After yesterday's post about meat I received a few comments from friends about my personal eating habits. And they were correct, I have eaten meat in the past, and I do eat a bit now. Now days though, it has to be grass fed free range or imported from Spain or Italy. Whereas the meat that my friends did indeed see me eat back some years ago when I catered or cooked for events, was always just grocery store meat. However, I won't eat that stuff anymore. And since I have very little money, pretty much I don't eat any meat.
So what do I eat then?
I am Lacto Ovo Piscevarian Vegetarian. As I have explained in the past, people my age that are not intense athletes, lose the delimiting enzymes needed to convert smaller chain Omega 3 fatty acids ALA and EPA into the much needed DHA. So since I don't run, bike or otherwise burn 4 to 5 thousand calories daily, (which it is thought promotes the production of those specific enzymes) I need that DHA from organic dairy, free range organic eggs or cold water fish and shellfish. Lacto - Ovo - Piscevarian. Earlier this year a very dear friend told me she was going totally raw. I looked into it, was impressed with the amount of data there is on the internet about the subject. The concept is pretty sound, cooking destroys most of the enzymes that natural whole foods contain that the human body uses to actually digest the plant material. So I tried it as well. For about four weeks, I ate nothing but raw foods. Except for beer and cigars, which technically I ate neither one. Anyway, I felt like crap after four weeks. I dropped nearly 20 pounds in that time. Maybe that was part of it. But that did make me look more into the Omega 3 aspect of diet. Learning is something I like to do, and the world does in fact change as new data, new experiments and new conclusions are reached all the time. The human race is learning. There just isn't a whole lot of wisdom coming with all that knowledge though, and that's the problem. Yes, we can make food plants grow in toxic synthetic weed killer, but should we?
Anyway, what do I eat? I love to eat. I eat spicy foods, I eat whole grains, I eat raw vegetables, I eat to fuel my body. I used to eat stuff that satisfied my tastes and hunger for sweet, fat, processed and crappy. I weighed 325. Today I weigh 248, just looked. In the past few months I have changed my diet to what I call the Modified Raw Diet. It's the diet for a healthy existence, one that allows the person to maintain an exceptional degree of good health. Provides all of the nutrients needed for maintenance of a healthy human body. And also like me, helps you to achieve weight loss goals. The diet is simple, eat a wide variety of raw plants, nuts seeds and some fruit. Organic. If you eat food that has pesticide residue, was grown in exhausted soils using petrochemical fertilizer, your body has to work hard to process the toxins that are IN your food. Don't eat the toxins, and you are off to a great start to begin with. Then in the modified Raw diet, eat the things that help your body, things like whole milk yogurt, aged raw cheeses, real eggs and fish. And that last one, eat wild caught fish, never farm raised crap. And finally, eat some whole grains that are prepared in the time honored traditional ways of preparing them. This basically means don't eat plain old cooked rice or wheat or corn, or other grains. Grains and seeds (nuts to a lesser extent as well) contain lectins and phytates which need to be neutralized in order for them to be healthy. Soaking, fermenting (or souring), sprouting and steaming all are traditional methods of processing grains that were discovered many many millennia ago and make those foods healthier. It's so easy to do, soak your brown rice overnight before you cook it. Ferment your bread dough overnight before baking your bread. (Yeah yeah, I know, I'm the only one in the world that bakes his own bread. Try Ezekial sprouted grain bread, just as good)
So, me, I eat brown rice virtually every day. I eat a small piece of real whole wheat bread (I know it cuz I make it) three or four times a week. I eat eggs 5 or 6 days a week. And I eat humus a few days a week also. The rest of the time, I eat vegetables and fruit. Some of the vegetables I cook lightly. Except Kale, that needs to be cooked awhile. And fruits, I only eat what's in season locally. I make raw crackers, I soak and dry my own nuts and seed mixes and snack on those, and I eat an avocado every day. Seventy- Eight pounds lost. And although I have continuing long term medical issues (Thank you City of Austin) the reality is that since I have begun the raw and then went to the modified raw diet starting in January, I haven't been in the ER or hospital, haven't had a flare up of my MRSA infection in my sinuses, haven't had to go to the doctor because of uncontrolled asthma, been able to walk a mile or two nearly daily (well, the last one I stopped as it's 95 degrees at 6 am now)((but I ride the stationary bike)) and I feel better than I have since the black mold incident back in 2009. Now maybe part of all that is because I absolutely and completely gave up eating all processed sugars, any and all processed foods of any kind really and only eat things that I myself made so that I know exactly what it is and how it was processed. And all the food I eat is organic or grown by local farmers. I do go to farmers markets every week and I do get to trade with those guys for my food, but I have found that market food is comparable in price to organic produce sold at grocery stores. And the quality is way way better.
