The Vegetarian Myth

[Laura]

Thought I'd add another interesting observation. Over the past few years, I've acquired quite a few liver spots or age spots on my hands and arms around my wrists. Well, interestingly, in the last month or two, they have faded significantly. They are almost gone. Rejuvenation?

 

[Bluestar]

The book finally arrived yesterday and have read 47 pages. She is a fabulous author and witty. While you are horrified by the information, there is a break once in a while to chuckle.

Always had the basic notion how bad agriculture was especially to the flora and fauna and the little critters, but reading it in print really puts it all into perspective. Biocide!

The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith, page 32

That's the how of agriculture. It doesn't explain the why. Why would humans give up a life of near-perfect health and leisure for back-breaking labor and bad nutrition?

The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith, page 34

We did it because we got addicted, because those annual grains offered up a happy chemical hit.

Add in hyperdimentional manipulation and walla! A world of numbed out food source.

 

[Aya]

My books "Life without Bread" and "Vegetarian Myth" arrived yesterday. Now I'm trying to catch up.

Thought I'd add another interesting observation. Over the past few years, I've acquired quite a few liver spots or age spots on my hands and arms around my wrists. Well, interestingly, in the last month or two, they have faded significantly. They are almost gone. Rejuvenation?

This is a good news, Laura!

I have been eating hamburger meat that I cook every morning for 3 weeks. I feel full all day after and now I am less craving for food. I have been quite successful with getting rid of wheat and dairy, but I'm just starting to learn about low-carb diet. After I move, I will try to focus on eliminating more carbs and vegetables.

 

[forge]

A just fwiw here. For those who are still having the feeling of a stone in your stomach after eating, I'm a type A and the ox bile was not helping me and actually causing me bloating, gas and diarrhea. [..]

Same here too. Couldn't imagine while i'm bloated all the time.

 

[Courageous Inmate Sort]

Thought I'd add another interesting observation. Over the past few years, I've acquired quite a few liver spots or age spots on my hands and arms around my wrists. Well, interestingly, in the last month or two, they have faded significantly. They are almost gone. Rejuvenation?

That's great news Laura! These are very common in my family and I always thought they were permanent and would only increase with time. If only my relatives would listen when I try to explain why I eat what I eat....

 

[forge]

Finished the book. It left me a flattened piece of lump lying on the ground, thoroughly battered.
Tried to observe the future from Nature's perspective:

Ice Age seems to be a direct answer to civilization. A reducing agent. Nature is very possibly renewed after the ice has withdrawn. The lands are cleansed of civilization, industrial pollution and most humans.
Maybe cataclysms and asteroid impacts are the Immune System of the Universe, curing Earth from
the virus humanity has become. All these worries about salvation, moral drives to repair the environment seem impotent and negligible in the eyes of Nature. Humans simply need either to get back to hunting and gathering or Nature will find another animal with big brains that will serve just as well for its needs. Ignorant humans greatly overvalued their importance to exist. Either we live up to expectation of the Solar Intelligence in their Laboratory and generate enough viable specimens at the end of Human Experiment or will get flushed down the drain. Then humans will do one final good to Nature:
successfully becoming good fertilizer for the regeneration of soil.

 

[Gimpy]

Thought I'd add another interesting observation. Over the past few years, I've acquired quite a few liver spots or age spots on my hands and arms around my wrists. Well, interestingly, in the last month or two, they have faded significantly. They are almost gone. Rejuvenation?

Mine faded significantly once I quit the big four: Wheat, dairy, corn, and soy. I quit using sunscreen a while ago, but have had to start again. I think the meds for MS make my skin too light sensitive without protection. (Plus I supplement heavily with D3, up to 10,000 IU a day)

 

[Gimpy]

Just a little update: After several years of having no dairy at all, (except Ghee), and finding that I can now eat eggs (which means my leaky gut has healed significantly), I decided to give cream a try. It would be useful to have a more pleasant way to introduce more fat into the diet. Well, it was a very bad idea. Within a couple hours my entire digestive system reacted as if I had been poisoned. It felt like I was on fire all the way through. A couple more hours and I had the trots and it actually burned "in passing." Next morning, same thing. I did not have serious cramps, just one, giant, prolonged tightening of everything as though my digestive tract was trying to get away from this stuff. I did have a few burps and gas later on.

Today is the second day after this consumption of 5 teaspoons of Cornish clotted cream and I'm still feeling like my insides are raw.

