From ... in Awareness — Aug 4, 2019

Harvard Scientists Suggest Meat Is Not Healthy & You Shouldn’t Be Eating If You Want To Live Longer

More and more evidence is emerging that highlights the tremendous benefits of adopting a plant-based diet.This lifestyle can have a drastic impact on our environment, animal welfare and our health.

What small changes could you make in your diet today to protect yourself from easily preventable diseases? Why is it that we are so addicted to meat to begin with? Have you considered at least cutting down meat intake? Whether it be from a place of compassion, growing concern for environmental sustainability or a more thorough understanding of what it really means to be healthy, one thing is clear — more and more people are cutting out or at least cutting back on meat and other animal products, and for good reason. Scientists from the University of Harvard have found that at least one-third of all early deaths could be prevented if everyone moved over to a vegetarian diet. Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard Medical School says that the overwhelming evidence in regards to the benefits of a plant-based diet has been extremely underrated. Figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest that around 24 percent or, 141,000 deaths each year in Britain were entirely preventable, the majority of those numbers were due to smoking, alcohol or obesity. New figures from Harvard are now suggesting that at a minimum, 200,000 lives could be spared each year if people were to simply cut meat from their diets. While speaking at the Unite to Cure Fourth International Vatican Conference in Vatican City, Dr. Willet said, “We have just been doing some calculations looking at the question of how much could we reduce mortality shifting towards a healthy, more plant-based diet, not necessarily totally vegan, and our estimates are about one-third of deaths could be prevented. “That’s not even talking about physical activity or not smoking, and that’s all deaths, not just cancer deaths. That’s probably an underestimate as well as that doesn’t take into account the fact that obesity is important and we control for obesity. “When we start to look at it we see that healthy diet is related to a lower risk of almost everything that we look at. Perhaps not too surprising because everything in the body is connected by the same underlying processes.” Another speaker at the conference, British-born Professor, David Jenkins of the University of Toronto, credited with developing the glycemic index, which outlines how carbohydrates impact blood sugar, also told the conference that the benefits of a plant-based diet have been ‘undersold.’ According to Jenkins, humans would do better by following a “simiam” diet, similar to that of lowland gorillas who eat stems, leaves, vines, and fruits compared to the increasingly popular “paleo” diet, which cuts out carbohydrates and encourages regular consumption of meat. Dr. Jenkins and his team recently teamed up with The Bronx Zoo in New York and traveled to central Africa to research and record the feeding habits of gorillas. After recreating the diet for humans, translating to 63 servings of fruit and vegetables a day, they observed a 35 percent fall in cholesterol in only two weeks, which is the equivalent of taking statins. “That was quite dramatic,” he said, “We showed that there was no real difference between what we got with the diet and what we got with a statin.” Statins are a prescription drug that is often prescribed by doctors to patients with high cholesterol in an attempt to stave off heart disease. Nearly 15.5 million people are currently eligible for statins equating most men over 60 and most women over 65. Because of side effects, many prefer not to or stop taking the drugs — what if the answer was much more simple the whole time? According to Dr. Jenkins, “We’re saying you’ve got a choice, you can change your diet to therapeutically meaningful change or you can take a statin. Drug or diet.” President of the Committee for Responsible Medicine has also stated that people need to wake up to the health benefits of a plant-based diet. “I think we’re underestimating the effect,” he told delegates. “I think people imagine that a healthy diet has only a modest effect and a vegetarian diet might help you lose a little bit of weight. But when these diets are properly constructed I think they are enormously powerful. “A low-fat vegan diet is better than any other diet I have ever seen for improving diabetes. With regards to inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, we are seeing tremendous potential there too. Partly because of things we are avoiding and cholesterol but also because of the magical things that are in vegetables and fruits which just aren’t in spam.” A recent study conducted by researchers in California and France found that meat protein is associated with a very sharp increased risk of heart disease, while protein from nuts and seeds is actually beneficial for the human heart.

The study is titled “Patterns of plant and animal protein intake are strongly associated with cardiovascular mortality: The Adventist Health Study-2 cohort,” It was a joint project between researchers from Loma Linda University School of Public Health in California and AgroParisTech and the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique in Paris, France. It was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The researchers found that people who ate large amounts of meat protein, which is a daily norm for many people, represented a portion of the human population that would experience a 60 percent increase in cardiovascular disease (CVD), while people who consumed large amounts of protein from nuts and seeds actually experienced a 40 percent reduction in CVD. 81,000 participants were analyzed for this study. According to Gary Fraser, MB, ChB, PhD, from Loma Linda University, and François Mariotti, PhD, from AgroParisTech and the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, who served as the co-principal investigators: Dietary fats are part of the story in affecting risk of cardiovascular disease, proteins may also have important and largely overlooked independent effects on risk.

