Why I am not a vegan and how
the planet needs us to take
our place in the food chain
It
is said so often that “going vegan” is the best thing we can do
for our health and the planet. Not True.
In
this talk I will
alert vegans to the health dangers of their diet and make the
argument that grass fed, organic and local animal products are the
by far the most nutritious foods and are our best hope of reversing
climate change
Terrible climate
change
When...the
Australian
tax office business line has as its first keypad option "press
one if you have been affected by a natural disaster", we must be
doing it tough. But like the frog in the water being slowly brought
to the boil, we are getting use to climate change, we just turn up
the air con and go shopping. However in many shops the air con
really isn't coping and really things are becoming uncomfortable..
Farmers are scrambling to find more ways to grow with less rainfall,
but last year for the first time since the great Depression many
didn't bother to plant a crop, the banks would not lend them any more
money to do it. These are the times predicted long ago by the great
Indian Chief Seattle who knew where the ways of the white man were
leading: “the end of living and the beginning of survival”.
A significant cause
of climate change …..desertification.....the unravelling of
ecosystems
When
the cause of a problem and the symptoms of it are thge
same thing, you have a compounding problem . One symptom of a sick
ecosystem is desertification. Deserts
growing ever larger are both the cause of climate change and the
result. A
drier climate is leading to more deserts and these treeless
landscapes do not form clouds which yield rain. Some deserts may for
a time receive rainfall but with fewer
plants and
animals now, whose residues and remains made
the humus (that carbon rich material that soaks it up) nutrients
stop cycling. Now
rainfall is not effective ...80% evaporates or runs off. The
remaining plants are without shade, are thirsty and stressed ,and
are prone to pressure from ever hungrier wildlife, insect pest
and disease. As vegetation sickens and dies, soil is easily lost.
When a rain event does occur, we can lose tons of the thin layer of
soil that feeds us all and took thousands of years to build up.
Trees
are vital to the planet's
systems not least their function of releasing organic particles
that seed the clouds to make rain. Deserts are growing not just in
3rd
world countries but everywhere especially Texas and Australia. We are
witnessing desertification right here in Nannup . The Blackwood river
runs red after rain events alongside the Balingup Rd where the
plantations and native forests in the upper slopes are
disappearing, decimated by frequent fires, fiercer sun ,dwindling
rainfall and associated insect damage. This may not be immediately
apparent to the travellers along the valley, once a very pretty
tourist drive.
Have
you been in one place with your hands in the soil for 30 years.20
?10? If
so you
are well qualified to answer the question
“ is
climate
change for
real?” If
not, find an old timer and ask them.
How
I hoped, wishfully believed, that the predictions of GW and the
“Green House Effect “ prevalent in my youth, were false or at
least exagerated .However they were spot on , in fact they were too
optimistic.
Denial
…..progressing to "Can't someone else fix it?"
As
many addicts know, it is hard to solve a problem while you are
denying it exists. How many people are denying G W, or hoping the
politicians will save us, hoping for
a silver bullet? Nah, the problem of humanity is so huge, it's going
to take every one of us, doing all we can, now. Like the humming
bird. And
of course that means firstly engaging in politics and voting Green, closely followed by cleaning up our own act and leading the way .
Old
growth forest from ashes
There
is a hope that ,man will see the error
of his ways and quickly sit down to learn at the feet of
Mother Nature for the first time in our ( homo sapiens) mere 200,000 year history.
Vicious cycles can be reversed so that things get better and then
way better. Exponential improvement has occured many times over
Earth's history, rain forests prove that.
Imagine the scene around a
volcano after a major eruption...Bare and sterile rock.. So how does
Mother Nature transform this lifeless site into a rain forest? By
studying the progression we can mimic it and even speed it up. But
first lets
look briefly at the history
of Earth
and
see where our species fits in to the evolution of our planet so
far
Earth
began as
a bare rock revolving in space roughly 4,5oo million ( 4.5 billion)
years ago. 600 million years later it had cooled to the point that
water could lie about, and seas were formed. Life began in these seas
some
three
billion years ago . At the time, Earth's atmosphere was virtually
devoid of oxygen. At about 2,4oo million years ago, oxygen was
released from the seas as a by product of photosynthesis by one of
the earliest life forms : cyanobacteria. Levels of the gas gradually
climbed, reaching about one percent around 2,000 million years ago.
