In a diary I published here last Tuesday, I advocated being a responsible omnivore - that is, eating meat, seafood (and, by the way, vegetables) that have been brought to market in a sustainable fashion.
I wrote the diary because I had been told pointedly that "meat and seafood are unsustainable no matter how they are raised." I hope I made the point that meat and seafood can, in fact, be raised (or, in the case of wild seafood, caught) sustainably and eaten with a clear conscience.
But that diary ran long, so there was an issue raised to me previously about being an omnivore which I decided not to cover in it - can you be a healthy omnivore? Follow me below the orange squiggle for the answer.
Consider this comment, from another recent diary I commented on, "There are No Vegetarians in a Famine" by aimlessmind.
I don't think they have always eaten as much meat as we eat today. I think it probably takes about 50 some years of over eating meat to kill you. If you aren't a pig about it you'll probably be fine.
However some of us aren't fine. My mother had Type 2 diabetes and was disabled most of her later life. My father started having strokes in his mid 50s. My brother is dead from heart failure, his first attack at 46 and dead at 50. I was overweight with high blood pressure, high cholesterol and could just feel how unhealthy I was.
For those of us who don't do so well the culprit is saturated fat and cholesterol. Those two ingredients come from all animal products. Not just meat, poultry or fish, but eggs and dairy as well. My point was it doesn't help to eliminate meat from my diet if I continue to consume saturated fat and cholesterol with egg and dairy. There is no point!
I'll grant you some forms of animal food may contain less saturated fat or cholesterol than others. But from my perspective it's just less of a bad thing not a good thing.
I can sympathize with the commenter, because my brother passed away last December at the age of 52. Although the ultimate cause was septic shock brought on by an aggressive urinary tract infection, the triggers which began his year-long decline in health were congestive heart failure, type 2 diabetes and two small strokes following heart surgery.
But the other members of my family are doing relatively well. My father, who passed away following a stroke almost 10 years ago, lived to be 77 - pretty close to the average life expectancy for a working person in the U.S. My mom is 81 and in good health, my sister is doing fine at --, and I'm 51 and, though I have high blood pressure (now under control) and health issues related to a hiatal hernia, by the numbers (blood sugar, triglycerides and blood cholesterol) I'm well within healthy limits.
The key to this is what my brother was doing in the last few years of his life, namely going to school at a technical college in Orlando to try to learn a new career. He graduated in June, 2010, and went into the hospital with congestive heart failure on Christmas Eve of that year. While commuting from Ocala to Orlando two to three days a week for school, he practically lived exclusively on fast food and vending machine junk food. And he drank a lot of sodas sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. I'm convinced that's what ultimately killed him.
The commenter I quoted above is right to pin a lot of modern health problems on excessive saturated fat and cholesterol intake (though he or she doesn't mention two other culprits, trans-fats and excessive sugars, especially high-fructose corn syrup).
But here's the rub - when the above commenter says...
I'll grant you some forms of animal food may contain less saturated fat or cholesterol than others. But from my perspective it's just less of a bad thing not a good thing.
...he or she may not be entirely correct. To understand that statement, you have to understand (at least a little) how much we're learning as time goes by about how our bodies process the things we eat, and how things like fat, cholesterol, carbohydrates and other nutrients interact with each other.
I don't claim to be an expert on any of this - although I've been doing a lot of reading on it to try to understand it since my brother died. But the key take-away from the research I've been doing is this - much of what's in our food, or at least whole foods which haven't been processed, is there because it's supposed to be there, and our bodies have evolved to process those things we have historically turned to for food. That includes fat (even saturated fat), cholesterol and carbohydrates.
For example, we've been told (and the commenter above reinforces this) that eggs are bad, because they contain extremely high levels of cholesterol. Dietary guidelines for heart health tell us that we should eat eggs no more than once or twice a week, right? Well, prepare to have your mind blown:
Eggs are high in cholesterol, and health experts in the past counseled people to therefore avoid this food. (All of the cholesterol in the egg is in the yolk.) However, nutrition experts have now determined people on a low-fat diet can eat one or two eggs a day without measurable changes in their blood cholesterol levels. This information is supported by a statistical analysis of 224 dietary studies carried out over the past 25 years that investigated the relationship between diet and blood cholesterol levels in over 8,000 subjects. What investigators in this study found was that saturated fat in the diet, not dietary cholesterol, is what influences blood cholesterol levels the most.
How is this possible, given that a typical extra large egg contains 240 milligrams of cholesterol? Well,
it turns out that eggs also contain a type of lecithin called phosphatidylcholine which prevents our bodies from absorbing most of that cholesterol. And given that eggs - and specifically the yolks - contain a host of beneficial vitamins and nutrients, it turns out that avoiding eggs for fear of high cholesterol and heart attacks is misguided. I encourage you to read both articles I linked to above - they're fascinating stuff.
So what about saturated fats? Yes, bad for you in large quantities. But also a source of important nutrients. Most of my research indicates that keeping saturated fat down to 7% of total fat intake per day will keep you safe. Basically, follow the USDA nutrition guidelines, and you'll be fine.
I specifically have been advocating for grass-fed beef - not grass-fed or pastured beef finished on corn or grain at a feedlot, but real grass-fed beef, pastured and eating nothing but natural grass from the beginning to the end of the animal's life. It's much, much better for the environment; it's more humane for the animal; and perhaps most importantly, it's much better for your health.
Here's a number for you - the average American consumes 66.5 pounds of beef a year. Grass-fed beef is lower in fat, especially saturated fat, than corn-fed beef, which means it's also lower in calories. In fact, if you eat that average amount of beef, you'll eliminate about 17,733 calories a year from your diet by switching from corn-fed to real grass-fed beef. That's without reducing your beef intake by one ounce!
The bottom line is this - human beings evolved as omnivores, that is, eaters of both meat and plants. Our bodies have, on the basis of our historical diets, evolved to process the nutrients in both meat and plants. That processing takes place in amazing ways we don't fully understand yet, but are learning more about day by day.
One of the things we're learning is that eating whole foods grown (or raised, or caught) in natural ways provides us with the best balance of nutrition and health benefits while greatly reducing the negative side effects of things like saturated fat and cholesterol. You don't have to eliminate meat from your diet to be healthy.
A good resource for omnivores who want to eat a healthy diet is The World's Healthiest Foods website. It is a product of the George Mateljan Foundation, which describes itself as a not-for-profit foundation with no commercial interests or advertising.
If you're interested in joining the true grass-fed revolution, start by browsing the Eat Wild website. It will provide you with lots of information about the health benefits of grass-fed livestock and dairy products, and help you find a farm in your area (they're all over the country).
Finally, I highly recommend The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook by Shannon Hayes. I just got my copy yesterday, and it's not only a great cookbook filled with mouthwatering recipes, it's also packed with information about the grassfed revolution, a history of how we got away from naturally-raised beef to grain-fed, feedlot beef (it only happened after World War II) and tips for finding and evaluating local farms. It's $26 plus shipping, and I think it's a bargain.
I'm going to work this afternoon, but I'll try to keep up with the comments and answer any questions you have.