Omnivore Rage

Omnivore Rage

Weight: 275

Exercise: Ran 2 mi yesterday, 3 mi today.

Having been a vegan for about 4 years (with a 1 year lapse in between), I am well used to all the usual questions that omnivores ask: 

"Where do you get your protein?"

"Doesn't eating only plants get boring?"

"How can you be a runner and not eat meat?"

"How can you possibly live without milk and cheese? I could never do that."

"What are you eating?!?"

"Quinoa? Never heard of it. Sounds gross."

The list goes on and on. Not that I'm complaining. The massive amounts of energy I get from eating vegan more than make up for it. I knew from the moment 4 years ago that I decided to stop eating meat, eggs, and dairy that I would be viewed as odd by most mainstream people. (Any of you who know me personally, already know that I am a bit odd, and totally comfortable with it). Thus, I thought I was very well prepared for anything that could be thrown my way about the subject of veganism and fitness.

The other day, I was totally caught by surprise. I was speaking with a very good friend of mine (who shall remain nameless), and happened to mention the fact that I was vegan again. As most people do, he peppered me with several questions about a vegan diet, and why I choose it. I apparently mistook his questions for genuine interest and politely suggested that he check out the facts, and perhaps consider adopting a vegan diet himself. I was totally unprepared for what happened next.

This friend of mine, normally a quite rational person, became angry. He raised his voice and said that he "would never do that." Further, he asserted that "people have to eat meat," and that anyone who doesn't is not only "dumb" but also a "scrawny weakling."

Ignoring the obvious insults, I asked him why we have to eat meat. He said "what else are you going to eat at Thanksgiving, Easter, or Christmas?" and also that he was a "meat and potatoes" kind of guy, because that's what he had always eaten.

His response to my questions got me thinking. I am definitely not a militant vegan who insists that no one eat animals, ever. I also don't go around throwing buckets of red paint on people who wear fur coats. I don't picket fast food restaurants. I merely advocate eating a plant based diet because it is the surest way to promote health, avoid or cure disease, and maintain vitality as long as possible. My third DevolveHealth eating rule says:

"Eat a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and legumes and VERY LITTLE if any meat, dairy, and eggs."

This is based on the simple logic (which has been backed up by a lot of research) that our primal ancestors would have eaten mostly plants (vegetables and legumes), fruit (which was only available certain times of the year), and seeds and nuts (also available only seasonally), and very little meat. It's not that they would try and avoid meat, but meat (also known as an animal) is pretty hard to come by. It turns out most animals, prior to domestication, didn't want to just lie down and be eaten. They were either much faster than we are, or had adequate weapons or size to fight us off. 

It was only after the development of weapons and then the domestication of animals that mankind had ready access to meat. It was only in the past 50 years or so that mankind (at least people living in industrialized countries) had access to as much meat as they wanted on the cheap, due to factory farming practices and cheap government subsidized corn.

As my friend was unintentionally pointing out, what we eat is a very emotional and cultural matter. Some of my own best childhood memories are of Sunday afternoons spent eating homemade spaghetti and London Broil with my mother's spaghetti sauce (if I ever gave that recipe away, she would drive up from Florida to kill me). 

The problem is, culture has changed with time, as have our waistlines and rates of disease. The typical diet about a hundred years ago (garnered from various sources) consisted of a small portion of meat, about 2-3 oz, fresh vegetables and grains, and seasonal fruits. Meat and grain made up about 20-30% of the food eaten, whereas the other 70-80% consisted of vegetables and fruits when available. There was no corner grocery store, and people had to live off of what they could farm, hunt, and fish. Thus, the diet would vary based upon what time of year it was, and how lucky or unlucky the family hunter/trapper was.

Compare to today. The average diet today consists of 50-60% refined grains or oils. These come in the form of processed sweets, pre-packaged foods, sodas, bread, and the like. 30-35% of our diet comes from meat, mostly in the form of chicken, pork, or beef, all of which has been factory farmed and is full of toxins, artificial hormones, and antibiotics used to keep the animals alive long enough to reach slaughter weight. That only leaves a measly 5-10% for fruits and vegetables. The most commonly eaten vegetable? The potato. There is nothing wrong with potatoes. They have many vitamins and minerals, and are quite healthy, when combined with other vegetables. The downside is that they are rather starchy, with a high glycemic index. Combine that with an overload of sugars, raising our post meal blood glucose, and the high protein and saturated fat load of the meat, and you have a perfect recipe for insulin resistance (read: diabetes). 

Sadly, my friend was misled. I can't really blame him though. So was I for many years, and I am a doctor, for God's sake. Since just after World War II, we have been very gradually conditioned to accept processed foods as staples, and encouraged to eat ever more meat and dairy. There are two main groups who are conditioning us this way. Offender #1 is the USDA. The US Department of Agriculture is a farm advocacy group. They are also the people who write our nutritional guidelines, and determine the "% daily value" which goes on the side or back of every food package sold in the US. Their primary interest is to make sure that the people they represent (namely the dairy farmers, meat farmers, and vegetable farmers, 99% of whom grow only corn and soybeans) make as much profit as possible. Is it at all surprising that the nutrition pyramid for at least 30 years has recommended grains, meats, and dairy products as the 3 most consumed nutrients?

Offender #2 is the National Dairy Farmers' Association. As the name implies, they work for dairy farmers. What they also do on the side is provide educational materials to schools on nutrition. I'm sure I don't even have to tell you what they are telling our children to eat. "Milk. It does a body good." speaks for itself. For more on just how bad milk is for you, read my previous post on milk. 

We all eat what we eat for a variety of reasons. Two of the most important are taste and history. We like food that tastes good, and we like to eat what we ate when we were children, because of the memories the food evokes. The same is true of holidays. We don't eat a turkey at Thanksgiving because it is an intrinsic part of the holiday (there is absolutely no evidence that turkey was eaten at the first Thanksgiving. It was probably added sometime in the 1800's). We eat it because it reminds us of our childhood, and happy times with family. In a way, it brings us closer to our distant and deceased family members, if only in our minds. Sadly, those "traditional" meals have been perverted over the years, by ever increasing levels of processing, and the agendas of groups who have placed profits over our health.

Now that makes me mad!