Same here. :( Dairy, for whatever reason, really hurts. It wrecks my lungs, joints, and digestion and ramps up the pain back where it was before beginning the diet.

Whenever I forget that and slip, its that pain that keeps me on the straight and narrow. ;)

On a positive note: My Infusion Nurse at the hospital asked me how I got my weight down so well, and I gave her the titles for Life without Bread, Good Calories, Bad Calories, and the Vegetarian Myth. She was intrigued, because she can see how well the diet is working for me over time, unlike the majority of my family and friends. She's seen me when I could barely walk or speak, and now I get around most of the time with a cane, and am bright eyed and interested in life again. (Most of the time. Here lately I've been a nasty grouch.)

 

[mcb]

Just a little update: After several years of having no dairy at all, (except Ghee), and finding that I can now eat eggs (which means my leaky gut has healed significantly), I decided to give cream a try. It would be useful to have a more pleasant way to introduce more fat into the diet. Well, it was a very bad idea. Within a couple hours my entire digestive system reacted as if I had been poisoned. It felt like I was on fire all the way through...

Ouch. It's not an unreasonable thing to try. There are so many potential variables that sometimes you have to just try it and see what happens. And that is what happened.

I tried having some cheese a few weeks ago, just to see what it would do, and it left me feeling a little better. I have also come across at least one recommendation (on mercola.com) that it might help with autistic spectrum disorders, which apparently are associated with disorders of fat metabolism. That suggestion came with a warning, however, to avoid any form of pasteurized milk. As it happens, the cheese I was trying was raw milk monterey jack.

I did a little research of my own back then, following up on the various links about casein here in the forum and searching on my own as well. It seemed clear that if you don't have all of the enzymes needed to digest dairy then you don't want to include dairy in your diet. It can be dangerous. What is not clear is whether there is danger if you are able to fully digest it and are not allergic to any part of it.

I decided that it wasn't worth the risk. Even if I think it's OK for me, I can't be sure. At the very least, it is not a good thing to insert into the midst of an ongoing elimination diet experiment as I am doing now. If I eventually find that I need to permanently eliminate all or nearly all plant foods then I may want to take up the question again.

I did not find much in the research results that suggested that dairy is dangerous if properly digested. Most of the warnings I read either pointed to specific digestive deficiencies as the source of trouble, or were simply "proclamations" without any reference to research or other data. The question of raw vs. pasteurized seems to be an open one.

So I am avoiding dairy, but I can see why there might be reasons to experiment with it. It seems that certain forms have the potential to be beneficial at least in some cases.

 

[Laura]

I posted this in another thread but it belongs here as well:

I'm reading this book "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living." He explains some things in there that suggest that people who are "carb sensitive" have all kinds of problems, including emotional, in reaction to carbs... not just wheat, dairy, lectins, the rest.

He also brings forward some information that actually makes me wonder if we did evolve from a fruit/root eating anthropoid. Maybe it was the other way around? Some sort of predatory monkey type creature evolved rapidly and those who were stuck in situations where only fruits/veggies/roots were available due to some catastrophe or whatever, branched off and became apes, not the other way around.

As he points out, there is NO ONE who cannot function better in a state of ketosis, but there is a subset of people (minority) that can thrive on carbs. Everyone else is heir to all kinds of ills for eating them. This suggests that eating meat was at the beginning and only later was there adaptation to carbs. Who knows? Maybe those who eat carbs and veggies will start a devolution to apes in a few dozen generations?

Anyway, he says you need to up the salt intake significantly while going through the transition phase - like 5 grams a day - plus some potassium. Also, that you do get a lot of fat in what is called even lean meat so maybe we don't need to get so angsty about piling on the fat?

It can take several days to go into ketosis and everybody has their own "level of carbs" that gets them there most efficiently. Usually 50 grams or below. You have to find the level where you stay in nutritional ketosis and he offers some suggestions how to do that. I'm just going to get the urine test sticks.

Once you are in this state of nutritional ketosis (he's got a lot of science that is well worth the read and explains it pretty well without jargon), you have to be in the state for at least a week or more before you start getting the real benefits. These benefits include completely rebuilding your body at the cellular level, DNA changes, and so on. It seems that Lutz is absolutely correct, a whole bunch of conditions can be cured not JUST on low carbs, but in a state of ketosis.

I would say that this is the next essential book to read on the topic. It is very important to have the details in order to monitor what you are doing.

