Thursday, January 2, 2020

Veganism is preventing wide spread adoption of regenerative grazing, the most effective action on climate change.

Just WHAT is going on? My social circle is polarized and the subject is almost banned as too touchy. The nicest people I know have been sucked in.
The way out of climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss,   and growing enough food to nourish a burgeoning population is clear. It’s called regenerative agriculture. For me it is not just theory or what Ive heard but what I’ve practiced and observed daily. But instead of embracing the solution, my friends, environmentalists, are going the opposite way.
Ive been accused of pushing meat down people’s throats and of being “adversarial” for raising the real issue of vegan deterioration, admonished with “each to his own” . If only we had that luxury, but as extinguishing our selves and millions of other life forms looms we urgently need more people to eat animal products.I am  just one of thousands of former vegans who are reporting they became a physical and mental basket case while abstaining from all animal products.
Just who is behind the ever present messaging to avoid eating meat? Well, clue: Nina Tiecholz wrote the book A Big Fat  Surprise,  working furiously to complete it over an entire decade, such was the depth of her investigative journalism and the corruption involved. Nina uncovered that the   Co-chair of the EAT Lancet group was Walter Willet. This document about him is apparently 8 pages long https://www.scribd.com/document/397606854/Walter-Willett-Potential-Conflicts-of-Interest and  I was unable to see more than half a page without paying for the rest, but I found: Willet has published 3 vegetarian  books and works closely with David Katz, a prominent promoter of the vegetarian det who receives $millions from food companies. Under Walter Willet ‘s directorship of the HARVARD TS Chan school of public health, the school has received between $455, 000 and $1,500,000 from companies or groups promoting a vegetarian diet or products. The school has also received between $350,000 and $950,000 from pharmaceutical companies which presumably would not benefit from a nutritional solution to chronic disease. Willet rarely discloses any conflicts of interest.


Photo taken at Merri Bee Organic FArmacy by Clint Conner, Notion Photography 
Im a Saggitarian, and THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD!  I must push back against a raft of fallacies being believed about meat which is preventing one of the most effective actions against climate change, and reducing the size of people’s brains so they can no longer grasp the concepts.
The well funded misinformation campaign is working, and bears all the hall marks of large and greedy corporations. They just bombard us from all sides with the opposite of the truth. This tactic sadly works.  
Examples of their success: a dear friend identified as an organic meat eater at a climate change rally in a chat with the 2 young vegans beside her and was asked in a vicious way “Why are you at the rally if you eat meat?” Huh?
 The proprietor of an organic café struggling to stay afloat turned the café vegan even though we had agreed about the environmental benefits of regenerative organic animal products and discussed her concerns over the physical, mental /emotional state of her vegan patrons and their seeming disconnectedness with the Earth.

My own niece who has competed a bachelor of science in astronomy tells me beef uses heaps of water and electricity to produce. Huh?

At my local organic garden and café the barrista says  the take up of plant “milks” is about 40 % .

At our farmers markets the majority of organic customers identify with a touch of pride, being vegetarian. I immediately want to know why. Sometimes I do ask and get staggering answers like “my father died of bowel cancer” . End of story, as if meat is carcinogenic, when there is no evidence for that belief ( see below).  A lot of my friends, forest protectors and animal lovers, are  strict vegetarians, if not vegan. I witness with sadness their aches and pains, knowing their quiet sacrifice has done the opposite of their intentions for animals, the environment and a safe climate.  

 Here are a few examples of accepted beliefs I do not accept, as my FB readers are aware :

*Prescribed burning is necessary to remove fuel load and prevent wildfire.

 *Doctors know what's best for your health and will cure you with medication

* Dietary fiber is essential for GIT health

* Meat is bad. fruits, vege, whole grains , legumes , nuts and seeds are good.
* Climate change is due to our lavish use of fossil fuels and would be solved if only  we went renewable. 

Well I have different information on all these topisc. It seems that while tinderbox dry Australia burns and climate change ( CC) awareness belatedly dawns on more Ozzies, as  NZ chokes in smoke from our fires as does  Sydney for the foreseeable future, and  my sister evacuates from the south coast of NSW as an area half the size of Belgium is expected to burn this weekend......these  myths need busting urgently.
No doubt  renewables are needed NOW, but far more important is it to EAT  for the environment , ie ORGANIC. We need to get  vast areas of soil alive and functioning again as a carbon sink. We must stop deliberately burning the bush and put out fires fast, as forest burning is a far greater polluter and contributor to GHG emissions in Australia than all our fossil fuel emissions  combined.

It  so happens the best diet for Earth is not only organic, but it is organic MEAT. Meat and other anial products are the species appropriate diet for us with our huge brains.
To be clear, I abhor factory farms, and refuse to support  the water pollution and the cruelty associated with them no matter how hungry I am late at night and how tasty and juicy I remember a KFC drumstick.
But grass fed organic meat production is totally different. Eating  meat from factory farms is the worst thing you can do for the planet, but buying regenerative meat is the best ecological and health move you can make.

I wanted to answer all the vegan false claims in one place ( here) but that would probably require a book, so this piece will not be exhaustive. I hope to be able to copy and paste the various topics into forums to de- bunk what our vego friends and sometimes paid trolls are saying all over the place. I hope you do this  too.