1,000 million years ago fungi came onto the land , then followed by
algae. By 800 million years ago, oxygen levels reached about 21
percent and began to breathe life into more complex organisms .
About
this time The oxygen-rich ozone layer was also established, shielding
the Earth's surface from harmful solar radiation.
Fungi teamed with algae in the form of lichen to set the stage for
plants
by decomposing
the rocks to create small soil lenses, allowing the first plants
with roots to grow about 430 million years ago.
The
Carboniferous period takes its name from large underground
coal deposits that formed from prehistoric forests around 360 mya.
This oxygen producing forest was eventually obliterated by massive
volcanic activity at the Permian-Triassic transition . Huge volcanic
eruptions caused not only a decline of the oxygen content to 15%, but
also the largest mass extinction in geological history. Again fungi
inherited the Earth, and prepared the way for plants to flourish
again. Along with the flourishing , the oxygen concentration
recovered and reached 26% again by the middle of the Jurassic, and
probably even rose to 30% in the Cretaceous. During this time the
largest dinosaurs evolved POSSIBLY
DUE TO HIGH levels of FREE OXYGEN.
The
end of the Cretaceous period is marked by yet another setback, this
time a meteor impact lead
to climate change and
another
mass extinction.
Again
fungi pioneered
the next wave of life. Photosynthesis by Cynaobacteria again
raised
oxygen levels to around 21%, and since
then it is has remained fairly static. Homosapiens
turned up just 190,000 years ago.
12,000
years ago he moved from being a hunter/ gatherer to farming.
Omniverous
man hunted and gathered for 178,000 years.
For many long ages before this , atmospheric CO2 oscillated
between 240 and 290 ppm (in ice age or interglacial periods
respectively ).
In the last hundred years we know that this figure has risen way
past what climate scientists agree confers to us a safe climate ( 350
ppm)We are currently at 400 and rising . And BTW, We have also
entered 6 X....the
6th
mass extinction
event in the history of Earth . Typically we lose 10 organisms a year
as shown by the fossil record. Now we are losing 20
to 30,000 species
every year. It was biodiversity that got us all here today. We are
the cause and will most likely be the victim of this
massive extinction event.
How are we causing mass extinction? By releasing toxins into the
environment, by logging, by
burning
vegetation and de-stocking. Our habit of burning fossil fuels may
not be as significant a contributor as the first 3.
So
what can we do?
We've now peaked at how Mother Nature builds soil ( the
largest carbon sink we have)
and revegetates and
transforms bare rock into a thriving ecosystem. Each step builds upon itself and small improvements lead to bigger improvements. Fertility is ever accelerating unless there is a set back such as a bushfire, toxic insult or feral pig population explosion.
Famous
farmers showing the way
Many
examples abound of M. N's methods working for farmer
Joel
Salatin's
farm in the Shannandoah Valley U.S. was eroded down to parent rock
when his father bought the land in 1940. Using cell grazing he has
rebuilt the soil to a foot depth or more. He is selling pasture fed
poultry, eggs , pork and beef. People travel long distances to buy
his produce as it tastes so much better than the usually available
factory farmed offering. ( Don't want to blow my own bugle but we
have been described as a mini Polyface Farm and use similar methods
here in WA, but unlike Poly Face we buy in nothing but organic grain).
Allan
Savory from
Africa has returned huge deserts to lush landscapes by cell
grazing livestock and wildlife. Inspiring photos of Allan Savory's
work illustrate his great results in his Ted X speech available on you tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
We've personally witnessed great
results from his “Holistic Management” methods on our
farm .
Another
great example has been documented by soil scientist John
Liu ,
who filmed how the Loess Plateau , a barren dry mountainside that was
being massively eroded every year and silting up the Yellow River in
China became a lush fertile paradise flowing with streams and
populated by endangered species wildlife some 12 years later. His
documentary Hope
in a changing Climate
is indeed very hope full .