So just one example of a fantastic breakfast I made that only took about fifteen minutes to make and it was indeed, fit for a king. I took some baby zuchinni, split them in half and
threw onto my cast iron in some olive oil. Then sliced locally grown mushrooms, a sliced red onion and a red pepper I grew in my container garden, then stirred them around a bit. Then cracked in two real free range eggs and cooked them over medium. (note in the picture just how ORANGE the yolk is, compare that to grocery store eggs with their insipid flavor and pale yellow color) Served with some sliced cantalope and it was the perfect Father's Day breakfast. Not exactly raw, but they were just lightly sauteed and still able to retain a lot of the desired qualities of raw vegetables.
Yep
Whaaaaat? Yumminess. Sheesh. Hey, it's true, meat tastes good. I love meat. I grew up wolfing down burgers from the Gilded Breasts franchises (McDonalds if you missed the analogy) the King, the Whataburger and ate tons of roasts, pork products and chicken from every conceivable purveyor of poultry. When I turned 23, I became a vegetarian. Nothing religious, no sudden insight into the way cows and pigs were slaughtered being cruel or inhumane, nothing like that. It was simple, I was broke. Meat costs more than plant based proteins. Working two jobs in an attempt to improve my financial position meant I worked some pretty long hours. I found that the weeks I didn't eat meat, my need for sleep was reduced to 4 or 5 hours a night. When I ate some meat, I felt crappy unless I got 7 to 8 hours.
There were two books that influenced my decisions about food and became a cornerstone of a new way of life for me. The first, The Chemical Feast. A book by good old Ralph Nader's Group. It was eye-opening. Published in 1970 it detailed how the food processing and drug industry were pushing new drugs and new chemical based foods onto the public with very little testing for safety. This was way back in the late sixties when the GRAS contained less than 800 entries. Today, the GRAS has over 3,500 chemical compounds approved for use in the manufacture of food and food-like products. And the EAFUS (Everything Added to Food in the US) lists over 10,000 chemicals. The scary part is that some of those chemicals, even though approved for use in food production by the FDA, are banned from human consumption by the EPA. Yeah, it's true, click here to read about one big one (EPA and FDA)
The second book was very interesting, Diet for a Small Planet. This book showed me in very simple easy to understand detail, that the human body can get nearly all of the protein needs from plant based foods. That meat, is not necessary for a healthy long life. And there were a whole lot of recipes for eating meat-free. The book is still available, it still has some fantastic recipes and along with the companion book, Recipes for a Small Planet, they became my go to source for information and concepts for cooking.
However, as I grew older, I learned, I questioned. I did find some interesting things. The first is that protein is not the only required thing that we as humans need to eat. That's a given I think, every fifth grade health class teaches us about carbs, protein, fats, vitamins and minerals. I talked about the big fat ones a while ago, Omega 3 and 6 fats. (The Omegas) and of course I have talked about how the Paleo concept of only eating fats and protein is not a viable diet, that humans evolved eating carbs. And I also learned that plant based foods contain all the proteins a human body will ever need. It's just that they don't give us the correct proportion of very specific Omega 3 fatty acids we need. And of which as we grow older, we need that one specific DHA fatty acid that younger folks are able to synthesize from the more basic ALA and EHA fatty acids. It seems that the enzyme needed to do just that becomes in shorter supply as we age, gain weight and do less exercise. It happens. So as I explained in that posting referenced above, older people like me need to increase the intake of basic Omega-3's by eating cold water seafood, free range eggs, or meat. That's the bad part, meat. Although humans need that protein, and can get all of the eight essential amino acids from plant sources, meat is a ready supply of both Omega-3 and all eight aminos. Pretty nice if you think about it. And that's probably why it's so popular with weight lifters, Paleo people, the meat industry, you know, most of the American public. It's ingrained into us from TV ads (Beef, it's what's for dinner) to the USDA Food Pyramid (which as I have shown here before, was in the past written to please the food industry and had little to do with actual nutrition) to health class in fifth grade to college nutrition classes. Meat is a good thing.
However, that's just not the case. I'm going to get a little technical here now. The problem with meat, modern meat goes far far beyond all the things that I have talked about in the past here on my blog, the ractopamine problem, steroids, arsenic, rBGH, glyphosate laced feeds, and all that other stuff that makes modern meat inedible. There is also the very real problem with protein oxidation. Protein oxidation is defined as the covalent modification of a protein
induced either by the direct reactions with reactive oxygen species
(ROS) or indirect reactions with secondary by-products of oxidative
stress. ROS can cause oxidation in both amino acid side chains and
protein backbones, resulting in protein fragmentation or protein-protein
cross-linkages. Now, the problem is, not a lot of research has been done in this area and only a little is known about what happens when humans consume highly oxidated meat products. We do know that when we consume meats that have high amounts of peroxal components, by products of oxidative stress, that those peroxide ions can cause indirect oxidative modification of specific amino acids during our digestive process. That indirectly causes enzymes to make Carboxymethyllysine. This is indeed a problem as that is just one measure used to determine how advanced the body is into diabetes. Yeah, that one is scary. What needs more research is does being diabetic in fact also produce CML or does an increase in peroxidated meat products then cause the formation of CML that then causes reactions to take place within the body resulting in diabetes.