 Electricity and Water usage to produce meat is an issue raised against omnivores, but the calculations vary wildly depending on sources. PETA ( People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) cite extraordinary numbers such as that it requires 2,400 gallons or 12,000 liters of water to produce 500 grams of meat. As Joel Salatin says, “Don’t know who came up with those figures but they weren’t a farmer!”  I don’t think they factored in that water drunk by a cow doesn’t all go into growing muscle, they urinate and defecate and breath out water laden breath. I know without a doubt our vegetables take more water to produce than it takes to keep our animals alive. Somebody has done some  calculations and found a bunch of plant foods including walnuts use far more water to produce per kilo than meat. It takes 5 liters of water to grow a single almond, yet sales of almond milk are still skyrocketing as millions of almond trees are dying of drought in California. In any case there are so many variables from soil health, to rainfall, to aspect, to housing and growing systems that such a simplified statement as PETA’s is meaningless. Nevertheless it is parroted by all and sundry. Amazing that many vegans have pets, which also need to drink water and eat meat. Cows are the scape goat for everything. There is open warfare by protestors on animal farms ( we feature on the “Aussie Farms map”) , but did you know there are more horses than dairy cows in this country ( and presumably they drink water too?)  
As for energy consumption a ruminant on pasture uses none, the slaughter and butchering of him can be minimal, packaging & refrigeration and freight can be minimal for local consumption so what’s the fuss? Carnegie Mellon University has released a new study showing lettuce production is 3 times worse in terms of GHG emmissons than  bacon, and that the lettuce is far more likely to become food waste in the fridge and then create more emissions, Surely the devil is in the details  with all these claims, so why do people so easily accept and live by such sweeping generalizations?

I acknowledge we are all from different genetic backgrounds, with different gut microbiomes and have individual needs when it comes to diet, but feel duty bound to warn people that the vegan diet may not only be as disastrous for them long term as it was for me ( and thousands of others….look up EX VEGAN on you tube ) but equally disastrous for the environment  UNLESS organic. (Be wise like the O W L and avoid conventional Oats, Wheat and Legumes as these are often sprayed with glyphosate just before harvest, even in Australia!)  
Kind to animals? 
 As for our farm “slaughtering animals for their flesh” to quote vegans , consider the cost in terms of animal lives with a plant- based diet. I think someone on a carnivore diet, eating regenerative meat only, would be not only very healthy but would be responsible for only about one steer death a year, where as someone on a plant based diet, usually not 100% organic, would be responsible for tens of 1000's of deaths from microbes up. 

"A vegan diet minces up or poisons far more sentient beings than a meat based diet. A study published in the journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics examined incidental death of field animals that occured as a result of growing and harvesting crops in the U.S. and the estimate is that 7.3 billion animals die annually. Who determines that a cows life is more important than that of a rabbit, mouse , turkey or bacteria?"   


..
Beef causes deforestation of the Amazon?
 Eating  a steak in Australia, the US or indeed anywhere but where South American beef is sent ( China, Hong Kong and Russia) makes not one iota of difference to the rainforests. Cattle farming is not the only cause of deforestation. Brazil produces 120 million tons of soybeans. Of that, 80 million tons are exported to China who squish soybean oil from them for the humans and feed the expressed soy cake to pigs. Destruction of Indonesian rain forest for palm oil is equally disturbing so please check everything you buy as palm oil is in EVERYTHING Im told, from vegan snack foods to shampoo and conditioner.  
We don’t have the land ? 
 Could  everyone to eat regeneratively grown animal products? Well around here we do, so lets do the right thing here, locally, before concerning ourselves with what happens in, say,  China. 

It is often levelled that while Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm and Merri Bee Organic Farmacy may be improving the environment, combatting climate change and have animal welfare as top priority, not everyone can eat meat from such as farm, it is not possible to scale up, so the conclusion is .....
Da Dumm…..we should not eat meat. To which I answer: Try us!  Who says we can’t all eat better meat from carbon negative farms? This is the core issue! Cattle grazing regeneratively has doubled the carrying capacity of numerous farms in one year so perhaps there is no limit to how much meat can be produced from a certain number of acres? Certainly there is no limit to how deep topsoil can go. “Yedoma” soils in Siberia , formed by the grazing of numerous wooly mammoth and other prehistoric ruminants 9,000 years ago, goes down 40 meters and holds one  ton of carbon under every square meter.
                                                                                                                                Your read that right. See Pleistocene Park Project    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
 It has been measured at White Oak Pastures ( WOP)  regenerative grazing farm by a “Whole of Life” GHG audit of their beef operation that  more carbon is being drawn down than is being emitted. WOP beef has a carbon footprint 111% lower than a conventional US beef system, in fact a negative carbon footprint. To offset GHG emissions from an “Impossible Burger” you would have to eat some WOP beef! “WOP beef is a rare climate-positive product and there could be a large net-positive carbon benefit should this production model replace degraded crop land.”  Read the results of the study here https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/hubfs/WOP-LCA-Quantis-2019.pdf 


No doubt this drawdown is occurring on all organic farms…..  Rodale Institute measured it at 7 tons per acre per year, but Colin Seis on Winona NSW is sequestering 33 tons of CO2 per hectare annually. Doesn’t it stand to reason then that  we need to increase the acres of land under biological  management? We need everyone’s help to scale this up, not just an unsubstantiated  statement that we are 1 nanno fraction of the market and  it isn’t possible to feed everyone this way! 
We know @ Merri Bee Organics we could increase our carbon sequestration and carrying capacity out of sight, if we could go to daily moves of our livestock. If the demand was there we could pay people to herd.  More farms could transition to this model if supported by your buying dollar, so what are you waiting for? Should we keep mining coal because as a country we are a small player in GHG emissions? Should you keep eating from chemically managed crops? [BTW, I’ve been  accused of profiting from the “murder” of animals, so want to state that  we profit negative figures  from meat but organic fruit sales are not too bad. ]  

Here is an article showing how an Australian station has doubled its grass production and stocking rate using Holistic Management. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-01-07/landscape-rehydration-better-than-dams-in-improving-production/11834394?fbclid=IwAR3s76ZbKTMM0xKRX7NST8U_RSr5lR 