Tony
Rinaudo
has managed to change practices in Nigere..... in the 80's it was a
growing desert area where many died of starvation. Millions
of world vision dollars devoted to tree planting were getting no
where and Tony nearly gave up , but then he noticed something vital
. The underground root system was still there , the trees were still
sending up sprouts but
the people falsely
believed trees
competed with their millet crops and were cutting them all down for
firewood. Tony asked them to try taking all but one sprout, to try
leaving one trunk of a tree for shade and to see if it really did
effect crops. Under the fierce sun, the millet yielded better in the
shade! The trees quickly grew back and were soon providing far more
food, fibre, fodder, dyes , medicine ,precipitation and income than
the dry sands could ever produce before. Kids climbed the trees and
picked fruit and sold it to the old people who were overjoyed to see
the ingredients for local dishes they had not seen for 40 years. The
kids bought school books with the money etc etc.... They said “Mr
Tony, we are too much happy”
…Word
spread amongst the Africans . Tony's influence can be seen from
space as vast deserts have turned into about 12.5 million acres of
forests with 2 00 million trees . Precipitation is now reliable.
Surprising
to most, water tables started to rise before the rains came back. Let
me explain why:
A
Financial Review article entitled "logging dries up W.A".
highlighted a report from U W A's Centre for Water Research,
connecting logging to our drying climate. A century ago, wet years
occurred every 2nd year. Now, a wet year has failed to materialise in
2 decades, said the report, which put a figure on what percentage of
our declining rainfall in the last 40 years can be attributed to
clearing of forest: 62%. Forests improve everything: air quality,
rainfall , temperature , runoff into dams, etc with trees not only
acting as giant condensers but also holding much water in their
massive root systems and even more water in the mychorizal fungi
which extends their roots. Mychorizzal fungi have the ability to make
water. Thanks to forests, rain is created, absorbed , cleaned and
gradually released into dams throughout the year.
In
Western Australia the climate is drying rapidly. Planting
trees to replace the million acres annually cleared by government
decree in the 50's should be of paramount importance for the Minister
for forestry and water , but at a pre -election event in Manjimup
last year, Terry Redman fresh from a tour of the wheatbelt
(addressing suffering farmers), scoffed at my idea that we should
revegetate the wheatbelt. Later his speech revealed that he is
oblivious to the science around the water cycle and that he had the
dangerously false notion that the less trees there are in a
catchment, the more water enters the dam. In fact the opposite is the
case,
Back
in Nigere,
the ecosystems health is growing exponentially . There is a
saying there now:
“Plant
the rain and the plants will plant themselves”.
It
is my belief that every person in every place on Earth needs to
install permaculture now, just as the people of Niger have done.
Unfortunately
ecological illiteracy abounds in most countries and fallacies that
trees suck up the water from our dams or prevent runoff of water into
dams or shade our crops (lowering yields) are fallacies which folks
like the “people of Springfield” in the Simpsons, just run with
. The mob doesn't investigate claims.
Here's
my list of the 4 most dangerous myths out there:
Myth
1:
The original myth that humans
think they are of prime importance!
Aboriginals don't agree, and consider trees much more important.
They believe the best people are reborn as trees, and believe that
their grandmothers re incarnated as trees.
Myth
2 :
You must replace the nutrients you take out of the soil with every
crop.
This
rumour was begun by chemical companies when they invented the Green
Revolution. You know, when the factories making nerve gas and
gunpowder for the World war suddenly had no customers at wars
end........they made a few changes to their formulas and started
peddling these as pesticides and fertilisers respectively. Farmers
believed and still believe the line that nutrients need to be
replaced, so they used the synthetic fertilisers and soon had need of
pesticides. The progression, or should we say regression, all makes
sense when you understand the soil food web.
Soil
microbiology Phd Dr Elaine Ingham says that as long as you have
sand, silt and clay on your farm , even in Australia, you have all
the nutrient plants need. All the minerals are there, but they need
to be unlocked by soil microbes. It is the biology
we often lack from past assaults on the land, nothing more, and it
can be put back with properly made aerobic compost and compost tea.
Fertilizers such as urea and superphosphate are killing off the
microbes. This is the
whole problem with agriculture.