Of even greater concern is the advanced glycation properties associated with CML formation. What this means is that heavily peroxidated amino acids have a tendency to cause human blood to clot more quickly. And the secondary finding is that high levels of CML appear to increase artherosclerotic calcification in diabetic patients. Again, here, this research is in its infancy and a lot more needs to be done to verify if these specific glycation endproducts are the result of diabetes itself or if the scarier prospect is that having huge amounts of CML actually cause or enhance the disease itself.
So, this is just some of the research that has come out just this year. It's difficult to believe that the simple production method of taking beef, cutting it into smaller pieces, then letting it sit in big tubs, albeit in a cold room, for long periods of time allowing the beef access to free atmospheric oxygen; and then grinding that beef and making patties for the local purveyor of burgers could in effect be the cause of so many health problems in America today. These studies were done on beef, but I'm sure they apply to pork, chicken, turkey, ground up earthworms, any meat that gets put into food destined for stores, fast food joints or finer restaurants everywhere. I have a couple friends that go Paleo a lot and give me a ration of crap all the time for being vegetarian. They keep telling me that humans evolved eating large amounts of meat, that's what we are supposed to eat. Yeah, I don't think that any of our paleolithic ancestors ever ate burgers or sausages or chicken sandwiches made from oxidated meat.
Yeah, I know, but meat tastes gooooooood!!!!!!
Yep
Yeah, I was told this once. The new husband of a very sweet and dear friend got into a discussion with me about a year ago. On Facebook. Because I posted a meme about vaccination and links to degradation of American health. He wasn't nice, he stated I was helping to destroy the health of the people and that vaccination had eliminated diseases like polio. That vaccination should be mandatory to protect all people living in this Great Land of America.
I asked him if he looked here on my blog and read the article referenced in the FB posting. I was then told no, as I was sarcastic and science cannot be disputed, vaccination is good, the findings infallible.
He put me in my place then now didn't he. Science, cannot be disputed.
Well, except when scientific findings are found to be, well, wrong. Incorrect, corrupted, paid for, lies, results fabricated, and the very foundations of science called into question.
But then that never happens now does it?
PCB's Safe, environmentally friendly
DDT Safe, environmentally friendly
Dioxin, A byproduct of industrial chemical manufacturing, Safe
FDA approved drugs. Believe it or not, big pharmaceutical companies spend millions of dollars testing new drugs in order to get them approved by the FDA for use by the medical industry. Since 2000 every single pharmaceutical company has been taken to court by the FDA for violating their rules. Collectively they have all been fined over 20 billion dollars, many of the charges against the big pharma, falsifying data to get drugs approved.
The FDA has withdrawn from the market, over 175 drugs that after having been approved, using infallible science, were later found to be, not so good for us.
Who failed? Infallible science, or the very very fallible humans that created the chemicals and drugs? Or those that approved the applications based on the infallible scientific results from the creators?
So, is the vaccine industry different? Even though most vaccines are manufactured by some of those very same pharmaceutical companies that have paid fines for falsifying data for their drug business; none have had to pay fines for making vaccines.
Is it because they just do a much better job at creating vaccines? Or is it because the Congress of the United States declared that the companies manufacturing vaccines can do so with no liability whatsoever for the products that they make? That one is still hard for people to believe. It just doesn't seem realistic to them that our government would protect one industry to such an extent that there is no accountability for the products they make. None. The Feds did set up a 200 billion dollar fund to pay the families of any person that is killed, disabled or harmed in anyway from having received a vaccine. It's called the Vaccine Court, and they determine whether your claim is viable. That is if you can prove the vaccine caused the death, Guillian-Barre syndrome, neurological damage, atopic disorders, SIDS or a whole host of problems that the Feds recognize as having a direct causative force to have been from a scientifically tested and approved vaccination. Autism has only been determined to have been caused by vaccines twice in the history of the Vaccine Court.
But very few people actually are hurt by vaccines and few have had to use the Vaccine Court for compensation for injuries though right?
We don't know. It's public record that the Vaccine Court has paid out a little over 230 million dollars in just the last 10 years. But there is no data on how many injury awards there were. We do know that the CDC estimates that less than 10 percent of people injured even report their injuries.
So how much do these people receive if they win and receive compensation from the Vaccine Court? Winning a case includes a clause in your payoff award that states you are not allowed to discuss the case with anyone, especially the media. At risk of fines and imprisonment. Isn't that a little scary?
But thankfully we know that vaccines are safe. Scientific principles are used in the testing of all vaccines before they are put on the market. They are tested for safety and for efficacy.
Are they?
No, sadly, they are not. There are NO double blind studies done for either, safety or efficacy of any vaccine. Double blind is the gold standard for verifiable results. Nor are single blind studies done. In fact the manufacturers normally perform open label testing on as few as 80 volunteers.
IS THAT SAFE?
There is no liability for vaccine manufacturers. There doesn't have to be, the manufacturing of vaccines is all science based and every principle used in that manufacture is soundly tested and regulated.
Just like it has been for DDT, PCB's, Dioxin, Thalidomide and a whole host of drugs recalled because those same scientific principles were not so sound.
Yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about, or so say so many.
Yep
