The Meaty Truth (7 page)

In simplest terms, the cause of heart disease is plaque or fatty deposit buildup in the sixty thousand miles of veins and arteries throughout our body. Healthy arteries are lined with a smooth substance called endothelial tissue and are supposed to be strong and elastic. When we eat foods high in fat and cholesterol (i.e, meat, dairy, eggs, cheese, and butter), these endothelial cells become sticky and fatty deposits, or plaque, stick to our arteries and accumulate. This buildup of plaque is like the narrowing of a hose pipe. Eventually it slows blood flow and causes hypertension. A heart attack happens when this plaque buildup eventually ruptures and spills toxic contents into our bloodstream. In response, our platelets try to come to the rescue and fix the problem, but their help can actually deprive our heart muscles of vital oxygen, resulting in a heart attack or, in some cases, sudden death.

Let’s be crystal clear on the issue of cholesterol: excess cholesterol that forms plaque
only
comes from animal products. Plant-based foods do not have cholesterol. Researchers around the world have proof that eliminating animal protein from our diet can reverse and prevent heart disease. One landmark study—the Framingham Heart Study—demonstrated that lower cholesterol levels can protect a person from cardiovascular disease.
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Similarly, the renowned Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr.’s twelve-year study was one of the first to show the protective qualities of a plant-based diet.
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Of his eighteen subjects who followed this diet, none of them had cardiac events over the twelve years. Those that did not follow the diet continued to have cardiac events over the same time period. Not one drug, diet, or surgery has been able to replicate the same track record.

Thousands of Americans undergo risky bypass surgery, have stents placed, or live on cholesterol medication. For whatever illogical reason, simple solutions like dietary changes are considered more radical than having our chests cracked open. The bigger problem is that surgery and pills do not address the underlying cause of the disease. Think of your heart like a tire with a hole in it. We wouldn’t keep pumping air into the
tire and driving on it in the hopes that it would magically fix itself. We know the tire would inevitably blow out, so logically we would change the tire. In this case, we can’t put a Band-Aid on heart disease with medicine; we have to fix the underlying cause, which is where the plaque is coming from in the first place.

For those skeptics out there that think we can’t “solve” heart disease through diet, let’s look at what would happen if we actually cut back on animal protein. Fortunately, one country decided to try this experiment. In the 1970s, Finland’s mortality rate from heart disease was the highest in the world (Sound familiar to America’s current heart disease epidemic?). In an effort to reduce heart disease, Finland’s government decided to cut back on all animal products, including meat, eggs, and dairy products. To gain support, the government implemented nationwide programs that reduced intake of saturated fat from cheese, chicken, cakes, and pork. They even assisted in switching dairy farmers to berry farmers. The result? There was an 80 percent drop in heart-disease deaths, and cardiovascular and cancer mortality was cut in half.
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This drastic change was from just reducing animal-product intake, not completely eliminating it. Impressive? We think so too. Heart disease doesn’t run in our families but rather in our family recipes. The mounting evidence is clear. We have the answer. It’s our choice between pills or plants. We will opt for the plants, please.

The Dirty “C” Word

An increasing number of families are devastated by cancer, especially hormone-related cancers such as breast and prostate cancer, each year. In the United States alone, there are 146,000 new breast cancer cases and forty-six thousand deaths from breast cancer each year.
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In the past this was something that only happened to postmenopausal women. Today it is now afflicting women in their early twenties and thirties.

Put simply, cancer is a faulty replication of our genes that mutates quickly if fertilized by carcinogens and unregulated. While genes do play a role in cancer development, what most people do not know is that diet
can control our genes and essentially turn cancer on or off. All of us have cancer cells present in our bodies. Whether or not the cancer is expressed is determined, in many cases, by environmental and lifestyle factors such as diet. In fact, studies show that our genes play a very small part in our risk factor for cancer development. Only about 2 to 3 percent of all cancers are purely genetic. This means our chance of having cancer is primarily due to lifestyle and food choices. Cancer can be slow to manifest, meaning our childhood eating habits can set the stage for adult cancer.