 It turns out cheaper to eat nutrient dense organic meat as most meat- based folks  end up  only eating twice a day, as opposed to 6 times a day when plant- based and snacking. Try this at home: breakfast on animal products like bacon and eggs and see how long before you get truly hungry. Next day breakfast on plant foods like toast or museli and fruit or any  other insulin spiking food  and note how soon you are hungry again. We find carbs make us hungry.
We are not yet considering energy involved in packaging, transport, blitzing- gadget- embodied- energy and fuel costs of preparing all those vego meals, but in any case you could consider a regenerative meat purchase as a donation to the environment and an investment in your health. “Health ?” you ask with an eyebrow raised.Yes indeed, meat heals. Of all the diets and super foods and suppements Ive tried to lose weight and gain energy, the carnivore diet is the only regime that is do able long term and therefore gives noticeable results for me at least. There are sound reasons why, but 
before we leave ecological  audits, consider the costs of disease. In the U.S. , the healthcare system generates 10 percent of the nation’s GHG, whilst current ( poor practice) beef production only generates 2%. Obviously alleviating certain health conditions takes away from the  environmental burden  of disease management. And alleviating the most common of our expensive chronic diseases is what meat does.

Human Health  

Human health is a mess, particularly in the U.S., which ranks number 1 in the world for death on the first day of life. Diabetes, obesity, cancer, mental illness, auto immune diseases are through the roof globally.
Just as when Gabe Brown decided to do the opposite of every conventional farming practice and found his yields and profitability increasing exponentially, some very ill people with multiple chronic diseases, 14 years ago, decided to go against all accepted dietary advice and embark on a meat only diet, the ultimate elimination diet.  And they thrived and continue to do so, clear of all symptoms, unless they venture to add a plant food bac in!  Today thousands of people are thriving on Carnivore.
Let me quote from the back of a book I just purchased,  The Carnivore Diet

 “ Shawn Baker’s carnivore diet is a revolutionary, paradigm-breaking nutritional strategy that takes contemporary dietary theory and turns it on its ear. This  diet breaks just about all the “rules” and delivers outstanding results that address common chronic issues, such as prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, anxiety and depression, PCOS, arthritis, and many other ailments of our modern word. At the heart of the diet is a focus on subtraction rather than addition, which makes this an incredibly effective and easy-to-follow nutritional plan.
The Carnivore Diet  reviews some of the supporting evolutionary, historical, and nutritional science that gives us clues about why so many people are having great success with this meat -focussed way of eating. It highlights dramatic real-world transformations experienced by people of all types. This diet often reverses common disease conditions that have a reputation for being lifelong and progressive. …….”

If you have a rare condition and NEED to eat nothing but plants, this can be done organically ( though hellishly expensive due to the volumes of this low nutrient/ indigestible food required)  yet the food miles of a vegan diet are never good. So,  the rest of us are going to have to eat more meat from local regenerative farms to offset your non- local organic diet, until local organic WA growers of lentils and peanuts and such- like show up. I am a member of a whole food co op and most of the organic whole foods  come from overseas. You could try to grow your own food organically and this may work, but after 36 years of trying here, it’s an F for FAIL, and it is only getting more and more difficult thanks to CC. We have invested in a seeding machine with not just the  aim of establishing perennial pastures during the narrow windows of opportunity we get, but growing pulses and grains. Our region grows organic oats but currently it is all contracted to a German baby food company.


Longevity

Running counter to suggestions that eating meat shortens your life , researchers have conducted several formal epidemiological studies indicating there is no advantage to a plant based diet when it comes to mortality. These include the "45 and up" study from Australia with a sample group of 250,000 people, the Epic Oxford study which included 60,000 people, and the PURE study with 135,000 participants. As they are only epidemiological they need to be taken with a grain of salt.

People in Hong Kong eat the most meat per person at an average of 750 gms per day, and live to an average of 85 years. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/02/health/hong-kong-world-longest-life-expectancy-longevity-intl/index.html
Cognitive function
 Our huge brains are a wonder of the universe. It seems we did not evolve to eat meat, but  evolved BECAUSE  we ate meat.  Eating animals nose to tail provides all of the nutrients that a human needs in the most optimal, bioavailable forms, in the right ratios, without any of the plant toxins.
  
Plant toxins? Yes. Ubiquitously thought of as innocent,  plants have been around far longer than humans and have developed protection from being eaten, in the form of chemical warfare. They use oxalates, lectins, gluten, phytic acid, sulphurophanes, glycoalkoloids ( found in night shade family, Goitrogens ( cabbage family) , protease inhibitors , saponins, Salicylates, and Flavonoids ( which are potentially beneficial at low doses but at higher doses have been noted to produce genetic mutations, free radical damage and hormone inhibition.


Here is a transcript of Dr Paul Saladino talking to  Dr Gundry :
“Paul Saladino: So polyphenols …..They’re often plants defense mechanisms. They are plant toxins, or they are used as colorings or pigments in plants. But what we know about polyphenols is that they’re often compounds that don’t even participate in plant metabolism. Tannins are a great example.
Tannins inhibit digestion in animals. So … we see this time and time again with polyphenols that have been much touted for health whether it’s resveratrol or curcumin. When we actually look into the data, resveratrol has repeatedly failed in human trials and has shown many negative effects. It decreases androgen precursors, it’s been shown to create thrombocytopenia potentially modulate the immune system in negative ways by affecting T Helper 17 cells.
Curcumin is much the same, there are over 120 failed randomized double blind placebo controlled trials with curcumin. And then if we actually look at what curcumin is doing in the rest of the body we find it can interfere with a potassium channel called the hERG channel. It can affect DNA replication and inhibit topoisomerases, which are DNA repair and unwinding enzymes. So this gets back to the idea that imo, polyphenols, they’re from a different operating system. “

