MaxDiet Week: What’s Wrong With Meat?
Cutting out sugars and refined flours, as we talked about last time, probably offers the most significant opportunity to improve your diet. Unlike sugar, meat is not all bad. It does in fact have nutrients in it which are readily used by your body.
Unfortunately for steak lovers (my former self included), the negatives associated with eating meat far outweigh the positives (including that buttery rich taste that we all love so much).
There are two major problems with eating meat is well as the issue of animal rights, which I’ll get into at the end.
Animal Protein
Animal protein is ascribed supernatural powers. It’s what makes men manly. It’s what builds muscles. Fat and carbs have been targeted as dietary land mines, but no fad diet has targeted protein.
And, indeed, protein is extremely important to our bodies. Protein is used to repair our cells and build new ones. Without protein we would all die.
So the argument for veganism, which is the complete removal of all animal products from the diet, is not an argument for giving up protein.
Animal proteins are often recommended over plant proteins because they’re complete proteins, meaning they contain all of the amino acids we need.
In reality, these argument doesn’t carry much practical weight. A decent vegan meal will contain all of the amino acids you’ll need.
The one thing that plant protein DOESN’T have is the ability to kill you.
Dr. Campbell, who I mentioned in the introduction, discovered a direct correlation between eating animal proteins and things like cancer, heart disease, stroke and most other early life-enders readers of this site are likely to meet with eventually.
Plant proteins had no similar effects. It’s important to remember that these conclusions came from lab experiments with rats as well as data obtained from many thousands of people. It represents science’s most current understanding.
The explanation for why this is the case and the experiments that lead to the discoveries can be read in his book, “The China Study“. It is so compelling that I became a vegan the day after reading it.
Where Meat Comes From
Disgusting. That’s really the only word that can be used to describe the current method of producing meat.
Animals are born indoors and very frequently never leave the building they were born in until they are slaughtered. They never go outside. In fact, they barely move at all.
Besides not being a lot of fun for the pig, this poses other problems. The pigs are fed such a strong concoction of antibiotics and drugs that their feces turn bright pink. This pink sludge flows out of the facilities where the pigs are housed, but not before filling the air with noxious fumes that can literally be smelled for miles.
Because of the filthy living conditions and tight quarters, so close that the pigs are usually in contact with each other, they develop festering sores on their skin. That’s not the extent of the disease the pigs experience, either. The great majority are diseased when they are killed.
The one major requirement is that the animals must be able to move to the slaughter house by their own power. This is encouraged through beating and electrocution.
By time that piglet becomes bacon it has been abused by any definition of the word, and has lived in a level of squalor and disease that is totally unfit for food to be in. This is true even of milk cows, whose milk can legally be sold with small amounts of blood and pus in it.
Further compounding the problem, these animals are not fed their natural diet. They’re fed genetically modified corn and soy, which they would never eat in the wild. Cows, for example, have a specially evolved digestive system for digesting grass. It doesn’t work with corn, so they are pumped full of drugs to help digest the food.
This is how the overwhelming majority of livestock in the world, and especially the United States, are raised. This is not the exception. Even “free range” and organic meats are far from the innocence they connotate.
There is fierce competition in the industry, which means that the name of the game is packing as many animals into the smallest area possible without killing too many, pumping them full of any substance that will grow more meat, and doing it as inexpensively as possible.
This does not produce a product that you want to eat. It is sanitized and removed from its original context by the time you get it, but realize that every piece of meat you eat, no matter how nice and juicy it looks, has been through this process.
Dairy is no better. Milk has to be pasteurized to kill all of the gross bacteria that come out of a farm cow. It’s illegal to sell it otherwise. Milk was actually used for several of the studies in the China Study.
Fish
Fish are supposed to be the healthiest meat. They may have been in the past, may possibly still be now, but they are far from actually being healthy.
Fish have the same proteins we talked about earlier which contribute to all of those diseases that the meat eater will almost inevitably succumb to.
But in recent years, things have gotten even worse. They are farm raised in filthy pools, and fed corn because it is cheap. Think about that. How would a fish ever naturally get corn?
Wild caught fish aren’t much better. Pollution levels are so extreme that it’s a fair assumption that any fish you may eat is contaminated. Some fish, like tuna, have heavy metals in them which, once in your body, will never leave.
In the middle of the pacific is a huge sludge of trash that humans have produced. It’s larger than Texas, which is pretty darn big. The sludge is made of everything from plastic bottles to couches and TVs which float on the surface. No nation will take responsibility for the sludge, since it is in international waters, so it continues to grow every year.
The poisons from the trash leach out into the water, accumulate and concentrate in the fish, and are then delivered to you on your plate.
Mmmmmm.