Once you harm the soil food web, the zillions of microbes and larger
critters that create and maintain healthy soil, a cascade of
malfunctions follows. The soil food web confers innumerable
benefits to farmers and gardeners alike which will later be
explained, but how do you harm it? Well, agriculture does this by
clearing, burning , ploughing ( slicing, dicing , exposing to air and
UV rays), chemical fertiliser, and with “icides” herbicide
fungicide, nematacide or any other pesticide)
Currently
the big water users such as vege growers in Myalup and dairy farms
on the Scott Coastal Plain lack the soil food web, as do 99% of the
farms which supply us “food”. Without microbes, soil structure
is lost . Good structure means lots of air and water passageways,
water holding capacity, and no compaction. Without microbes,
megalitres of fresh water are extracted from underground to keep the
crop alive. Much of this precious fossil water is lost to evaporation
in the day time, but the poor sand which supports these “hydroponic
“plants needs constant irrigation. The prodigious amounts soluble
fertilizer applied leaches away into the water table to pollute it,
but very little of it is absorbed by plants.. When soil is alive and
functioning, irrigation water use is reduced by between 30 and 70 %.
Bacteria
Archea* and Fungi are the first trophic level of the food chain of
an ecosysytem. Residues and remains of plant materials are
decomposed by these and the elements are now held in their biomass.
In addition, fungi eats rocks, dissolves them and delivers the
minerals that were hithertofore locked up in the rocks. In exchange
for this constant delivery of nutrients right to the plants roots,
the plant feeds the fungi sugars. Where did the sugar come from? From
the excess CO2 in the air!!! YES, lets remember what we learnt about
Green Plants and photosynthesis in primary school.... green leaves
are solar panels, they make energy from sunlight! Green plants suck
up CO2, turn it into carbohydrates, grow fruit and flowers and
leaves with half this energy and the other half is leaked out
through the roots to feed masses of beneficial bacteria and fungi.
They in turn are eaten by protozoa, microarthropods and nematodes.
Guess what? the waste materials from these predator organisms are
plant available nutrient: Nitrate, sulphate, phosphate,
potassium......the entire array of elements in soluble form. And
guess what else?....a well fed plant does not send out stress
signals that attract pests and disease. And guess what else? Plants
growing in a dead soil of just sand silt and clay ( no microbes) do
not do this exudate thing. They don't bother to sequester carbon in
the form of carbohydrate to a dead soil. Remember at this point the
vast acreages under the control of conventional farmers, who remove
all living things from their vast acreage to grow their crop, from
the microbes up to the wedgetail eagle. Plants, btw, will grow to
resemble
a healthy plant as long as the farmer forks out for regular
applications of man made fertilizer. Man made with massive amounts of
fresh water and fossil fuel that is. Do you see why Agri business
corporations said 25 years ago:”We will be 5 companies controlling
food and health” ? Today, I realise a chilling fact: Five
corporations do in fact supply the poisons that grow nearly all the
food found in supermarkets and also sell the cancer detection
machines and pharmaceuticals you will soon need if you eat
mainstream style. Conventional produce and even some poorly grown
organic foods are often low in minerals. Properly made compost and
arerobic compost teas derived from them are no doubt the vital key
to sweet, colourful, tasty and truly nutritious produce containing
the full spectrum of known and yet to be discovered nutrients.
* Archea
were only first discovered in 1970. They are as small as bacteria and
are found everywhere. So different are they that scientists have
called them the 3rd
Kingdom of life. There are now plants , animals and archea! Archeons
are important to carbon and Nitrogen cycling.
Dangerous
Myth 3:
Sheep
and Cattle are bad. They burp methane . Don't you hear this almost
daily?
A
healthy soil contains an estimated 50 million different kinds of
bacteria, and some of them are methantrophic , meaning they eat
methane..Sydney
University research has found healthy soil bacteria absorb more
methane per day than a cow produces in an entire year.
"Typical
methane production by beef cattle is round about 60 kilograms of
methane per year, and some of the high country soils are taking more
than that out of the atmosphere every day, so one hectare is taking
out, or oxidising more methane than a cow produces in a year"
says
Professor Mark Adams. Dean of Agriculture at Sydney University.
.While
it is important to improve the soil around your house with compost ,
to recycle nutrients and grow as much nutrition as possible close to
home, , if you want to improve vast tracts of poor soil into
productive soil with a higher level of carbon and therefore a great
infiltration of water and a greater biomass which sucks up CO2 on a
grand scale ….......
