Moving Towards a Plant-Based Diet
The me of a few years ago would have laughed at the idea of going on a plant-based diet. Crossing over into my mid-30s and starting to think about health for the long haul, and learning a bit about the potential health benefits as well as the real costs of factory animal farming, and here I am writing this article!
My wife and I used to eat meat with nearly every meal, mainly out of habit. Meat, eggs, a ton of dairy...all kind of mindlessly, but hey, it is all quite tasty to the human pallet! Now we're committing to buying one meat item, one fish item, and half a dozen eggs between the two of us every week. When you add it up we're shifting our diets to be about 75% plant-based.
Health, Mercy, and a Cleaner World
So why the shift? Well, Netflix and their darned documentaries plus some light reading! The first documentary to get us thinking was Forks Over Knives, which introduced us to The China Study, which links significant meat consumption to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and stroke.
And then came Food, Inc. that highlighted inhumane industrial animal farming practices and how ecologically harmful they tend to be.
So there you have it: migrating away from meat can maybe make us healthier, reduce animal cruelty, and help the environment! Win-win-win...
Here's a good way to ruin your morning seeing cows lined up for slaughter, but everyone should see something like this at least once.
A Healthy Dose of Skepticism
As an economist, I can't help being skeptical of...well, basically everything! I know how research works and I know how statistics can be used to prove the point you want. Non-findings just don't get published, which makes the journal literature biased towards the sensational. On top of that, studying complex systems like large groups of humans (economics) or even the intricate system that is a human, requires ruling out thousands of potentially correlated contributing factors, many of them unseen.
That said, all diet prescriptions should be treated as hypotheses with the humility to acknowledge that we're all different with potentially unique sensitivities to the same inputs. Also realize that there are a number of things going on in your life and environment that can effect your health. For instance, those who care about their diet are also more likely to exercise, which, itself, contributes enormously to your health; which contribution dominates is TBD.
So What's the Plan?
For now we're just decreasing the amount of meat, fish, eggs, and dairy in our diets. I'm still supplementing with my favorite organic grass-fed proteins so maybe that's cheating, but benchpress, squat, and deadlift are important aspects of manhood!
Should the new routine work out well, we'll certainly consider cutting back further. Stay tuned!
Do any other Steemians have plant-based diet stories to share?
For more super interesting #life, #freedom, and #economics posts, you can follow@cylonmaker2053 or my less restrained alter ego @finpunk.
Image source: http://whats--hot.net/2014/05/film-review-food-inc.html/
Generally reducing calories....especially refined sugars and eating less, higher quality meat is a good idea to me. Treating animals with kindness and respect seems obviously right and imagining food as akin to medicine.
Agreed. I've heard very good things about calorie restricted diets, and of course eliminating refined sugars is a no-brainer.
You think that industrial animal farming is inhumane. Just wait until they really find out what they are doing in the industrial vegetable farming.
To note: Animals and plants have feelings. They are both hurt for the nourishment of others, but they also know the circle of life far more than humans do.
Chickens raised in a chicken tractor (A portable coop, so that they can eat real plants and bugs in an area, and then be moved to another) are far more healthy, and good for you to eat.
Tilapia raised in an aquaponics system (fish shit feeds plants, plant shit feeds fish) are a very good source of protein in an ecological balanced (and small) system.
So, it really isn't the meat that is bad, it is the farming practices.
On diet, sugars are the number one cause of most diseases.
Meats need to really only be eaten to replace broken proteins in cell development. For a normal adult, that seems to be about 8oz a week. For a man who works out (muscle building is done by breaking down the muscle) you need a lot more protein.
Vegetables are the clean up crew. They take all the excess (and broken) proteins and help remove them from the body. So arthritis is not always just the eating of meat, it is often the absence of enough vegetables.
And finally, diet. That stupid food pyramid they taught you in school? It was designed by General Mills. It is useless when it comes to anything approximating healthy. There are quite a few body types and each has its preferred diet. Such as many people do well on a paleo diet. Me, I would die if I tried to eat that diet. So, really find what works for you.
Cookies and chips, from the store, don't seem to work for anyone.
I agree re: farming practices and processed sugars being the primary culprits to poor health, and i agree with your balanced approach. This is just one experiment to cut meat where i believe i've been routinely over consuming it.
I watched the same documentaries and I couldn't help but think about its fallacies. Yes, there is a big dose of "inhumanity" in industrial farming and that has to change. Stuffing animals with corn is not only bad for them but for humans too. It increases omega 6 content of meat, which causes inflammation - my mother-in-law gets into excrutiating arthritis pain whenever she eats red meat.
However, humans are not designed for a plant-based diet as our teeth show. You should watch Fathead to see that carbs, not meat, is the enemy. Ever since I turned (more or less) paleo I have melted - now comfortably sitting below 8% body fat. And despite eating at least 50% of my calories from fat, my blood work is stellar.
But you DO have a good point about grass-fed protein. The omega 3 content (good for the heart) is higher. But if ever you completely vegetarian/vegan, don't forget coconut oil. It's pure saturated fat of the good kind - anecdotal evidence suggests it is excellent for cognitive functions.
Excellent points and I agree with the skepticism. Good recommendation about Fathead, I'll check it out, but have heard similar things about our natural diet consisting of meat. Paleo is my go-to when I want to shed; it's an awesome way to drop weight fast. I'll keep y'all updated on how this experiment goes. I'm certainly not going to substitute meat for high glycemic starches, but i've long been interested in trying this, so here goes...
Not only to shed pounds but also to maintain a healthy lifestyle. I barely eat grain now, and I incorporate more fruits (real/dried, depending on what I have) when I need extra calories when I train harder like right now.
For sure, I just meant that that's how I've used paleo in the past. Some things that've kept me from maintaining it as my long run baseline:
I'm Italian-American and can't imagine a world without pasta! Albeit, it's now more of a treat than staple in my diet ~2x per month.
The anti-legume thing in paleo just never made sense to me.
I still feel like paleo encourages too much meat. I'm not entirely abandoning meat, just reducing and staying well diversified.
Otherwise, you can't really go wrong eating more whole foods and minimizing grains certainly keeps weight off, which is a big aspect of long run health.
absolutely and i've certainly tried a variety of the alts to pasta, just not a fan. i'm tempted to eat pasta every day, but i've settled on the 2x/month lower bound...
also with you on the seeds and nuts.
I see myself heading in the same direction.
Same reasons?
I am vegan for about 7 years now. I am in my late 20s. I have also done a lot of research (mainly on studies) and i can recommend you the book of dr. greger called "How not to die" it is realy well written and has a lot of research cited (literally every second sentence).
About the protein powder you are using the protein powder; in my opinion it is not necessary. You can build nice muscles on 0,7g/kg of protein. (You only need more protein when you are a baby because you have to double you weight in a few month. Babys get around 1,5g to 0,7g/kg depending on state of their development. Just look at studys about mothers milk composition and the consumption of a baby)
"How Not to Die" looks awesome, will definitely be reading it, thank you. I've also been skeptical of protein supplementation--i agree with it not being absolutely required, but am also skeptical that it's unnatural to consume a high dose of isolated proteins, we really don't know the full long term effects on our bodies.
One can only imagine... moving back to that once again.