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“What do you think of meat based diets like the Atkins diet?”
I call them “the make yourself sick diets” because they cause the body to
go into ketosis—a state that occurs when we are seriously ill. I also use
that designation because the very foods recommended — meat, chicken,
bacon, eggs, and cheeses —are the foods the Heart Association and the
Cancer Society say cause our most dreaded diseases. ... There is only one
way to fully satisfy your appetite with delicious foods and stay trim and
healthy for a lifetime—that’s a low-fat vegetarian diet with fruits and
vegetables and a bit of exercise.
Dr. John McDougall, medical director of the McDougall program
“Isn’t fish a health food?”
Anyone who eats fish for “health” reasons should think again: The flesh of
fish can accumulate toxins up to 9 million times as concentrated as those
in the waters that they live in, and the flesh of some sea animals, like
shrimps and scallops, contains more cholesterol than beef. Fish on farms
are also fed antibiotics that are passed along to humans, impairing the
immune system. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, 325,000 people get sick and some die every year in the U.S.
from eating contaminated fish and other sea animals.
Dr. Neal Barnard, author of Foods That Fight Pain
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Good Nature, Vegetarian
Living
Eating for Life
Some people ignore dietary advice to cut back on or cut out animal
products, perhaps hoping that a “magic pill” will come along that will
make their illnesses go away. Common sense tells us that prevention is
the best medicine. More and more people are finding wonderful ways to
tempt their taste buds without tempting fate.
“There’s no reason to drink cow’s milk at any time in your life. It was
designed for calves, it was not designed for humans, and we should all
stop drinking it today, this afternoon.”
—Dr. Frank A. Oski, former director of pediatrics, Johns Hopkins
University
Vegetarians and vegans live, on average, six to 10 years longer than
meat-eaters.
Eliminating animal foods from your diet reduces the risk of some of our
biggest killers. According to Dr. T. Colin Campbell, nutritional
researcher at Cornell University and director of the largest
epidemiological study in history, “The vast majority of all cancers,
cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness can be
prevented simply by adopting a plantbased diet.” Heart disease, cancer,
strokes, diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity, and other diseases have all
been linked to meat and dairy consumption.
It’s never too late to change your habits for the better.
Changing your diet isn’t nearly as
inconvenient as enduring a heart bypass operation, suffering paralysis
from a stroke, or facing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for
cancer! Going vegetarian is the single best thing you can do for your
health.
Chickens, pigs, cows, and fish accumulate toxic chemicals in their flesh
and fat, which is why meat and dairy products are responsible for almost
all the toxic residues—dioxins, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and
antibiotics—that Americans consume. In fact, 80 to 90 percent of dietary
pesticide exposure, as well as 100 percent of dietary hormone and dioxin
exposure, comes from eating animal products, and many of these chemicals
are known to cause cancer in human beings.
- The risk of developing heart disease
among meat-eaters is 50 percent higher than that of vegetarians. In
fact, researchers have found that the longer and more often people eat
meat, the greater their risk of heart disease.
- Meat, dairy products, and eggs are
completely devoid of fiber and complex carbohydrates, the nutrients
that we’re supposed to be consuming more of, and are laden with
saturated fat and cholesterol, which make us fat and lethargic in the
short term and lead to clogged arteries and heart attacks in the long
term.
What About Protein?
“Vegetarians have the best diet. They
have the lowest rates of coronary disease of any group in the country
... they have a fraction of our heart attack rate, and they have only 40
percent of our cancer rate.”
—William Castelli, M.D., director, Framingham Heart Study, the
longest-running clinical study in medical history
In Western countries, our problem is too much protein, not too little.
Most Americans get at least twice as much protein as they need. Almost
everything contains protein; unless you eat nothing but junk food, it’s
almost impossible to eat as many calories as you need for good health
without getting enough protein.
Healthy sources include whole-wheat bread, oatmeal, beans, peanuts,
peas, nuts, mushrooms, and broccoli. By contrast, too much protein,
especially animal protein, can cause people to excrete calcium through
their urine and increase their risk of osteoporosis. Too much protein
can also strain the kidneys, leading to kidney disease. Vegans do not
need to combine foods at each meal to get “complete protein.” All
grains, legumes, vegetables, nuts, and seeds provide all the essential
amino acids.
What’s Wrong With Milk and Eggs?
No species naturally drinks milk beyond
infancy, and no species would naturally drink the milk of a different
species. Cow’s milk is designed for baby cows, who have four stomachs
and gain hundreds of pounds in a matter of months, sometimes weighing
more than 1,000 pounds before their second birthday.
For humans, milk has been linked to heart disease, some types of cancer,
diabetes, and even osteoporosis, the very disease that the dairy
industry claims it is supposed to prevent! The high animal-protein
content of milk actually causes calcium to be leached from the body.
According to a Harvard Medical School analysis of the evidence, milk
does not protect against osteoporosis. In fact, according to Harvard’s
nutritionists, countries with low calcium intake (just 300 mg/day) tend
to have a lower incidence of hip fractures (an indication of
osteoporosis) than those countries with higher calcium consumption
rates.
Milk is also loaded with fat and cholesterol and contains an ever
increasing variety of pesticides and antibiotics that are fed to cows.
You can get all the calcium that you need from the plant world—tofu,
broccoli, beans, grain, and calcium-fortified orange juice are all good
sources.
Serving up just one egg for breakfast each morning can raise your
cholesterol level by as much as 10 points! The human body makes all the
cholesterol it needs for maintaining healthy nerves and cell membranes.
The consumption of additional cholesterol through animal products, the
only other sources of cholesterol, subjects the human body to a
potential overload, leading to clogged arteries and heart disease.
Eggs are a primary carrier of salmonella, which sickens more than a
million people and kills over 500 every year in the U.S. alone.
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