....it
can only
be done with grazing animals. But not grazing any old how. They
need to be managed . Holistically managed. Enter Allan Savory, a
great man and a keen observer of nature.
In
his Ted X speech, Allan takes us on a historical journey of many
lost civilisations & points out that we would be struggling with
climate change even if we had never discovered fossil fuels. By
managing our live stock so that they mimic the way grazing
animals behave in the wild, we have a fantastically powerful tool to
suck carbon out of the air and put it back into the soil where it use
to be before humans came along and , frankly, stuffed
everything up. Cell grazing very quickly lifts carbon levels in soil.
“Every
one-percent increase in soil carbon holds an additional 300,000
litres of water per acre.
For
soil to form, it needs to be living, and to be living, soil needs to
be covered," says Australian soil scientist Christine Jones.
“Without a cover
of plants in
various stages of growth and decomposition, much soil carbon oxidizes
and enters the atmosphere as CO2.”
Following
on from this myth , we come to a most pernicious myth, the one I
mentioned at the beginning :
“Adopting
a vegan diet is the best thing you can do for yourself and the
planet.”
For
decades I have listened in frustration to high profile
environmentalists denouncing meat. There
are 600 million vegetarians in the world, and many of them say they
avoid meat for reasons of animal cruelty and health . The
notion that vegan
is the ultimate
is popular and not going away, if a large audience at the Melbourne
town hall in June is anything to go by. They were there to watch a
debate and eventually voted in droves for the affirmative team on the
topic " Should Meat be off the Menu" . Its on you
tube. Sadly there was no distinction made by the affirmative team of
vegans between factory farmed and grass fed animal products regards
animal welfare and harm to the environment, let alone from a human
nutrition aspect. These systems are poles apart ! Chalk and cheese.
One is our most destructive invention, the other is possibly our
major solution to the challenges we face.....challenges which we
will need all our wits and energy to deal with. Wits and energy are
often reduced by a vegan diet, and the science behind this
phenomenon is unfolding.
No
one especially me advocates factory farming or big abattoirs. Both
are un necessary and cruel. The eggs, milk or meat produced
in CAFO's, feedlots and factory farms, even free range farms
consisting of bare dirt paddocks , is no doubt carcinogenic and poor
quality ( low in nutrition). These disgusting factory farms do
untold environmental damage. Just watch “Rivers if Waste”. …
outrageous! For but one example from the doco: arsenic is fed to
broiler hens , there's a mountain of arsenic laced manure to deal
with and no one knows how.... children living nearby are getting
cancer. I haven't had any cheap fingerlicking good take away chicken
for 10 years now and never will again. The practice of injecting
steroids into beef cattle is widespread and profitable. It is most
often GM canola or soy being delivered to the silos attached to the
feedlots, piggeries, egg and broiler sheds . It is only because these
animals are killed young ( 6 weeks for broiler hens) that they do not
die before slaughter date is reached. Pollution of nearby waterways
is guaranteed and effects everybody downstream.
From
an ecological and health point of view however, there is every reason
to seek out and consume grass
fed
animal products and to take our place in the food chain.
I see no cruelty to humanely killed , naturally raised animals.
Organic pasture fed animal products are incredibly nutrient dense
foods- high in Omega 3 oils, the fat to assimlate its protein and
essential elements like selenium, zinc and the fat soluble vitamins
A , D and K. To illustrate, a dairy farm could be a great asset
to its customers and the environment if organic, or an outright
disaster if conventionally run. Simply by deciding to apply
superphosphate on the advice of an agronomist ( chemical salesman )
a chain of events is set in motion and the ecosystem in the area
unravells.
A
huge biomass of archea, bacteria and fungi create soil ( the
biggest carbon sink on the planet) and for at least 3 billion
years these soil food web organisms , who need animals (as does
grass), have cycled nutrients and sequestered vast amounts of
atmospheric carbon and methane and kept everything sweetly
balanced . Like feral pigs, man lays the soil bare to plant seeds.
The result, unless great care is taken , is desertification—these
symptoms bear witness that the carbon cycle has gone awry.
Soil
needs plants. Grass needs animals. Allan Savory shows us National
parks where grazing animals have been excluded and the grasses are
grey . ..sitting there slowly oxidizing for 70 years, land turning to
desert.