Dr Saladino , a classically trained MD who has specialized in psychiatry, has always looked for the root cause of illness. He ended up going back to study functional medicine (which looks for the underlying cause of disease). He has embraced the carnivore way of eating for over a year . His cognitive function is A1 and his ability to study relentlessly, retain info and  pass it on coherently are so useful. Here is what he said on the evolutionary evidence for a carnivore diet :
….the  evolutionary argument is that humans have been eating a primarily meat based diet for 3.5 million years. And there’s evidence for this in the fossil record……
…. that probably …to change our brains from an Australopithecus type animal, which is a primate- like animal, to a homo genus animal like Homo habilis or Homo erectus, was the consumption of a large amount of meat. ….. very nutrient dense food, which provided all sorts of special nutrients…. fat soluble vitamins, Omega-3s, DHA, EPA, which most people believe allowed our brains to grow. Primate evolution proceeded human evolution for 20 plus million years. We know that eating lots of vegetables doesn’t grow a brain because primate brains pretty much stayed the same size, 300 milliliters. Some primates have larger brains. But for the most part, over 20 million years of primate evolution, the brain remained the same size eating primate diets.
And then something really important in human evolution happened about 3 million years ago, when Australopithecus became Homo erectus. We started to walk more upright, and our brain exploded in size. It went from 300 to 600, to 800 to 1000 ccs. And then in the last, maybe 800,000 years, our brain went from 1000 cc to 1500 ccs. So our brains have been growing. And we know that with these growing brains comes increased complexity of processing, and human intelligence, higher development of structures and increased neural networks. And I think there’s a very clear argument that animal foods allowed this to happen.
If we go back and we actually look at fossilized remains, we see stable isotopes studies from Neanderthals and contemporary Homo sapiens, even 70,000 years ago. What we see is that the amount of nitrogen in that collagen is so high that it’s higher than any other known carnivores at the time. These are ..compelling studies to suggest that 70 to 80,000 years ago, our Homo sapien ancestors as they were moving up from Africa to Europe and contacting the Neanderthal, were both eating a lot of meat, perhaps almost entirely meat. I would argue that humans are facultative carnivores. People often want to compare us to obligate carnivores and say, well, clearly humans aren’t carnivores, because we don’t look like lions and tigers [but we do use tools and fire. A lot of evidence points to the fact that we were apex predators who teamed up and used language to hunt and thrive. The Aborigines hunted mega fauna to extinction and the Siberrian tundra was full of animals until 9,000 years ago when humans arrived and wiped out the wooly mammoth and many more species]
Our stomachs are darn acidic [the most acidic stomachs in the animal world at 1.5 ph]. But we have become, a facultative carnivore. And what that means is that animal foods provide the ideal nutrition for humans. But we can eat plants if we need to during times of survival, …, if animal foods are not around. So it’s this really incredible adaptation.”

 I’m guessing we can do well short term on a plant based diet but long term we need to nourish ourselves with meat, or nutritional deficiencies start to rear their ugly heads. 

But what about all the studies vegans will tout showing people are healthier on a vegan diet? Ah, the hierarchy of scientific evidence is important to be aware of and the involvement of politics in science.

 The hierarchy of evidence pyramid provides an overview of various types and levels of scientific research, systematic reviews sit at the top of the pyramid, followed by randomized control trials and observational studies. Expert opinion and anecdotal experience are ranked at the bottom.

So let’s talk about research and epidemiology. There’s experimental and non experimental epidemiology. Non experimental epidemiology has traditionally just been called epidemiology. These are population studies based on  food frequency questionnaires. These are notoriousy inaccurate as people either don’t remember what they ate or dishonestly answer and fail to mention the tim tams. Sometimes epidemiology is all we’ve got. But we have to understand the nuance of this because it can be misinterpreted in so many ways. With epidemiology we are looking at associations and correlation does not always mean causation. Sometimes correlation can be an indication of causation. But ideally, these studies generate hypotheses that are then tested in interventional studies, a much higher quality of evidence.
Nutritional studies that are interventional, are very rarely done due to the ethics and expense of locking people up long term in a metabolic ward and measuring their intake and vital signs / organ function. The majority of studies, if not every single study, that suggests that plant-based diets are beneficial to people in terms of longevity or health outcomes, are non experimental epidemiology. There is a bias here called healthy user bias :
For the last 70 years, most of the westernized world has been told red meat is bad for you. So, who by now eats red meat? People that also smoke, people that exercise less, people that are have lower socio economic status, people that are rebels. …the James Deans who are saying, “Ah, I don’t care about your recommendations. I like my hamburger.” Well, is it the hamburger that’s not beneficial for them? Or the fact that they’re washing that burger down with Coke, not exercising ,smoking and/ or drinking alcohol?  This is the unhealthy user bias, that’s been associated with red meat. And again, this is all just theory. And this is why the epidemiological studies trotted out by vegans need to be followed by interventional studies.
If we look in Asia, there’s so much interesting epidemiology that shows the reverse trend repeatedly. In Asia, meat is associated with royalty. So what do we see in the studies in Asia? That people that eat the most meat live the longest and the best. Asians love meat and live a long time, and the people that eat the most meat, live the longest. The biggest meat eaters on Earth live in Hong Kong, followed by New Zealand and Japan. In Japan they have been decreasing their rice consumption and increasing meat steadily since 1961. Colin Campbell wrote The China Study, an extremely influential book, and preaches  the exact opposite of this, but Colin may have done a little bit of cherry picking of his statistics! Multiple people have done re-analysis of his data and de- bunked his book, which is not a study in any way. As  humans, we always have a bias.
While epidemiology has its limitations and RCT’s are far more rigorous,  even peer reviewed and published research can be influenced by “publication bias and conflict of interest in academic publishing. For example, studies with conflicts due to industry funding are more likely to favor the product of their sponsors.

