Many books and nutritional gurus promote a high-protein diet with lots of animal products. However, an increasing number of scientific studies have accumulated evidence that demonstrates the folly of this viewpoint and the dangerous outcomes that occur from following such ill-conceived advice. Higher intake of animal products in the diet is associated with twelve different types of cancer, as determined by data from the GLOBOCAN project of the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Researchers investigated populations in eighty-seven U.S. counties that had high-quality data available and demonstrated an association with cancer in the overwhelming majority of counties in which pasture-raised or naturally raised animal products were used, as opposed to feedlot-fed commercial meats, which are likely even more detrimental.2
More protein from animal products encourages the growth and spread of cancer. But when people modify their diets to include more natural, higher protein plant foods, such as beans, greens, seeds, and nuts, and fewer high-protein animal products, they achieve dramatic health and life span benefits, especially fewer deaths caused by heart attack.3
People in the nutritional arena make all types of claims, and they always have some studies to back up their views. Eggs are good; eggs are bad; fat is good; fat is bad—in each case, someone finds and quotes a different study to support a predetermined position. People can claim almost anything and always find some study somewhere that supports their viewpoint. The public is left with no choice but to believe whomever they want and just pick the diet they prefer to eat.
So why am I giving extra credence to the three studies I am highlighting as examples below? Why not accept other studies that show animal products are not so dangerous, and could even be helpful for some people? The main reason is the large number of participants in these studies and the significant number of years the study subjects were followed. Short-term studies can be manipulated to show benefits when a person loses weight, even if the diet is not ideal for cancer protection or longevity in the long run.
Blood test markers may improve, but these are soft endpoints, meaning they are suggestive of benefits but may or may not translate into fewer heart attacks, fewer strokes, less cancer, and a longer life down the road. Hard endpoints, such as a cardiac event, a cancer diagnosis, or a death, are more powerful indicators and need to be granted more weight and legitimacy. The data from many long-term studies with hard endpoints have accumulated recently, making the science definitive.
STUDY NUMBER ONE
Scientists followed more than 85,000 women and 44,000 men for twenty years or more (twenty-six years in women and twenty years in men), none of whom had prior diabetes, heart disease, or cancer. More than 12,500 deaths were recorded. This study demonstrated a 43 percent increased rate of death from all causes in those participants eating a “low-carbohydrate diet” that was high in animal products, compared with those eating a high-vegetable diet.4
This huge and convincing study, with more than twenty-five years of follow-up in women, clearly showed that a high-protein diet was much more dangerous than even the SAD; and of course the opposite approach, with fewer animal products and more plant vegetation in the diet, demonstrated a significant enhancement of life span. The study essentially puts an end to all debate about a high-protein diet. It simply is irresponsible to advise such a diet, because it kills people.
This massive study was published in 2010, meaning that we have known for years—without question—that these popular high-protein diets are deadly. It makes you wonder how authors can write books glorifying the benefits of high-protein, meat-based diets when such studies are available for everyone to review. Clearly, some authors pander to the masses’ desire to eat meat despite the known dangers.
STUDY NUMBER TWO
A 2012 study looked at the relationship between a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet and the incidence of cardiovascular diseases in Swedish women. More than forty-three thousand 30- to 49-year-old women were followed for more than fifteen years.5 This study was notable both for the large number of participants and for the care taken to access the degree of dietary adherence to the high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet protocol. Participants with the highest proportion of animal protein in their diets were also found to be consuming more animal fats, compared with those who consumed fewer animal products.
The researchers gave the subjects a diet score from 1 to 20 based on how closely they adhered to a low-carb, high-animal-protein dietary pattern. Those who were following the old Atkins-type or Dukan/Paleo diet most closely, with lots of animal products and severe restriction of carbohydrates, were given a score of 20. Those who followed a diet restricting animal products significantly and liberally eating plant foods rich in carbohydrates were given a score of 1. The researchers gave every participant a score to indicate how much that participant’s dietary pattern favored plants or animals.
Researchers tracked cardiovascular events (per ten thousand woman-years) and found a dose-dependent increase in risk: a 5 percent increase in risk of cardiovascular events (heart attack or cardiovascular-related death) per 2-point increase in the low-carb, high-protein diet score. Overall, a 60 percent increased risk of cardiovascular events and deaths occurred in those women adhering to a low-carb, high-protein diet with a diet score higher than 16.
The results showed a gradual and consistent increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease and experiencing a cardiovascular-related death when the consumption of animal products increased and consumption of plant-food carbohydrates decreased. The study’s conclusion? Low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular-related death. The researchers also compared their results with four other studies that looked at the same issue. They found that their results were consistent with earlier, smaller, long-term studies and that all these studies collectively showed that diets low in protective plant foods and high in animal products are exceedingly dangerous.
