Animal Products Are Killing You
Animal products are killing you! You’ve been fed a lie, and it’s time to break open the egg! I want to be careful here. My claim is not “animal products are simply bad.” Here’s the claim:
If you compare nutrient outcome per health cost, plants win. In other words, every nutrient that you get from an animal product can be better sourced from plants, without the downsides meat, eggs, and dairy come with. Pesticides are an issue, but we can shop and farm against this. You can’t out-shop or out-farm most of the issues with meat, unless you’re replacing it with plants.
Humans need protein (9 essential amino acids), essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, and energy. We can get all of these from plants. We cannot get all of these from animal products, but what we do get from meat comes with issues.
Want to get your protein and fats from meat or eggs? It’s going to come with saturated fat, cholesterol, heme iron, IGF-1 growth signaling, TMAO precursors, and no fiber. Can you get your protein from plants? Absolutely! All 9 essential amino acids too. Just look at our last couple of Cronometer logs! At 2,000 calories/day we’re upwards of 100 grams of protein without supplementation.
Some people don’t think dietary saturated fat and cholesterol intake matters. They do. Some people argue they don’t raise serum cholesterol levels, but we literally have a predictive equation, known as the Keys equation, to determine just how much serum cholesterol will rise according to what’s consumed. And LDL cholesterol is causal in atherosclerosis (the plaques forming in your arteries) and heart disease. We know this for several reasons. People born with genetically low LDL have dramatically lower rates of heart disease, and drugs which lower LDL reduce the likelihood of a heart attack.
To make it super simple from a biomechanical standpoint, LDL particles enter arterial walls, become oxidized, trigger your immune response, and then form foam cells (the plaque).
What about calcium? You could drink milk… and consume the very protein (casein & whey) scientists used to reliably induce cancer in lab rats during the china study. It too comes with saturated fat and cholesterol, and spikes IGF-1 (increasing your risk of breast, prostate, and colon cancer.) Not only is this trouble evident biomechanically, but epidemiologically in those populations which consume the most dairy.
Some people think dairy is our best source of calcium, but surprisingly, the countries with the highest dairy intake also have the highest hip fracture rates. That doesn’t mean that dairy is causal, or that its acidic load is leaching from your bones, but that it’s not protective in the way we think. On a population level, higher consumption of dairy doesn’t translate into lower fracture rates. This is a common concern that goes much deeper, known as the calcium paradox.
Plants on the other hand? They deliver the calcium with bonuses! They have an alkaline mineral load, no lactose issues, tons of fiber, and rarely any saturated fat. Plus, they’re typically a better source of Vitamin K, potassium, and magnesium. The nutrients that plants have relative to the nutrients that animal products deliver can easily be seen if we just track our micro nutrients in a logbook, such as Cronometer or MyFitnessPal.
Here’s another issue with meat! Most of the ways that we prefer to cook it come with the kinds of carcinogens that you’ll find in cigarettes and all the other things that we’re desperately afraid of! Doesn’t matter if it’s hot dogs, steak, or plain-Jane chicken breast. Frying, grilling, barbecuing, and smoking result in either HCA’s or PAH’s. That's heterocyclic amines or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. And you guessed it! These are associated with all kinds of cancers too. Even if you want to eat your meat in the grossest way and boil it, the heme iron results in the kind of oxidative stress that contributes to cancer as well.
Now let’s fill in the gaps! Critics poke at B12, omega 3’s, Vit D, and Iron, but with a little intentionality these are easy to come by. They aren’t signs we shouldn’t be eating plants over animal products, they’re symptoms of poor soil composition and poor eating patterns. Nutritional yeast and other fortified foods such as different plant milks come with a variety of B vitamins, including Your RDI of B12. Vit D can be had with a little fun in the sun or some nut milks.
What about omega 3’s? Well, on a normal diet, especially if I’m trying to eat healthy, I’m usually supplying my bodybuilding routine with a pound of chicken and a pound of turkey burger/grass fed beef per day. I rarely eat any fatty fish. I just don’t like it. And that’s true for most of America! About 80% of Americans fall below the necessary omega-3’s.
On a Whole Foods plant-based diet I’m usually eating a tablespoon of flax a day as some kind of binder, plus Chia seeds or walnuts somewhere. I’m actually getting more omega-3’s than I ever do otherwise! The main issue people point to is that there’s a conversion from plants’ ALA to the EPA and DHA we find in fish. But the reality is, I am over the necessary threshold for that 5-10% conversion with my little bit of flax and walnuts. On whole foods, I’m actually more on top of it than ever.
And iron? Some things can block iron absorption, like coffee. Some things can assist it, like citrus. Simply track what you consume and keep this in mind. The minerally legumes, veggies, and seeds that taste like earth are your typical plant sources for iron. Between our last two days of whole foods, I’ve gotten 358% one day, and 312% the next. It’s in there, without the cancer propagating heme.
All of this points to one conclusion: there’s a reason the countries that consume the fewest animal products and most veggies live the longest lives with far less of our western-diet diseases. With the exception of people with rare genetic anomalies, we don’t need them. They aren’t as good for us as whole food plants.
Can you live a healthy life with a few animal products? More than likely! But every step in the direction of whole food plant nutrients over those same nutrients found in animals is a step in the direction of better health.