One of the weaker forms of evidence is “consensus of expert opinion” , yet a report put out by a panel of experts early this year got SO MUCH air time, SO MUCH promotion, you would definitely have heard of it.  It’s findings were bizarre …saying  we should limit red meat to a portion the size of a blue berry, chicken to 2 blueberries worth a day, and eat only a quarter of an egg a day. Interestingly, Frédéric Leroy and Martin Cohen published a powerful opinion piece about the EAT-Lancet Commission's report, questioning their global action against meat  saying: "isn’t it remarkable how meat, symbolizing health and vitality since millennia, is now often depicted as detrimental to our bodies, the animals, and the planet?"
The following summary is by Nina Teicholz        January 24, 2019
“The EAT-Lancet report, published by The Lancet last week, has been presented as the product of 37 scientists from around the world who gathered to evaluate the science on diet and both  human health and the health of the planet. These are separate scientific questions that each deserve careful evaluation.
It’s important to note that there are significant scientific controversies on both these questions. On diet and health, I can safely say that there is an enormous amount of legitimate scientific dispute surrounding the question of whether a plant-based diet is best for health and also whether minimizing red meat in the diet is healthy or even safe. The best, most rigorous (clinical trial) evidence supports the idea that red meat does not cause any kind of disease. There are also a number of analyses showing that diets low in animal foods are nutritionally deficient, thereby increasing the risk of many diseases and interfering with normal growth and brain development in children.
Evaluating the science on any subject requires convening a range of viewpoints so that scientific controversies can be fairly evaluated and discussed. Presumably The Lancet, an old and venerable journal, knows this. And yet an examination of the EAT-Lancet authors reveals that more than 80% of them (31 out of 37) espoused vegetarian views before joining the EAT-Lancet project.
This was clearly a highly biased group, and the outcome of their report was therefore inevitably a foregone conclusion..”

Similar  conflicts of interest exist at the World Health Organization.  Referring to their  2015 proclamation that red meat is a class 2 carcinogen and processed meat is a class 1 carcinogen, (which puts it into the same category as smoking cigarettes in terms of risk of developing colon cancer), first know that this was not a consensus decision, 30% of the IARC panel disagreed with the conclusion. Dr Georgia Ede has done a remarkable job of sorting through the same data the IARC cited and has determined that the evidence in support of the claim that meat causes cancer is fairly underwhelming. You can find Dr Ede’s critique at www.DiagnosisDiet .com.
Ive read it , appreciated her sense of humour and interpretations and have now truly lost my lifelong awe of scientists. I thought they were smart but I could have designed better experiments. What relevance do studies on  rats have when they are natural grain eaters unlike humans who only recently began to eat grain? Why confound your human experiment with orange juice and fail to mention baseline  health status of participants?   Sloppy work!  Here is the conclusion  of gorgeous psychiatrist Dr Ede:
“When you get right down to it, the only plausible evidence to suggest that red meat might be risky to human colon health is contained in two, that’s TWO, human studies, both of which were very small and  poorly designed, and therefore unable to give us useful information about the effects of red meat on cancer risk. These studies are inconclusive at best, and worthless at worst. Human nature being what it is, believing is seeing. People looking for reasons to avoid red meat may view these two studies as concerning. People looking for reasons to eat red meat may view these two studies as reassuring.Trumpeting to the world that meat causes cancer on the basis of these two studies is ridiculously irresponsible and makes a mockery of the WHO. There is ample information to suggest that the WHO’s report is biased, incomplete, and scientifically dishonest.”
 For an excellent review explaining the limitations of epidemiological studies of meat and human health, please see this article authored by the USDA’s National Program Leader for Human Nutrition, David Klurfeld PhD: Klurfeld DM 2015 Research gaps in evaluating the relationship of meat and health. Meat Science 109: 86–95.] Dr Klurfeld was on the IRAC panel and was frustrated as the panel refused to consider the good quality studies he tried to present showing no harm from meat.
The generally accepted lifetime risk of developing colon cancer is 4%. If the WHO is correct, that risk goes up to 5% and there is a 1% increase in absolute risk. This is one of the classic statistical numbers games used to scare people. Hyper insulinemia, abdominal obesity, and chronic inflammation are much scarier risks . As these conditions resolve for most people sticking to a carnivore diet, their overall risk for colon cancer likely falls. As pointed out elsewhere, Asians are big meat consumers but have low rates of colorectal cancer, but if they move to the United States their likelihood of developing cancer and  getting fat and sick in other ways goes up. This suggests it is the junk food consumed with the meat, not the meat! 4.5 billion people live in Asia so we better note their data carefully.
Norwegian Founder of EAT - Gunhild Stordalen, the Australian CEO of the EAT Foundation - Sandro Demaio, Harvard Professor - Walter Willett and the world-wide headlines they created, are claiming we all need to go virtually vegan now, but just as many authorities are saying the diet they have devised is dangerously low in nutrients, especially for growing children.
Numerous court cases have found well- meaning vegan parents guilty of starving their children ( sometimes to death) on the vegan diet. Doesn’t this register with our evangelical vegan friends?  
Some comments on the Eat Lancet Commission’s report
“The ambition of the authors …risks laying the groundwork for further worldwide increases in malnutrition and food waste”
  Apparently the methods of dissemination of the report, sent a few days prior to the editors of newspapers and magazines around the world “under strict embargo”, fanned   media clamour that  “the EAT-Lancet commission wanted to achieve, rather than warn about presumed dangers resulting from the improper use of food and natural resources."
“Science is not based on opinions: 37 scientists, although authoritative, are not the scientific community
Carni Sostenibili   Full Article here