STUDY NUMBER THREE
In the third study, more than six thousand people eating high-protein diets that were low in sugar were studied and compared with people eating fewer animal products and more carbohydrates. They were followed for eighteen years and were in the 50–65 age range. Following deaths over those eighteen years, the researchers found a fourfold increase of risk of cancer death and a 75 percent increase in overall death in the group eating more animal products.6
It is interesting to note that the people in the high-animal-protein group were consuming the average level that most Americans consume—that is, about 18 percent of calories from animal protein, or about 27 percent of calories from animal products when you add in the fat calories. This means that high-protein diet gurus, who advocate much higher levels of animal protein than investigated in this study, may be dispensing more dangerous cancer-promoting advice compared with even the shocking higher death rate seen in this study. The lowest-protein study group consumed 5 percent of calories from animal protein, or less than about 8 percent in animal products, which is considerably less than what Americans currently consume.
It is also interesting to note that there was a seventy-three-fold increased risk of developing diabetes in the higher-protein group, and a twenty-three-fold increased risk in the moderate-protein group, compared with the lower-protein group. This increased risk of diabetes with higher animal protein intake was consistent at all ages.
It’s important to note that the study included data on elderly people that showed that animal protein in the diet was beneficial with advancing age, likely because of decreased digestive capacity and increased frailty with aging. However, that aspect of the study did not examine participants eating high-protein seeds, nuts, beans, and greens, which can increase the protein concentration of the diet without the known drawbacks of increasing animal products. Regardless of the question surrounding the ideal diet for the elderly, we know that the goals to maintain body muscle and skeletal mass and to maintain immune function as we age can be
best achieved with a diet mostly of natural, nutrient-rich plants. If animal products are needed, they should be used judiciously.
WE ALL MUST AGREE TO AGREE
Over the past decade, we have garnered an overwhelming amount of evidence regarding the dangers of the SAD and the protective effects of eating more natural plant foods. In fact, most nutritional scientists throughout the world agree on three basic tenets of healthy eating:
1.Foods that are highly refined and processed lose their natural structure, fiber, and micronutrients. They also are generally highly glycemic, resulting in increased insulin production. These foods promote disease and premature death.
2.Eating more colorful fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds protects against disease and reduces all-cause mortality, extending human life span.
3.Eating excess animal products can shorten life span and promote chronic disease and premature death. Some animal products are safer than others, but even safer ones should be consumed in only limited amounts.
Hundreds of studies have looked at the relationship between eating whole plant foods and chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer. For virtually every disease, studies have shown that people who eat the most vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains always have the lowest risk, no matter what disease is being investigated.
Large-scale, population-based studies document these effects. The more vegetables people eat, the better their health. For example, researchers analyzed sixteen prospective studies from the United States, Europe, and Asia that reviewed the effects of fruit and vegetable consumption on death from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.7 The studies involved a combined total of 833,234 subjects, with a follow-up period ranging from 4.6 to 26 years. This large-scale study showed that the risk of all-cause mortality decreased by every serving of produce eaten per day. The authors concluded: “The results support current recommendations to increase consumption [of whole plant foods] to promote health and overall longevity. The benefits of eating right are unparalleled by any medication on the market.” Dr. Kim Williams, former president of the American College of Cardiology, has called heart disease “a 99 percent food-borne illness.”
With the accumulated evidence available today, it is clear that heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States, is the result of nutritional folly. This fact makes almost every cardiac-related hospitalization, every death, and every stroke victim’s injuries the more tragic. We know this is all needless suffering and needless premature death, because these people could have learned to eat differently. We could revolutionize health care, add decades to life expectancy, and solve our health care problems—and much of the modern world’s economic difficulties—if people just ate better and followed the lead of the nutritional science community.
AMERICA: LAND OF THE FREE AND HOME OF THE OBESE
The facts regarding human nutrition have evolved so that we know how to save millions of lives. Yet people choose to ignore, twist, and vilify the science that has conclusively demonstrated that for excellent health, we need to eat a diet that consists predominantly of natural plants. Most people have not changed their behaviors, and dangerous eating and drinking are the norm. People are entrenched in their various dietary camps and do not want facts to interfere with their acquired food preferences.