Since
about 1930 mechanization has allowed grand scale logging,
ploughing and use of agrichemicals. GM is at the extreme end of
industrial farming where poisons like RoundUp are applied from the
air. At the same time The Amazon is daily cleared for growing
soyabeans. Yes a lot is fed to animals, but if PETRA gets its way,
many animals would no longer exist and we would all be eating
soyabeans ...many tonnes would be required . For how many years could
the land be cropped without an animal grazing rotation?
On
Merri Bee Organic Farm we avoid petrol driven machines as they may
not be available in future, so animals are used to control weeds
and even to plough. Often, plants farmers are taught to consider as
weeds they need to extinguish are in fact great mineral rich herbs
which animals soon re-learn to like. Transformed into manure
before setting seed, and then processed through soil biota such as
earthworms our weed problems are transformed into soil to grow the
next generation of plants, (and indeed a more productive set of
plants thanks to higher fertility soil).
Something
like 90% of the Australian continent is too dry for cropping ,
and can only feed us through wildlife or livestock. We simply don’t
have much arable land or water .
Many
people round the globe live in harsh terrains that can only feed
humans with wildlife or livestock.
The
option of following a plant based diet as the “Affirmative
team” in the debate admonished us to do is really only possible in
the cities of wealthy people. Whoever lives in a humid landscape
could perhaps follow the modern trend of juicing- using fossil fuel
instead of human jaws to transform kgs of fruit and veg into a glass
of juice and a large pile of pulp. Waste full. Hmmm.... animals
could be fed this waste, or worms, but they frown on keeping
livestock .
Weston
Price found people were incredible healthy in terrains where the only
diet possible was of rye and cheese, milk and butter . Islands North
of Scottland far too inhospitable to even grow trees yet ,
very happy and healthy
people lived there eating nothing but fish and oats.
Any
way of life has to be economically viable to be sustained,
obviously. Decades ago the Melbourne Hari Krishna sect approached
Bill Mollison to create a permaculture design which would allow them
grow all their own food . As lacto vegetarians, they figured 2 cows
would provide enough milk for their community. When they realised
the cow would have to give birth to be in milk, and further realised
with horror that the yearling calf would normally be sold for
meat, they stipulated emphatically that the calves would be kept to
live out their days on the property. Bill explained that a whole 100
acres of land would be needed to produce the milk from just 2 cows (
keeping all calves produced over the cows breeding life span). The
said their Brahman caste would need time to consider the problem and
would get back to Bill with a solution. He never heard from the Hari
Krishnas again. Obviously we the Earth isnt big enough to keep all animals ( males or otherwise unproductive) in retirement homes till their natural death.
Health.
If
, like so many peoples in tougher parts of the globe, we are forced
to eat the products of animals who can convert tough
indigestible ( to us) arid land vegetation into something we can
eat,
we need not fear that a diet high in animal fats will lead to heart
disease or cancer, contrary to the unscientific yet accepted view of
the past 30 years that had us avoiding eggs and suffering the inferior taste of margarine . The benefits of consuming cholesterol from grass fed
animals have long been espoused by the president of the Weston Price
Foundation , Sally Fallon, author of best selling book “Nourishing
Traditions” . Jerry Brunetti , a fantasically knowledgable person
who courageously rejected chemo and cured himself of Non Hodgsons
Lymphoma with nutrition, gives us the following facts on grass fed
animal fats in the diet: Butter contains the Wulzen factor
….discovered by Dr Wulzen, it protects against arthritis, hardening
of the arteries and cataracts. 15% of total butterfat is in fact
short and medium chain fatty acids, which are immune stimulating ,
anti tumour minute doses.
Mr
Brunetti , Sally Fallon , and Dr Terri Wahls ( medical doctor who
fell ill to MS and had to go outside her profession for the
nutritional information that cured her) all of whom have studied
the scientific literature, say cholesterol is required to synthesise
Vitamin D ( needed for mineral absorption, insulin production &
healthy nerves) It is also needed to synthesize bile salts and to
produce hormones ( anti -stress and sex hormones) and for cell
membrane elasticity. Not only is cholesterol an anti oxidant and
necessary for brain and nerve development, but it makes Seratonin
available in the brain. Seratonin is the feel good chemical that is
lacking in people suffering from depression. You would have heard
that the major cause of death in 15 to 30 year olds in Australia is
suicide?