James Cameron invested $140 million into his pea protein powder business and helped  produce the big budget vegan propaganda film  The Game Changers. Chris Kresser debunked the film on the Joe Rogan podcast for over 2 hours. Soon enough the producer of the film, James Wilks, was invited to debate Chris Kresser on the Joe Rogan show, but totally bullied Chris . Impossible to watch! Fortunately  the “de bunk of the debunk of the debunk” was then  done by Paul Saladino and Brian Sanders ( Brian produced the doco FOOD LIES). This show  was exhaustive too but with the advantage of time to investigate James Wilks’s claims, the lads did an excellent job, just as Chris Kresser did on the spot while being bullied  . The  Game Changers  promulgated many myths but  one deserves a mention here… the story that we can obtain enough B12 from eating dirt and drinking lake water. James Wilks insisted he had a study which proved this, but he omitted the fact that  the dirt in the study was enriched with human manure. The study in Iran is mentioned by Barry Groves below. Only one lake and only in winter has it been measured to contain much B12 at all. And vegans,  if you drink 20 liters a day you will be OK . In winter.
Look around you next time you’re in a random crowd, and realize that most of us  have done what experts have told us to do for 60 years, we have continuously lowered our meat and saturated fat consumption during that time, and we’ve increased vegetable oil.   How is it working out for us? Plant foods up, animals foods down, obesity and diabetes up
We will happliy sell you divine fruit from our permaculture 

A study has found that when vegans were supplemented with 5 grams of creatine a day ( the amount found in 500 gms of beef) they got more intelligent….recall, processing speed etc increased.  Indicators showed that previously they were operating at a low threshold of cognitive function to begin with.
In general our brains are have been getting smaller .

Dr Barry Groves points out that “ humans have a comparatively  small gut with which to absorb all the nutrients and energy our bodies need, and a modern low-calorie, low-fat, fibre-rich, plant-based diet is woefully inadequate as an energy source for our energy-hungry system to function at peak efficiency. That lack has begun to show. Since the advent of agriculture, there has been a worrying trend as our brains have actually decreased in size. A recently updated and rigorous analysis of changes in human brain size found that our ancestors' brain size reached its peak with the first anatomically modern humans of approximately 90,000 years ago. That t              hen remained fairly constant for a further 60,000 years.-11 Over the next 20,000 years there was a slight decline in brain size of about 3%. Since the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, however, that decline has quickened significantly, so that now our brains are some 8% smaller.
This suggests some kind of recent historical deficiency in some aspect of overall human nutrition. The most obvious and far-reaching dietary change during the last 10,000 years is, of course, the enormous drop in consumption of high-energy, fat-rich foods of animal origin which formed probably over 90% of the diet, to as little as 10% today, coupled with a large rise in less energy-dense grain consumption.-12 This pattern still persists; it is even advocated today: it is the basis of our so-called 'healthy' diet.

Vitamin B-12 is only one nutrient undersupplied or absent in a vegetarian  diet. Zinc, carnosine, carnitine, Creatine, Taurine Cholesterol and Heme Iron are others
If any more convincing that we have to be a meat-eating species is needed, there is one other essential nutrient that is not found in any plant food. That nutrient is Vitamin B-12.

Vitamin B-12 is unique among vitamins in that while it is found universally in foods of animal origin, where it is derived ultimately from bacteria, there is no active vitamin B-12 in anything which grows out of the ground. Where trace amounts of vitamin B-12 are found on plants it is there only fortuitously in bacterial contamination of the soil. And even that is lost if plants are washed thoroughly before eating them.
Bacteria in the human colon make prodigious amounts of vitamin B-12. Unfortunately, this is useless as it is not absorbed through the colon wall. Dr. Sheila Callender tells of treating vegans with severe vitamin B-12 deficiency by making water extracts of their stools which she fed to them, thus affecting a cure.-13 An Iranian vegan sect unwittingly also makes use of this fact. Investigators could not understand how members of this sect remained healthy, until their investigations showed that they grew their vegetables in human manure - and then ate the vegetables without being too fussy about washing them first.-14” “Thank you Dr Groves
No article is likely to persuade vegans but if YOU have an open mind you may declare just like a vegetarian lady at a talk I gave years ago: “ I  went in to hospital for a minor op but they couldn’t do it because my iron was too low. Up until now I have felt too guilty to consider eating meat but after your talk I‘m going to have a nice steak tonight and enjoy it” .
If less people feel guilty about eating meat after reading this, the time spent will have been worth it.
We have been enjoying the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought for far too long  as Peter Ballersted points out.
I would like to finish by pasting from De Georgia Ede’s website a forum comment by “Alice”, because she hits the nail on the head. Commenting on the WHO “meat causes cancer” debarcle Alice says to Dr Ede:

“Thank you for this terrific analysis of the latest 'fear mongering' by WHO. When I first heard about it, I stood farther back and dismissed it out of hand. When diagnosed with diabetes; which I recognize as an unwittingly self-inflicted condition, I did the research and realized quickly the 'traditional' approach to 'treating' this problem actually exacerbated it; i.e. intent focus on chemically suppressing the most obvious symptom; high glucose levels, and not the insulin response to consuming carbohydrate. I stopped eating carb for six months in a successful attempt to partially rehabilitate my permanently damaged insulin receptors….. my glucose levels became normal and have remained so without the use of any medications but rather by adjusting diet and exercise. My diet is focused on 'clean' meat and healthy fats. In order to accomplish this I was required to do a great deal of research and I was disheartened to realize the medical 'industry' and institutions we are supposed to respect and trust are; in my opinion, criminal organizations operating cooperatively to simply create profit without consideration of the general health and well being of the public they were originally meant to serve. The USDA and FDA are run by "ex" executives of Monsanto and for the benefit of Monsanto. The CDC and WHO are right in the pot with them and there is no doubt whatsoever of this reality and their collusion with the pharmaceutical industry. …. I believe our 'health' organizations have been gutted and something very dark has been substituted for sound medical/dietary guidance and information. As mentioned below, you really cannot believe a word they say and those who are at the very top of the human food chain; pun intended, seem exceptionally intent upon encouraging us all to eat the wrong foods. ….hundreds of studies have proven sugar; in all its forms, is poison to the human body. We are expected to believe our primary diet should consist of plant food which is unnecessary and processed by our bodies as poison? If you feed a cat grain it won't eat it because it knows grain is not its food, however the cat needs the nutrients in grain. Mice and birds eat the grain and the cat eats the mice and birds. Many different kinds of animals eat every kind of plant food. There are approximately 18lbs of vegetative nutrient in each single pound of wild meat. The animals eat the plants [carb] and we eat the animals. That is how we gain access to those nutrients. Our bodies were never meant to consume these plants directly and I see this as one of the fundamental causes of virtually all 'modern disease'. Notice our hunter ancestors did not stalk carnivores for food. They hunted the plant eaters ... just like the other carnivores. The rivers of insulin created by continuous consumption of carbohydrate disrupts the entire; profoundly complex, human hormonal system leading to the 'progression' of 'diabetes' into ever increasing destruction of the body. I can only assume the pharmaceutical indoctrination of a 'medical education' is generally overwhelming critical thought not to mention common sense”

