by Lorette C. Luzajic

The propaganda cheerfully floating around about the dangers of meat may protect animals while shamelessly promoting false or misleading information. But it won’t protect human health.

There is no shortage of wheat and soy salesmanship- it seems many vegetarians are incapable of objectively accepting factual science. Without regard to whose health is destroyed, so long as the moo moos aren’t hurt, misinformation is willfully propagated. Look up any illness and you’ll find endless meat demonizing – meat is the apparent cause of the past century’s diseases, even as we eat less meat and animal fat and more vegetable fat and grain foods than ever before.

It is these blatant lies or quietly misguided theories that make me into the anti-vegan monster I’m accused of being. I’ll reiterate it over and over again- I am not against anyone’s personal compassion choices. But I sure as hell am against the endless falsehoods about the evils of the diet we were  born to eat.

Seeking my nutritional birthright is not evil. But the sheer disregard for human health, herding millions into a brainwashed belief system that isn’t true? Evil. The national obsession with fibre, for example, continues unabated. This obsession was born with the Natural Hygiene Movement’s Freudian fixation on all things bowel. Lust and masturbation were blamed on animal foods, and so was constipation, meaning cereal doctors Kellogg and Graham promoted grains to alleviate fecal “pressure” on the sex organs, as being backed up apparently ignited arousal. Yeah.

Unfortunately, we hear over and over how dairy “leeches” calcium from bones, causing osteoporosis. I have yet to see a vegetarian write truthfully about mineral loss- it is excess fibre that flushes crucial vitamins and minerals out of the body. It is also phytic acid, which literally binds itself to iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, manganese, and other vital nutrients, removing what we already have from our bodies. Where do these phytates come from? Largely, from grains and soy “foods.”

More, arthritics and lupus sufferers are asked to give up meat to cure their chronic illness. Kristine Napier, member of the Lupus Foundation of America, says in Rodale’s Doctor’s Book of Home Remedies for Women, “If you have lupus, a healthy diet, built on the principles of the Food Guide Pyramid, will strengthen the disease-fighting abilities of your immune system.”…a nutritional plan calling for 6 to 11 servings of bread, pasta, cereal and other grain foods per day; 2 to 4 servings of fruit; 3 to 5 servings of vegetables; 2 to 3 servings of meat, fish, poultry or other protein foods; 2 servings of dairy products and a bare minimum of fats and sweets…Shun fat, seek carbs. “Make sure that your diet is low in fat–no more than 20 to 30 percent of your caloric intake–and high in complex carbohydrates,” says Napier. That means concentrating on bread, pasta, cereal and other grain foods, plus potatoes and starchy vegetables like carrots.”

Excuse me? Seek carbs? What the hell is this mythology doing to people? What kind of advice is “concentrating on bread, pasta, cereal and grain foods…?” In addition to the immune system demanding its full heritage of fat, protein, B12, riboflavin, DHA, bla bla bla, whatever else you do if you have lupus or any other autoimmune disorders, you should ditch all grains.

Grains, especially gluten grains like “bread, pasta, cereal and other grain foods” do not “strengthen” the immune system. They remove vital minerals from your body. Worse, they damage the intestinal villi, meaning absorption of nutrients in other foods is diminished. Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that autoimmune disorders like Multiple Sclerosis, arthritis, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, and fibromyalgia, among other “modern” diseases can be managed beautifully for many sufferers by nixing dietary grains completely.

Indeed, some people have been “cured” by gluten avoidance. Lectin proteins like gluten create havoc in the body by permeating the intestinal wall, removing the natural and necessary barrier. Other things in the gut then leak into the system, causing the body to attack itself. (This is a simplistic explanation for brevity’s sake.) When the body’s myelin sheath is destroyed, extreme pain and paralysis occurs- this is called Multiple Sclerosis. This “mystery” disease has “unknown” causes, and while not all MS sufferers are helped by avoiding wheat, glutens are directly implicated in the destruction of the nerve’s myelin.

Other mystery illnesses like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, psoriasis, ankylosing spondylitis, and arthritis all thrive on grains. Avoiding carbs relieves their symptoms exponentially. Yet vegetarian sources continually push sufferers to avoid nutrient dense fat and protein, and consume inflammatory grains. Scorned authors James Braly and Ron Hoggan of Dangerous Grains explain how revolutionary and easy treatment- avoiding grain- is helping thousands of hopeless sick. Pick it up and give it to anyone you know with any of the “untreatable” illnesses.

Diabetics are told to ditch the meat to “balance blood sugar” in favour of “whole grains.” That fat and protein are not implicated in the breakdown of the insulin system is completely ignored by sinister animal rights extremists like the “Physicians Committee for ‘Responsible’ Medicine.”

This same faction will relentlessly follow their animal-friendly agenda at any price in  human life by pushing vegetarianism as the best diet for cancer patients, or cancer prevention. Religious vegetarians Seventh Day Adventists are continually held up as the paragons of healthy longevity. But Adventists don’t drink or smoke, either. There is a group that offers a parallel lifestyle, but eats meat. Who wins? The meat eating Mormons.

The truth is, cancer grows on sugar. It requires sugar to thrive. Starving tumours can quell their advance. And yes, grains are sugars. It’s an oft-touted stat that vegetarians suffer half the cancer rates of meat eaters, but this is garbage. The endless “studies” that show decreased cancer risk among vegetarians compare the Standard American Diet to the Vegetarian Diet. The SAD is clearly sad. Heritage eaters want studies that compare health conscious meat eaters to health conscious vegetarian eaters. But we aren’t waiting for the studies to come in, because the whole of history has been a study. And the healthiest cultures in the world use meat and seafood liberally and grains and other sugars sparingly. Tribal cultures that eat meat have terrific teeth and bones and low rates of disease as compared with groups that subsist on grains. The whole of anthropology can attest to this fact.