Animal protein is one of cancer’s best friends. Animal protein, such as that found in meat, dairy, and eggs “changes our hormone levels, modifies vital enzyme activities, causes inflammation and cell proliferation and creates an acidic atmosphere in the body—all of which create an ideal environment for cancer to thrive.”
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Friends, our current diet is cancer-causing. Simply put, the more animal products we eat, the higher the probability we have of getting cancer.

The World Cancer Research Fund recently reviewed over seven thousand studies and declared processed meats dangerous for human consumption, as they can cause cancer.
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These include All-American favorites such as bacon, sausage, sandwich meats, and pepperoni. Why are these meats in particular cancer causing? Sodium nitrate used to give hot dogs that reddish color and MSG added to give a savory flavor to otherwise dead meat are known carcinogens or cancer promoters. Most Americas consume these foods every single day. Think one hot dog won’t hurt you? Think again. Studies find that fifty grams of processed meat, the equivalent of one hot dog per day, increases the risk of colon cancer by 21 percent!
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We can cut our risk of cancer by as much as 40 percent by eliminating meat and animal products from our diet.
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According to Harvard University studies, our risk of colon cancer drops by two-thirds if we stop eating meat and dairy products.
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Who knew diet could be so powerful?

Studies are also finding that it is not just eating meat that is cancer-causing. Cooking it produces carcinogens as well. On every menu or USDA guideline, we are constantly reminded that undercooked meats
could be harmful and cause foodborne illnesses. However, it’s quite a catch-22, because cooking meat to the high temperatures required produces heterocyclic amines, or HCAs, which are known carcinogens. Cooking, grilling, frying, and oven broiling beef, pork, chicken, and fish even at normal temperatures produces these harmful mutagens. In particular, grilled chicken, which is touted as the “healthier white meat,” has been found to contain some of the highest concentrations of HCAs.
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Clearly, from cooking to eating meat, participating in this American habit is a significant cancer risk that we should rethink.

In particular, Dr. T. Colin Campbell has found that the most relevant chemical carcinogen identified is casein, the animal protein in cow’s milk. Casein makes up 87 percent of dairy products. Every time we reach for a glass of milk, slice of cheese, or a cottage-cheese breakfast, we are instigating cancer growth. This is because dairy is not only acidic but also contains the natural growth hormones’ insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF-1, that stimulate growth and consequently cancer proliferation. For example, studies have found that when IGF-1 is dripped onto human breast cancer cells, the mutated cells grow uncontrollably.
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The silver lining is that removing meat and dairy from our diets protects us from cancer. The Pritikin Research Foundation studied the blood from participants on different types of diets and found that those who consumed a plant-based diet in comparison to the typical meat and dairy-based SAD (Standard American Diet) had blood that was less hospitable to cancer.
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Blood from completely plant-based participants fought prostate cancer eight times better than those consuming meat and dairy products. Even better, in a mere two weeks a vegan diet was able to slow down and in some cases stop the progression of breast-cancer growth! Eating a plant-based diet can change about five hundred genes, “turning on genes that prevent disease and turning off genes that cause breast cancer, heart disease, prostate cancer, and other illnesses.”
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Ominously, the World Health Organization forecasted that the cancer rate will reach as high as twenty-two million cases a year over the next two decades.
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Prevention rather than treatment is our best option to combat
these numbers. It looks like we need to start eating a plant-based diet and run for the cure with banners promoting the power of plant nutrition.

Don’t Blame the Sugar

Type 2 diabetes is becoming a national epidemic, especially among children. Since World War II, the rate of diabetes has increased by 700 percent, doubling almost every year for the past fifteen years since 1975.
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The chance of a newborn baby becoming diabetic later in life is now one in every three. In the United States, diabetes alone cost $245 billion dollars in 2012, a 41 percent increase since 2007.
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Diabetes is a serious problem. It is the leading cause of blindness in the United States and is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. Other problems include nerve damage, cognitive decline, kidney failure, and amputations. The good news is that we can avoid losing our eyesight and save our kidneys by cutting the crap out of our diet.