Animal Rights
I’m torn on the issue of animal rights, although as I have stopped seeing animals as food and have started seeing them as amazing creations of nature, I have found myself emotionally more attached and more disgusted by the way they are treated.
If animals were supremely healthy for me, I would eat them. I would find farms that breed them in sanitary conditions with no weird drugs, and I would buy from them.
That’s not to say that I would be happy that the animals are being killed, but I realize that this is part of the food chain, and I will always put my well being over that of animals if push comes to shove.
The current system, however, is nothing short of repulsive. Many of the employees of these factories are sadistic and enjoy beating the animals. On peta.com (who I disagree with on a great number of things and would not use as a guide for diet), you can see videos of people bashing animals’ heads in with cinder blocks, cutting them and violating them in every way possible. It will make your stomach churn.
The Bottom Line
I’ve only barely scratched the surface of the meat issue. When you delve into it you also realize that the amount of pollution, energy, water, and food used for raising animals dwarfs the amount created and used for an equivalent amount of plant crops.
Whether you decide to stop eating animals because it’s nearly impossible to get animals not tainted by our meat producing factories, because eating it WILL eventually kill you, or because you love animals and don’t want to contribute to the atrocious conditions they live their lives in, you’re making a good choice.
After removing animal products from my diet, one question always nagged me. What about high quality farm raised cows who have never been treated with hormones or drugs, and who have always been fed their natural diet? I wrote to Dr. Campbell to ask if those might be healthy, and he replied,
Certain meats may be slightly better under certain conditions for certain people at certain times but we just don’t have any evidence that such differences are anything more than trivial. They certainly are not predictable.
Are these foods delicious? Yes, although they’ve now lost most of their appeal to me. My friend Jeffy once said, “Once you have self respect, it’s inevitable that you’ll become healthy”.
I believe that completely.
Removing meat from your diet is an act of self respect, essentially saying, “I care enough to give up superficial pleasures like a steak for a healthier and longer life.”
Continued in Part IV, “What to Eat?”
(20 votes, average: 3.85 out of 5)
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June 6th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Did you know that fucking a woman (especially if it is a different one everyday) could actually kill you. Maybe you should care enough to give up that superficial pleasure too.
Don’t hate,
Mike
June 6th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Hi Tynan, emailed you once before about the RV etc. I read Campbell years ago, and used to be a mostly vegetarian but after getting into CrossFit and doing my own research went back to meat. The thing is you CAN find humanely treated animals, it’s just more expensive and takes some effort. Those same animals also are being shown NOT to cause all the modern diseases that have been attibuted to meats. Because animals that eat what they’re supposed to instead of being force fed corn have vastly different meat. I now have a meat source from local farms along the Polyface Farms model, which is far more sustainable than industrial farming.
Highly recommend reading “the Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan, and looking into the Weston Price Foundation as well. There’s substantial evidence that there’s significant health benefits to eating meat, if it’s as wild and close to natural as possible, and mounting evidence that soy as a main protien source is actually very bad for you.
Anyway I know for myself that my health and fitness improved dramatically when I went back to meat. I also know I’ve never met a vegan who looked particularly haelthy, not that that alone is everything. Read for yourself and Black Box it, as they say.
Also if it was me in your shoes, I know I’d enjoy learning about local cultural foods, including meats. Some places have adopted western diets of course, but I imagine there’s some gems to be found as well.
June 6th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Hey Tynan
Id be interested to hear more thoughts about wild fish from other parts of the world.
Reason being I have been eating very similarily to you for about a year now, vegan (and eating real food, not soy/proccessed crap), except I eat wild fish every few weeks. Usually I catch them myself and clean/eat them the same day.
thanks
June 6th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I was a vegetarian for 2 years - but being Asian it is hard enough to keep weight on even eating beef. Once I cut beef out I looked like a heroin addict - lol
June 6th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Here’s one rebuttal to the China Study:
http://www.westonaprice.org/bookreviews/chinastudy.html
I read another article somewhere recently where someone asked Campbell what he thought of eating animals from sustainable farming programs like the Polyface farms, and he said something along the lines of that probably being ok but he didn’t know enough about it(…). Will see if I can find it. Thing is the China study only included industrialized meat, which is clearly not great on many levels.
Is not eating animal products at all the answer though? I’ve personally decided that taking the time to know where my meat and dairy comes from and perhaps pay more for it, is worth the health benefits and also supports further development of such practices. It’s also something of an interesting adventure to make the connections and find the real food.
June 6th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Good post, I agree with a lot of what you have to say.
I’m not sure if your intention was to attack people who eat meat, or motivate people to change, but if you were trying to motivate people to change (I’m going to assume you were/are), I’m not sure how well this post accomplishes your mission. This is for a few reasons:
1 - You use a lot of statements that challenge the way people typically choose to see things… but you don’t provide enough proof for them to believe you. The China Study has been on my reading list for a least a year… and I’m still not motivated to move it to the top of my list. And I’m not going to read it just to prove to myself that the points you made were true.