Jerry
notes that Conjugated Linoleic Acids are found in the fats of
grazing animals and (genuinely) free ranging pasture fed fowls. He
says CLA is the best anti cancer agent we know about to date. And he
mentions the Glycosphingolipids (GSLs)
in these same foods . They protect us from trace element
deficiencies …. chromium, iodine, selenium, zinc, manganese ,
cobalt and so on, which are essential , but only in minute doses. HE
points out the fact that Omega 3 oils are 20 times higher in
pastured animals and essential for brain development and functioning.
Folks,
$14 million dollars a minute
are spent by the health department of US government trying to deal
with epidemics of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer,
the list goes on. Many more debilitating disorders are rising: autism
, Alzheimer's, food allergies, infertility, depression to name a few. Surely humanities deterioration is the direct result of poor nutrition and toxic insult? How many people are still being spooked out of eating fat? I went
for half of a 12 week government run programme to combat obesity and was told
emphatically that aspartame as in diet coke and pepsi was
“preferrable to amputation from diabetes”.
Lee
has come home with a card each child received at school, it has the
phone number of Life Line and the words ”No One has to face their
problems alone”. On the back is a picture of a Big Mac and a bottle
of Coke and the words:”This voucher entitles you to a free beverage
with every McDonalds meal”. The voucher could be used repeatedly
throughout 2012. My son was the lone child in his class to be
unimpressed. He said to me ” mum, those sugar drinks make
you depressed”. Ah , my boy who appears to take no notice of me,
knows that B vitamins are used up in the digestion of sugar. A lack
of B Vitamins causes a long list of problems: fears, fatigue,
depression, paranoia, confusion, rage and anxiety. Hell oohoo.......!
Jerry
Brunetti has also pointed out that many people including himself are
allergic to pasteurised and homogenised milk but not to organic, raw,
grass fed cow milk. The farming method is all important, I hope this
is coming through? The microbes found in a healthy soil are the very
same ones found in the gut of a healthy person! They are the same
ones found on the skins of fruit and vegetables grown organically.
And
as yet another piece to the never ending puzzle my friend and great
Naturopath Sally Gray is teaching that you can not make pro biotic
foods such as sauerkraut, kimchee or fermented drinks from
conventional fruit and vegetables . Why? Because the beneficial
lactobacillus that start the fermentation off properly are just not
present on conventionally grown ingredients .
One
of our customers Fiona McCay offered me the following information ,
as she did her thesis on the benefits of cholesterol :
“The
China Study [a popular book endlessly quoted as reason to go vego] is
science fraud, anyone who has a research background in that area sees
that it has so many faults and it is weak, like his rat studies.
Colin Campbell [the author]only presents data that supports his case
"that animal protein causes cancer", and if that was the
case, every hunter gatherer society going back thousands of years
would have died out from cancer as that is what they predominately
ate. None of them were ever vegetarians, they always ate meat if it
was available. These societies were free from cancer, heart disease
and all the modern illnesses... they only get sick when they start
eating a Western diet. Killing
animals while hunting was a sacred thing, a far cry from the
factory farming of today. It is fine to choose for yourself, but if
women are pregnant and they are a vegan or if others push them to be,
they could damage the development of their unborn child”.
Finally
some warnings on veganism from the very straight American Dietician
Association :
“Although
there is such a variety of potent phytochemicals in fruit and
vegetables, human population studies have not shown large differences
in cancer incidence or mortality rates between vegetarians and non
vegetarians.” [see above Weston A Price's discoveries. Please also
note that the meat eaters in all studies mentioned are eating
factory farmed meat!]
(p.
1274)
“A
pooled analysis of 13 prospective cohort studies reported a high
dietary fibre intake was not associated with a decreased risk of
colorectal cancer after accounting for multiple risk
factors.”
…
“Although very little data exist on the bone
health of vegans, some studies suggest that bone density is lower
among vegans compared with non vegetarians. The Asian vegan women in
these studies had very low intakes of protein and calcium. An
inadequate protein and low calcium intake has been shown to be
associated with bone loss and fractures at the hip and spine in
elderly adults. In addition, vitamin D status is compromised in some
vegans”.