Please share this article widely. I don’t have a big budget to promote the real, the actual,  game changer----- regeneratively farmed meat. The information contained above is but the tip of the iceberg , I have more if you want. Meanwhile, spread it! 

Saturday, September 7, 2019

Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, is one of the most talked about (and studied) vitamins on the planet.  Yet, despite all the scientific evidence, many people are confused about its benefits – thanks to many misleading “nutritional” articles.
Vitamin C is absolutely essential to prevent infectious disease and deal with stress and toxins. It is the mother of all anti oxidants. We are among just a handful of animals on Earth who do NOT manufacture our own vitamin C internally. We rely on ingesting enough from plants and animals ( yes, liver contains vitamin C) as do bats, guinea pigs, capibarra and a suborder of  primates: Tarsiers, monkeys, apes and humans.
 Vitamin C is vital for  cardiovascular and immune system health.In the 1980s, Nobel Prize-winning researcher Linus Pauling definitively linked vitamin C with heart health – and stressed the importance of sufficient intake daily. Now, integrative cardiologists – including Mathias Rath, M.D., and Thomas E. Levy, MD, JD – are continuing Pauling’s lifesaving work.

Vitamin C deficiency is associated with heart disease

In Linus Pauling’s theory, heart disease is actually a manifestation of vitamin C deficiency. And atherosclerosis – with its attendant plaque deposits – is the body’s attempt to heal the cracks in arteries caused by the vitamin C shortfall.Since the 1980s, a host of studies have helped to confirm Pauling’s theory.
Supplementation with high-dose vitamin C restores heart health in two ways.Vitamin C scavenges harmful free radicals that cause oxidative stress, while functioning as an important building block for collagen – a protein needed to promote healing, structure and stability in arteries.
In a paper published in Journal of Cardiology and Current Research, researchers reported that high-dose vitamin C reduces heart attack and stroke by up to 98 percent.
Unfortunately, too many conventionally-trained doctors view high-dosage vitamin C therapy with skepticism – no matter how impressive the results.  There are great myths surrounding vitamin C which I aim to address.

Myth #1: There are no studies on vitamin C
In his book Primal Panacea, high-dosage vitamin C pioneer Dr. Levy calls this statement “medical malpractice” and says it would be understandable if voiced by a mechanic or stonemason – but not by a physician.
Dr. Levy points out that a simple PubMed search yields over 60,000 studies on vitamin C – many of them showing positive effects on human health.
A board-certified cardiologist, Dr. Levy has written extensively on vitamin C, including a landmark review of 650 peer-reviewed studies on the effect of oxidative stress on vitamin C levels – as well as on the ability of vitamin C to reverse atherosclerosis.

Myth #2: There is no evidence that vitamin C works

Again, this is absurd.
Dr. Levy references over 1,200 studies showing beneficial effects – and says this only “scratches the surface” of what is known about vitamin C’s therapeutic abilities.
And, there is a problem with what constitutes a “study.”
In order to be acknowledged by the medical community, says Dr. Levy, a study must be large, randomized, placebo-controlled and double-blind. Dr. Levy maintains that most prescription drugs currently in use lack this type of rigorous study!  So why is vitamin C held to a stricter standard?
Dr. Levy points out that a group of patients being given intravenous (IV) high-dosage vitamin C under closely monitored (hospital) conditions “does not count” as a study – even if all patients are cured!
To see evidence of vitamin C’s powers, one need look no further than the astounding success of Dr. Paul Marik at Sentara Norfolk Hospital.Dr. Marik uses a mix of intravenous vitamin C, thiamine and corticosteroids to treat sepsis, a life-threatening systemic infection. To date, the groundbreaking therapy has saved 150 patients from almost certain death.

Myth #3: Vitamin C is unsafe

With a superlative safety profile (and no known lethal dose) vitamin C appears to be one of the safest substances ever.  In fact, natural health experts note that plain water is more toxic than vitamin C. Obviously the truth of that statement would depend on the water supply, and be very true in the case of flouride and chlorine treated water, or ground water in conventional farming areas. Sad.
And, vitamin C seems to be free of dangerous side effects even at high doses.
In its use as a strong antibiotic, or in cases of acute poisoning or potential deadly infection, some natural therapists use doses of 250,000 mg to 300,000 mg a day.  This is  3,000 times over the RDA – yet no serious adverse effects have been reported. 