We have a serious health care crisis, and things are not getting better—they are getting worse. Throughout the United States, we have a growing population of people suffering from obesity and diabetes, and others who have serious dietary-induced diseases. Though health varies widely depending on where one lives and what one eats, most people in this country are overweight and sickly by the time they reach middle age. For example, the average adult woman in the United States is 5-feet-4-inches tall and weighs 166 pounds; a dangerous and foreboding statistic. And that means half of all women weight more. This ubiquitous ill health has devastating effects on the productivity of our workforce and the health of our economy, as well as contributing to poor living conditions in our cities. The explosion in the number of people suffering from diabetes, as well as the deterioration of mental and physical health, leads to despondency.
More than 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 40 and 59 are now obese. The number of overweight and obese people has never been so high in all of human history, and this explosion of waistlines has occurred relatively recently, so the full damage is just beginning to unfold. The future looks bleak, with a predicted eruption of Alzheimer’s disease as our current obese population becomes older. Furthermore, Alzheimer’s is occurring at younger and younger ages.
“We have finaly determined, based on geographical correlation, that the cause of obesity is alligators.”
A study looking at this issue concluded that for an obese person in his or her 40s, the likelihood of that person developing Alzheimer’s disease is 74 percent higher than for someone of normal weight, and if that person is obese by his or her 30s, the risk is much higher.8 Americans are eating themselves into brain atrophy and dementia, which will place an increasing stress on the younger generations who have to care for these individuals.
A serious problem in our country—and in the modern world generally—is the lack of acceptance that chronic, dietary-induced diseases such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, stroke, and dementia are almost totally preventable through superior nutrition. Our economy is being weighed down by an expensive and largely ineffective medical system—a system that relies on expensive tests, treatments, and last-minute heroics to combat the effects of a nation poisoning itself with a rich, disease-causing diet.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women, yet it can be almost entirely prevented. I say “almost,” because some people’s health conditions have deteriorated so much before they switch to a healthy diet that a heart disease–induced death cannot be prevented. Also, some people have rare congenital and valvular heart diseases caused by infections or other nonnutritional factors.
According to the World Health Association, “Americans have one of the worst life expectancy” scores of all modern countries.9 But what is even worse is our very poor “healthy life expectancy score,” which takes into account not merely how long we live but also that our quality of life is so poor if still alive, because people are sickly, with both physical and mental deterioration. If you eat like other Americans and live long enough, the result is often dementia and stroke, which cripple the elderly and force them into long-term-care facilities where their quality of life is limited.
YOUR HEALTH IS IN YOUR HANDS
A Nutritarian diet is the “gold standard” eating style to maximize health and longevity. It contains at least 90 percent natural plant foods, including fresh fruit, vegetables, beans, mushrooms, onions, sprouted grains, nuts, and seeds. If much of our nation ate this way, we would be able to invigorate our economy, improve emotional intelligence, and increase productivity. Chronic disease, such as heart disease, would rarely be found, and—after decades of change—we would halt the explosion in cancer rates that has occurred in the past century, and the number of new cancer diagnoses would fall precipitously. Such diseases would be as unusual as they were earlier in human history.
A Nutritarian diet is an eating style in which the vast majority of calories are obtained from eating natural, colorful, nutrient-rich plant foods. Refined, processed foods are avoided or reduced, and the use of animal products is kept to less than 10 percent of calories consumed. A Nutritarian diet style has a specific purpose: to maximize how long we live and to minimize the possibility of our suffering from heart disease, stroke, dementia, and cancer. It is not a fixed or rigid platform of rules, but a changing body of recommendations that moves with the preponderance of evidence to protect human lives from disease and to maximize health.
A Nutritarian diet is also effective, and sometimes modified specifically, for the treatment of diabetes, autoimmune disease, irritable bowel syndr
ome, gout, kidney stones, and migraines. It can be used therapeutically to enable recovery from most chronic diseases.10
The body is a miraculous, self-healing machine when fed properly. Through dietary excellence, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes melt away, and even advanced cases of atherosclerosis (coronary artery disease) resolve, removing the need for expensive, invasive, and usually futile medical care. Most diseases that plague modern America are the result of nutritional ignorance and are best remedied with superior nutrition, not drugs.
I was the principal investigator on a 2015 study on a Nutritarian diet documenting the benefits for reducing weight, lowering cholesterol, and reducing blood pressure.11 The results were remarkable. Out of 443 individuals, the average drop in systolic blood pressure was 26 mmHg—much more than drugs accomplish and more than any other diet ever tested. Patients routinely reversed their heart disease, even when the cases were very advanced. This eliminated their need for coronary artery bypass surgery and angioplasty.
As we have increased our waistlines in the United States, we are facing an exploding epidemic of type 2 diabetes. What once was a relatively rare disease now affects almost 10 percent of all Americans, and that percentage continues to increase. Yet a Nutritarian diet also reverses type 2 diabetes in approximately 90 percent of compliant individuals.12
Fast Food Genocide Page 8