2 - you said peta (even though you said you mostly don’t agree with the group, you still said it). When I hear someone mention peta, that scares me off… and I’ve been a vegetarian for a long long time. So imagine what it does to the meat-eating audience? Also, peta is mega biased in your favor just because of what it is. Use a source that isn’t biased in your favor to make your points more credible. I bet there are lots of good videos on youtube that you can find by typing in “slaughterhouse”.
3 - about “Removing meat from your diet is an act of self respect, essentially saying, ‘I care enough to give up superficial pleasures like a steak for a healthier and longer life.’”
This might be true, but you probably offended and alienated everyone reading your post who eats meat (which will make them want to do the opposite of what you’re trying to accomplish here). You just told them they don’t respect themeselves and they’re superficial. See: the guy who left the first comment.
I like what you’re doing here with the MaxDiet posts. It’s definitely beneficial and maybe an eye-opener to a lot of people. Don’t take my critique as an insult… I only critique things I like.
June 7th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
I’m obsessed with these new posts. PS I got your card today…I love it!! Thanks so much
:)
June 8th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Where do you get your protein if you eat no meat, fish, dairy, or soy? Beans? They are generally considered a non optimal source of carbs and you’d have to eat tons of them to get enough protein to support much muscle (and lots of other things in your body). Seems counter productive to doing any sort of workout program and not get enough protein. Which may be why every vegan I’ve known looked pale skinny and sick.
Traditional fermented soybeans might be an option if you can eat enough of it, somehow I doubt that’s on most vegans shopping list though.
June 13th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I am vegan aside from a very small amount of fish in my diet. Like a pound or two per month.
I am neither skinny, physically weak, pale, or unhealthy. Quite the opposite actually.
Any vegetarian/vegan you see that looks like shit probably looks that way because they believe anything they eat is healthy since they dont eat meat….things like dairy and frozen/proccessed food.
Face it, vegan rules =p
June 14th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Becoming a vegetarian is the best thing i could of done. There is a difference between a healthy vegetarian and an unhealthy one. A healthy one collects all the information on how to nourish a vegetarian lifestyle where as an unhealthy version may not eat meat but will be malnourished due to bad choice of foods, because hot chips are vegetarian right!!!
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:12 am
Becoming a vegan is work, in the beginning (ie. 30 days). If you encounter a pale, malnourished “heroin-addict” person, claiming that they are vegan, I promise it is because they haven’t done the proper substitutions that allow for total nutritional efficiency.
Most vegans that I know (myself included), prepare most of the food we eat. With a bit of reading and tweaking, it’s quite easy and fun to get to a level where your diet is totally balanced, energizing and delicious, minus the animal protein. In short, from what I’ve seen over 7-8 years, unhealthy looking vegans haven’t done their homework.
I am a vegan, going on 8 years now. I am 5′7, I weigh 129 pounds and I run marathons. Within 1 week of adopting the diet, my endurance went through the roof, my skin improved and somewhat standard allergies (hayfever) that I had suffered with for years, disappeared and never came back. I also need less sleep and have loads of energy throughout the day. I get my blood tested yearly and all vitamin/nutrient levels are bang on. I never get sick.
For those that insist that buying chemical-free meats is a compromise, I would recommend reading (or re-reading) the China Study and anything by Dr. Neal Barnard. Pay special attention to the effect of animal protein itself. No matter how it’s treated, it’s the SOURCE of the protein that is important. That it’s laden with hormones and antibiotics is just the tip of a rather huge iceberg.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Hey Tynan,
although I agree that meat isn’t healthy the way you put it, I for sure know that you are exaggerating about the pigs and other animals when it comes to their health. I know it happens, and maybe even more in the US, but we’ve had plenty of meat from our own animals, even a young cow (1 year old) which we always had outside during the day and during night it was in a stable that was big enough to contain 10 cows if they didn’t need any room. We also had pigs, and those were more ‘professionally’ raised, but those still had enough space and I know that out of 200 no more than 10 would have died over the course of 3 months. This may seem like a big number, but how many animals can you name that are born in the wild where such a high level of survival (95%) can be reached? And when those pigs went to the slaughterhouse, those were able to move by themselves. I don’t know because I never seen it, but if ever beatings (maybe) or electrocuting (I really doubt it) was used it was to get them running in the right direction instead of RUNNING the wrong way. There’s various other examples I could give and I do know the quality of the life of those animals wasn’t as good as in the wild, but you are making it sound a lot worse.
With that said I wanted to say that I still eat meat today, but that I’m going to check out and read about this MaxDiet some more and see if it is something for me.