Type 2 diabetes comprises 90 to 95 percent of diabetic cases in the United States.
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Since type 2 diabetes is directly related to obesity, it means our current diabetic epidemic is lifestyle related. In fact, cross-cultural studies can depict a diabetes map of the world. Those places that more closely follow America’s blind lead on diet have the highest rates of type 2 diabetes. America, we are self-inflicting this disease. This means we can stop it.

There has been a national outcry about the weight of the nation’s citizens, especially as it relates to diabetes and childhood obesity. In school nurse’s offices around the country, you can find insulin needles in every trash can as type 2 diabetes rates soar among children. Most of the efforts to address childhood obesity, such as the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” program, Katie Couric’s movie
Fed Up
, and New York’s move to ban supersized soda drinks, are well intentioned, but missing the larger picture. If anything, these efforts reiterate the lack of information surrounding the root of our health-care problems.

We think of diabetes as strictly a sugar problem. While diabetes is caused by elevated sugar levels in the bloodstream, the underlying cause is fat, hence its relationship to weight. In simplest terms, fat blocks our
insulin receptors in the muscles, which pushes glucose into our bloodstreams and leads to an excess of sugar.
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Most medical and dietary guidelines for diabetics strictly focus on limiting carbohydrates, fruits, and sweets. The problem is that they continue to allow people to eat excessive amounts of animal protein and foods high in fat, which only serves to promote, rather than control, diabetes. No offense to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), but its guidelines have yet to reverse diabetes in those who follow it nor does it incorporate the scientific knowledge we know today. Continuing to eat chicken and turkey high in cholesterol will not help regulate your blood-sugar levels. Diabetes does not have to be a life sentence. Yet most people are told that they have to spend the rest of their lives controlling or managing their diabetes. Seems like a lot of work to us. Luckily, there is a better way. 

By reducing fat intake, we can unclog insulin receptors and allow insulin to function normally again. A landmark study in 2006 found that those eating a low-fat, plant-based diet were better able to control diabetes and, in many cases, reverse their diabetes than those following the ADA guidelines.
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No More White Lies

What about dairy? Isn’t that natural at least? Every mammal has evolved to use the milk from its own mother to grow. Yet humans are the only species that chooses to drink the milk of another species. Nature never intended for us to continue drinking milk after weaning. This is why lactose intolerance is so pervasive around the world. After weaning, we naturally lose the enzyme that breaks down lactase in our bodies. Despite what we have been led to believe, cow’s milk was not part of our ancestors’ diet, and especially not in the amounts we consume today. We have been drinking milk only for the past six thousand years, which in evolutionary terms is the blink of an eye. Our bodies are not designed to consume cow’s milk. According to Harvard University studies headed by researcher Walter Willet, “Humans have no nutritional requirement for animal milk, an evolutionarily recent addition to the diet.”
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Of all foods, most people think that dairy is a perfect food for our health. Based on this assumption, Americans consume massive amounts of cheese, yogurt, milk, and other dairy products thinking that we are providing our bodies with a superfood. We have to hand it to the dairy companies when it comes to marketing. Dairy is a wonderful growth mechanism and the perfect food for baby cows. But dairy is the most imperfect food for human health, and it is linked to a host of health problems, including but not limited to: acne, arthritis, breast cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, heart disease, diabetes, autism, Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and osteoporosis.
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That’s right, dairy actually doesn’t build strong bones. If dairy did promote strong bones, then the United States wouldn’t have such high rates of osteoporosis and brittle bones as it currently does. We know this information goes against everything the dairy industry has been proclaiming for years, but “Got Milk?” doesn’t translate to “Got Strong Bones?” In fact, our obsession with calcium from dairy products actually weakens our bones and damages our joints. A more apt advertisement for the best sources of calcium would be “Got Kale?” or “Got Broccoli?” as these foods are superior to dairy products. Dairy products rich in saturated fat, hormones, toxins, industrial pollutants, and both natural and artificial growth hormones might just be one of the most contaminated and toxic foods that we could eat (For more on what’s hiding behind dairy’s angelic façade, read
chapter six
.).