” for more details). I don’t have to sprinkle garlic salt and butter on an apple to make it taste good, but I would have to do that to a long strip of bread. Grains also acidify the body, sure they’re better for you than meat, but they still don’t begin to match our physiology.

Okay so fruits and vegetables are good for me, I get the picture, but why? They’re extremely high in vitamins and minerals. Fruits are the number one source of vitamins and vegetables are number two. Vegetables are the number one source of minerals and can you guess what the number two is? That’s right, it’s fruit. So if you eat lots of fruits and vegetables you’re consuming the best sources of vitamins and minerals. Both also contain plenty of moisture which means they’re not dehydrating. This is extremely beneficial for athleticism, because a properly hydrated body can stay cool longer. Both also contain fiber. Fiber acts like a slip and slide, for the food you digest. With adequate fiber defecating can be a quick and almost effortless experience, but in its absence it’s a noisy, slow, painful, and sometimes even bloody ordeal. Unlike the fiber found in grains it doesn’t act like shards of glass cutting your digestive tract on the way down. This cutting effect found in grains is associated with a lack of coordination. Grains are dry which also makes them harder to defecate. What about animal foods don’t they contain fiber too? Nope, absolutely none.

Are you nuts, you forgot nuts? Well I’m sure you might think I’m nuts by now, but no I’m not. Nuts are delicious raw without adding any spices or cooking, although most people have never had them that way. A good raw macadamia nut, pistachio, or cashew is hard to beat in terms of decadence and flavor. Nuts do contain fiber and it isn’t as scratchy as grain fiber, possibly due to the high oil content. They are a plant-based source of omega-3 fatty acids, the ones that are so good for you. However, oil, any kind of oil, does a have a mild clogging effect on circulation, so it’s important to eat what you need and not over do it. A lot of star athletes consume little or no nuts, because of this clogging effect. Ruth Heidrich for example only sprinkles a little bit of ground flax seed on her plate to get some Omega-3’s. Omega-3s can also be found in green leafy vegetables so you don’t have to eat nuts if you’re trying to maximize weight loss or excel at athletics. Store bought beef would actually contain Omega-3s in significant quantities if modern cows were fed grass. However, the typical cow is fed grains, sewage, and the carcasses of other animals that were deemed unfit for sale. They only rule about feeding livestock animals is that it just can’t be from the same species. I’ve heard that coconut oil is good for you? Actually, unless you’re eating the coconut, I wouldn’t recommend it. Oil is just as bad for you as sugar, it’s an extremely refined food product. Oil is in many ways worse for you than sugar, because it contains 9 calories per gram whereas carbohydrates only contain 4. In other words oil is more energetically dense, fattening. That’s why I encourage people to eat avocados, nuts and seeds vs. oils, it’ll lower your caloric intake, while adding nutritional cofactors.


So if you want to look incredible, I encourage you to consider a plant-based diet along with plenty of exercise. After all, you’ve got nothing to loose, but cottage cheese thighs and you have everything to gain: cat calls, whistles, and phone numbers. Have a look at this list of famous vegetarians, chances are you’re a fan of some of these actors from watching television. You’ll also notice that the same website is a directory of vegetarian restaurants which seems like a great way for you to try a plant-based meal if you’ve gotten at least a little bit curious:
http://www.happycow.net/famous_vegetarians.html

Take Care, Christian