The authors emphasized that they, as well as their colleagues, have long suspected that the protein from nuts and seeds in the diet protects against heart and vascular disease, while protein from meat, especially red meats, increases your risk. Fraser said the study leaves other questions open for further investigation, such as the particular amino acids in meat proteins that contribute to CVD. Another is whether proteins from particular sources affect cardiac risk factors such as blood lipids, blood pressure and overweight, which are associated with CVD. While underconsumption of protein is harmful to the body, overconsumption comes with risks as well. In the United States, the average omnivore gets more than 1.5 times the optimal amount of protein, and most of that protein is from animal sources. This is bad news because excess protein is often stored as fat. This stored animal protein contributes to weight gain, heart disease, diabetes, inflammation, and cancer.

The study concluded that: Associations between the ‘Meat’ and ‘Nuts Seeds’ protein factors and cardiovascular outcomes were strong and could not be ascribed to other associated nutrients considered to be important for cardiovascular health. Healthy diets can be advocated based on protein sources, preferring low contributions of protein from meat and higher intakes of plant protein from nuts and seeds. On the other hand, the protein contained in whole plant foods is connected to disease prevention. According to Dr. Michelle McMacken: The protein found in whole plant foods protects us from many chronic diseases.

There is no need to track protein intake or use protein supplements with plant-based diets; if you are meeting your daily calorie needs, you will get plenty of protein.

The longest-lived people on Earth, those living in the “Blue Zones,” get about 10% of their calories from protein, compared with the U.S. average of 15-20%. Multiple studies have shown the difference between animal protein and plant protein. Another great example comes from Colin Campbell, a Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, whose experiments on laboratory rats showed cancer cell growth can be turned on or off by simply varying the amount of animal protein included in their diet. This was an enormous discovery, with implications to the diets of millions of people. His results, from what’s known as the “China Study,” have proven to be replicable. A study conducted in 2016 by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital followed more than 130,000 people for 36 years, monitoring illnesses, lifestyles, diets and mortality rates.

They found that substituting between 15g and 19g of animal protein, the equivalent of a single sausage, for legumes, pulses, nuts and other planet protein, significantly decreased the risk of early death. Replacing eggs with plant-based protein also lead to a 19 percent reduction in mortality risk. Researchers found that a 10 percent higher intake of meat was associated with a two percent higher mortality rate and an eight percent higher chance of cardiovascular death. Vegetarianism and veganism is no longer a fad or a hipster trend — the benefits, for our environment, to learn to live compassionately towards all beings and for our health are countless and evidence is only growing. With more and more plant-based alternatives, vegetarian restaurants, recipe blogs and a large growing community, it has never been easier to consider cutting back on meat and other animal products. If it is too drastic for you to just cut out these products altogether, that’s fine in the short term. By starting small, perhaps by making one day a week a meatless day, be it Meatless Monday, or some other day, you can begin to get a feel for plant-based recipes and meals that could be a nice segue for your transition. From there, you may want to consider something called Reducetarianism, which is pretty much what it sounds, drastically lowering your consumption of meat and other animal products. Often when people think about adopting a plant-based diet they start to think of all of the things that they will no longer be able to have. Well, fortunately, this isn’t an all-or-nothing type of scenario; by significantly lowering your consumption of these products you are still making a huge difference. You can eat a primarily plant-based diet and eat your grass-fed, ethically raised steak, too — if that’s your thing.

These rules aren’t set in stone, play around with it, start incorporating more fruits and veggies, taking days off meat, find what works best for you and your lifestyle! You may find that the less meat you are eating the more in tune with your body you are and the easier it is to see what makes you feel good and what doesn’t. Have you recently made the transition to a plant-based diet? We’d love to get the discussion going over at the CE Community on Facebook. Much Love Related CE Articles 9 Things That Happen When You Stop Eating Meat Why I’m A Weekday Vegetarian (Video) Would You Go Vegan To Save The World? New Study Suggests It’s The Best Option If You Think A Plant-Based Diet Means Eating Salad Broccoli All Day Then Read This Why Veganism In The U.S. Has Grown 600% In The Past 3 Years Why Killing Animals For Food Will Soon Be A Thing Of The Past — According To Richard Branson Everything You Need To Know About Getting your Protein From Plants Studies Show What Happens To Hear When You Go Vegan Or Vegetarian Federal Report Finds Plant-Based Diet Is Best: The Meat Industry Is Not Happy About It And countless others.... HERE. In this free guide, you can learn how to make your house safe from EMFs and 5G. EMFs are linked to a number of different health issues and improvements in things like sleep can be seen rather quickly with proper EMF protection.

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Harvard Scientists Suggest Meat Is Not Healthy & You Shouldn’t Be Eating If You Want To Live Longer

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