Based on what he says, some of the folks who are having trouble with too much plain fat can back off a bit if it makes them sick because there is more fat in what we are eating than we have suspected thus far. But they definitely need to get in ketosis and stay there and increase their salt and potassium intake during the transition.

Again: "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living" by Volek and Phinney.

Note: he allows dairy and doesn't seem to be clued in about artificial sweeteners or MSG, but that's a minor problem compared to what he does "bring to the table"!!

 

[Joe]

Thanks for this Psyche, somehow I feel like this will help me be more disciplined about my diet. Although seemingly unrelated, I am struggling with carbs/sugar. I am about at 150 grams.

Well, it's gonna be a struggle, if my experience is anything to go by, but I'm gonna stick it out until I get over the missing carbs. Going to any grocery store or garage shop is an exercise in temptation right now. Today I went in to a shop to buy some water, my eyes scanned the candy section...remotely weighing and measuring the likely carb content of each item. I toyed with the gum, checked the ingredients - sugar of course - but I was never really seriously going to buy anything except the water. It kind of makes trips to such stores more interesting though, from a perspective that members of this forum will readily understand!

 

[Joe]

On the other hand, I would like to report a downside I'm having with the meat and fat diet. Although my energy levels are better and more constant (no swings in energy during the day) and it does not give me gas, my stomach feels very heavy most of the time. Like there is a heavy ball in my belly. I haven't noticed any harm from this so far, but it does bother me. I bought digestive enzymes today to check if they help. If anyone has dealt with this or has other ideas, I would be glad to hear them.

Are you drinking enough water and getting enough salt? I need LOTS of water to digest meat, and I get that canon ball in my belly feeling if I don't drink enough.

I drink about 60-80 ounces of water with every meal, and I sip at least another 40-60 ounces constantly between meals. From what I've seen all meat eaters take a stomach full of water after they eat a meal.

Salt is very important too, my food sits in my stomach too long without it. It does something to help break down the meat.

I'm just realising this too. Drinking lots of water (more than usual anyway) on a high fat/meat diet is very helpful for the stomach problems that I've been experiencing, also starting to drink salted water, and my stomach seems to be grateful!

 

[Oxajil]

Also, that you do get a lot of fat in what is called even lean meat so maybe we don't need to get so angsty about piling on the fat?

That makes sense. I guess the people or hunters who ate meat didn't specifically only ate those parts that were the fattest, I guess they ate the parts of meat that were simply available.

 

[mcb]

There is something I meant to mention earlier when I was searching for information about casein online. There was a tremendous amount of "noise" in the search results. I think this is due in part to the existence of "content farms." Anyone that is searching online should be aware of their existence. These farms pay people small amounts of money to throw together low-quality articles on topics that have found to be frequent targets of searches. The point is to sell the advertising that accompanies the articles.

The information can sometimes be largely worthless, lacking references of any kind, and seems to be highly repetitive, turning up on site after site. I know that Google works to identify these farms and greatly lower their ranking.

I narrowed my searches to things like "casein abstract" in an attempt to find actual research reports rather that useless unreferenced blurbs from content farms and from sellers of supplements, but I still didn't come up with much that was useful -- there was SO much junk. I will search some more when I have time. Are there any particular topics or links here on the forum that I might have missed that make the case for casein being generally unhealthy for everybody? (I am not saying that it isn't or that it is; I am saying that I personally have not located much of anything so far that is based on research results, regarding the general case for healthy adults where faulty digestion is not an issue.)

 

[Laura]

That makes sense. I guess the people or hunters who ate meat didn't specifically only ate those parts that were the fattest, I guess they ate the parts of meat that were simply available.

Actually, just the opposite. The hunter/gatherers ate the organ meats, the tongue, marrow from the long bones, and gave the muscle meat to their dogs and dried some of it for emergency supplies.

Apparently, the human digestive tract isn't that much different from a dog's with the exception that dogs can handle more pure protein.

Anyway, I think that one thing that's been going on with quite a few of us is that we took our carb level down but not far enough for ketogenesis to start. So we were still running on carb metabolism but without the carbs. According to this book, that is an unpleasant state to be in. You get dizzy, have headaches, depression, etc. You have to go low enough for ketosis to feed your brain what it wants. And, as we read in one article published on sott recently, ketones can reverse alzheimer's. If they can do that, no telling what they might do for a relatively healthy brain/body.