The SNAKE BITE treatment 

Pat Colby is a famous Australian farmer for her use of vitamins and minerals to keep animals healthy and treat acute conditions. She writes of vitamin C :
"Early in 1930, an American, Dr Klenner did much research on the use of Vitamin C on humans. In turn a Californian Vet, Dr Wendell Bellfield, carried on the good work with impressive results on all sorts of dog ailments that are generally considered incurable or fatal. Today, in USA, there are now a significant number if Vets practicing alternative Medicine such as this.  After studying the literature, I decided that I really had nothing to lose trying Vitamin C on my own farm animals. The first one was a pony, almost moribund, whose blood was later diagnosed as having the largest amount of Tiger Snake venom the Vet had ever seen in an animal. Within 24 hours of being unable to move, and also having considerable difficulty in breathing due to pneumonia, the pony was grazing happily in its owner’s garden, apparently quite healthy. I only had one 30ml bottle of Vitamin C, half of what I would have liked, so I put half of the bottle into each side of the neck by intramuscular injection.  After that we treated sundry dogs, two cats and several goats including a stud buck. All recovered. A very valuable Alpaca which was being watched by its owner from her kitchen window went down to the dam to examine something. The owners, horrified, watched a large snake rise up and strike it on the nose - the worst place - and thanked her lucky stars the Vitamin C was in the fridge - not still on the shopping list. Rushing out with only 15 mls in the syringe - she injected the Alpaca before any symptoms arose. The snake had looked like a brown or a tiger, the result - happy ending.  The great advantage of Vitamin C is that anaphylaxis does not occur and the variety of snake does not matter. Vitamin C is cheap, easy to store and taking it on a hunting trip is no problem. All you need is a 20 ml syringe, some largish needles - say No 18 - and the bottle of Vitamin C. It can all be carried in a small wallet on ones belt. In between times it should be kept in the fridge."
It’s worth pointing out: pharmaceutical medications administered in hospitals kill thousands of patients a year.  In fact, a recent Johns Hopkins (U.S.A.) study reports that 250,000 people die every year from medical errors – making it the third leading cause of death in the nation, right behind heart disease and cancer!
So, one has to wonder, why all the “controversy” surrounding a non-toxic substance like, vitamin C?

Myth #4: Vitamin C causes kidney stones


Experts say that vitamin C can – under certain conditions and in certain forms – contribute to oxalate production, which can in turn contribute to kidney stones.
But, Dr. Levy notes that the presence of high oxalate is not enough to create kidney stones.For many, the matter was put to rest by a rigorous 14-year study of 85,557 women conducted by researchers at prestigious Harvard Medical School – in which the team found no link whatsoever between vitamin C intake and kidney stones.Vitamin C has been further vindicated by additional studies, showing that the nutrient actually lowers the incidence of kidney stones.
Sally K Norton is is an expert when it comes to the dangers of high oxylate foods which do in fact contribute to forming kidney stones. Oxylate is a toxin and anti nutrient found in many plants. The "plant based diet" is a cool sounding notion that doesn't stand up to scrutiny because sadly, nuts , beans, grains and seeds are full of toxins and anti nutrients which make them indigestible at best and a cumulative poison in the case of oxylate, which is not able to be broken down by culinary traditions, as soaking, fermenting  and cooking .Phytates and lectins can be denatured by these practices but not oxylate. Spinach, silver beet, rainbow chard, chocolate, almonds, kiwi fruit  and rhubarb are chockers with oxylate which can chelate minerals from our bones and use the robbed  calcium to form sharp, hard crystals of nanno size which lodge in joints and many other sites ( heart, lungs, brain, liver) and accumulate into larger and larger crystals as hard as your teeth! Calcium oxylate crystals can lodge anywhere, but often occur at sites of tissue damage to wreke mayhem. So whatever of your body parts you use a lot are prone to accumulate these little daggers ! And you thought  you had RSI, or failing thyroid, or digestive issues.  The aches and pains of age may just be due to our ingesting quantities of oxylate day in day out. Here is a clip of Sally Norton speaking on the little known topic of oxylate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfUUPrmqjbI I will blog on this in near future. 

Myth #5: You can get enough vitamin C through diet

This is mostly true, unless you ferment! Read on....The current RDA for nonsmoking adults is a paltry 60 mg of vitamin C a day – roughly the amount in one small orange.  Although this is enough to prevent the serious medical condition known as scurvy, natural health experts decry it as ridiculously low.
Of course, more vitamin C is required to combat atherosclerosis and heart disease.  In fact, one study showed that it takes 1,500 mg per day to prevent or reverse atherosclerosis in 60 percent or more of the population.
My approach to vitamin C is to rely on dietary vitamin C intake which you can do by eating organic citrus fruits, red capsicum ( peeled and seeded to get rid of lectin) strawberries, cabbage,broccoli and more. Australian native foods can be very high. Fermented crucifers in the form of kim chee has 100s of times greater amount of vitamin C than fresh cabbage so go the sauerkraut or kimchee daily. Other natural super high C sources include rose hips, Merri Bee Organic Fizz Juice  ( Lime, Lemonade  and Lemon Kombucha)
and the super star of all, Gubinge ( aka Kakadu plum) https://www.academia.edu/28561849/Native_Australian_fruits_a_novel_source_of_antioxidants_for_food  This research found Gubinge had 938 times more ascorbic acid ( vit C) than blueberry.
Natural sources contain the phenolic compounds and antioxidants that make the vitamin C more bio available. 
I keep a bottle of buffered, tasteless sodium ascorbate powder for emergencies where the body needs massive doses of vit C . Examples of acute conditions  include  infection, physical and emotional stress, dental  issues, smoking (thanks to prescribed burning) spider or snake bite. Others should use it if stressed from alcohol use, medications and environmental toxins – these will drain the body stores of vitamin C. Goats under stress have been measured to make 1000's of times their usual amount of vitamin C. 

Myth #6: Excess amounts of vitamin C are excreted through urine

Vitamin C proponents say that this is akin to saying that water is excreted in urine – which means that it is unneeded by the body – a clearly misguided belief.The truth is, water performs many life-sustaining functions before being excreted – and the same is true of vitamin C.  It is true that vitamin C is water-soluble – and, it is excreted through urine.  But, not before it confers a host of cardiovascular and other system benefits.
So, myths aside, we know that vitamin C is effective, non-toxic and safe. With heart disease claiming 640,000 lives a year, it seems unsafe not to use vitamin C to avoid unwanted health outcomes.