It will take too long to get into the whole soy thing, which is the other Big Business lie from monocrop mythology. So, briefly: Aside from the fact that most unfermented soy foods are made from industrial waste called “soy protein isolate,” there are the endocrine disruptors and thyroid damaging goitrogens that are promoted as “healthy.” Web sites like Vegfamily.com take great pride in “correcting” soy “misinformation” by telling us, “For people who have a thyroid disorder, and/or are taking medication for one, some research has suggested a relationship between soy and thyroid function. Fortunately, Mark Messina, soy expert, recently co-authored a review article that evaluated several studies on this subject and concluded: “…collectively the findings provide little evidence that in euthyroid [having a normal thyroid gland], iodine-replete [no iodine deficiency] individuals, soy foods, or isoflavones adversely affect thyroid function. In contrast, some evidence suggests that soy foods, by inhibiting absorption, may increase the dose of thyroid hormone required by hypothyroid patients. However, hypothyroid adults need not avoid soy foods.” (Thyroid. 2006 Mar;16(3):249-58.)” (quoting Dina Aronson, M.S. R.D.)

I’m sure Mark Messina, “soy expert” DID conclude we need not give up soy. Just take more pills and keep eating garbage. After all, soy earns him untold riches. Aronson neglects to mention that Messina is not a soy expert but a soy salesman. As a United Soybean Board’s head, he plays with millions of grant dollars promoting soy to cancer and health institutes. Most have been as gullible as we have, choking back the tasteless gunk in hopes of lowering cholesterol and solving hormone problems, while helping boys grow breasts instead. But some, like the American Heart Association, have disbanded, rejecting Messina’s claims.

Curiously, vegetarianism is promoted as a peaceful, nutritious choice to cure depression and other behavioral or mental disorders. We’re encouraged to forego the “toxic” fats in meat and replace them with healthy vegetables. I’m all for healthy vegetables, but the ever demonized cholesterol is indeed implicated in psychiatric and suicide disorders. The LACK of it contributes to them!

Low fat and cholesterol diets high in carbs increase aggression, homicide, and violence, as well as depression. Why? Cholesterol lubricates the brain’s neurotransmissions. The nutrients in animal fats and proteins are imperative to brain cell growth. DHA is nonexistent in vegan diets, and the brain needs DHA for cognitive functions. Vitamin D is also a necessary component of emotional and cognitive health. People go crazy and die without sunlight. But vegans can’t even make good use of the sun for Vitamin D- because you need cholesterol to make it. And don’t tell me that EPAs turn into DHA in the body. Because I know flax can make DHA. But the conversion rate is one percent. I’ll take the 100 percent option, thank you. And oh, yeah, there’s virtually no tryptophan sources in veg foods, and we need tryptophan to make good old serotonin.

Anyone who has had a digestive or bowel disease knows that more grains will cure it. At least, that’s been a major sales pitch and responsible for punctured intestines and damaged bowels the world over. Colitis or irritable bowel syndrome sufferers have long been told to give up meat in favour of more fibre, especially grain, but some doctors have started to hang their heads over the pain this grave error has caused. Brave thinkers like Elaine Gottschall have broken this vicious cycle with books like Breaking the Vicious Cycle, which removed grains from the diet to heal the intestines. A grain free, low fibre diet has helped untold number of victims of Crohn’s Disease and colitis. It’s shameful that the party line to decrease fat and protein and increase starches is still being forcefed to the sick.

I shudder to think I was once among these hucksters, parroting the “compassionate” lies. But these lies aren’t just about hating humans and being nice to animals. They’re about money. While I cringe to hear myself mumbling about the “beef board” and the “poultry industry” I had zero comprehension of the real moneymakers. Somehow, idyllic grains and peaceful vegetable food industries existed outside of immorality’s temptations. Meanwhile, the monocrops have devastated more than ninety percent of the topsoil. Those gentle waves of grain blowing across the prairie skies have meant the destruction of forests and lakes, where millions of animal species once lived and are now dead. It is better to eat a dead animal and accept its nutrition than to destroy habitats for zero human benefit except cold hard cash.

Oh, I know, I hear you. I hear you puppeting the things you‘ve learned- I said them, too. “But, but, sixteen people can be fed with grain on the resources needed for one person’s meat, bla bla bla.” Depends how you define “fed.” Plus, most of the world’s landscape cannot grow plants, but could sustain animal husbandry. But more importantly, we need to know that monocrops are guilty parties, getting away with it because of these very beliefs in their moral superiority to evil carnivores. Really? It’s not meat that is destroying the planet, but wheat, soy and corn.

Case in point, in the past two decades, some hundred thousand new food products have been invented. Guess what? There is no such thing as a new food product. There are traditional foods- animals, and the few plants that aren’t poisonous. And then there is unfood- boxes, bags and cans of soy oily garbage, of popped and puffed wheat, of cookies and fake syrupy junk. Sure, maybe you, unlike the weak, avoid the convenience store. But look around your health food store- if it comes in a bag, box, or can, it almost certainly shouldn’t be there.

This unholy trinity of wheat, soy, and corn is destroying animal habitats, human health, and planet earth. In Lierre Keith’s brilliant and viciously targeted book, The Vegetarian Myth, she points out that this trilogy forms some 80 percent of the world’s calories. Considering the density of calories from fat and protein as compared to grains, that’s a lot. Considering those are empty calories barely keeping people alive, that’s a tragedy.

Lorette C. Luzajic
www.thegirlcanwrite.net

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 at 5:06 am and is filed under Lorette, Vegetarian critique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.