…
“Results from the EPIC-Oxford study provide
evidence that the risk of bone fractures for vegetarians is similar
to that of omnivores. There is a higher risk of bone fracture in
vegans compared to both groups however, and this appears to be a
consequence of a lower calcium intake. Although excessive protein
intake may compromise bone health, evidence exists that low protein
intakes may increase the risk of low bone integrity.”
“Poor
vitamin B-12 status has been linked to an increased risk of dementia
apparently due to the hyperhomocysteinemia that is seen with vitamin
B-12 deficiency”.
(p.
1276)
Further
information on homocysteine from
the Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School:
The higher serum
homocysteine
levels that have been reported in some vegetarians, apparently due to
inadequate vitamin B-12 intake, may increase risk of CVD
[cardiovascular disease] although not all studies support this.
…..
The Nurses’ Health Study, however, found that significantly fewer
deaths, nonfatal heart attacks, or repeat angioplasties occurred
among patients given folic acid, vitamin B12,
and vitamin B6 compared
with those who got a placebo. ...””
Apparently
babies born to life long vegetarians often have hideous birth defects
due to B 12 deficiency in the mother.
I
found a speech by Dr Michael McGregor on You Tube. He was haunted by
the fact that a vegan famous person had died young of a heart
attack and when asked by a vegetarian association for his
medical opinion on the diseases caused by meat consumption, he gladly
did a thorough review of the latest research. It was shocking to him.
He reviewed the latest published studies - one followed 27,000 vegans for many years and showed no advantage to health or longevity
from avoiding animal products . He concludes that vegans should
take supplements if they want to be healthy. Yet there is much we
still don't know and supplements may not provide everything we
require. The latest word is that the minerals in supplements are often indigestible . My attitude to complete fertiliser and complete supplements
is that we do not know enough about soil or the human body to know
they are complete.
To
summarize :
With
due respect to groups concerned for the welfare of animals, veganism
doesnt work for many
of us who have particularly high needs for certain animal-based
nutrients -- whether because of heredity, circumstance, or some
combination thereof and may indeed need a diet very rich in animal
products.
There are no adequate vegetable sources of vitamin B 12 and if under
supplied, neurological pathologies may occur . Research
on B12 and Omega 3's show vegetarians are twice as likely to die
of neurological diseases, twice as likely to sustain hip
fractures, higher incidence of cancer and lo and behold, live
just as long as meat eaters.
We evolved eating meat and plant foods for 178,000 years. It is
possible to be a healthy vegetarian eating eggs and dairy but sadly
killing is still involved....the production of these requires animals
to mate and 50% of their offspring will be males . Space and money
precludes us from catering for unproductive herds or flocks of males
till they die of old age, and in any case if we don’t cull, cruel
fights to the death between the strongest males will occur. Some will
argue that methane emissions from belching cows is a potent GHG,
however Earth has been heavily populated by ruminant animals for
millions of years, yet also heavily vegetated, and the plants ,soil
and animals kept the atmosphere in balance. A healthy soil contains
methantrophic bacteria which absorb far more than the herbivores on
the same acreage could emit. Without grazing animals , what will
vegans do with the huge amount of grasses produced in seasonal
rainfall areas? It must be decomposed and turned back into soil
somehow, and whether by grazers in dry climates or microbes in humid
areas, the same amount of methane will be released. If animal-less
man mows the grass ,fossil fuel use contributes to CC. Whether we
deliberately or accidently burn the grass, tons of carbon dioxide and
other toxic gases enter the atmosphere surpassing the emmissions of
4,000 cars per acre per second. Carbon is lost from the soil, deserts
grow. Far more ecologically sound for grass to be broken down in the
gut of grazing animals, whence it returns to the soil as manure which
will soon provide the nutrients for the next generation of oxygen
producing plants . The creature that came along at "a second to
midnight" mostly lives in cities where large numbers have become
so disconnected with natural cycles as to believe many fallacies and
propose we all go vegan. Yet, just as vast tracts of the lungs of the
Earth ( the Amazon rainforest ) have been burnt to make way for soy ,
whole landscapes are cleared, ploughed and poisoned to grow lentils
in Canada. By logging, burning and de stocking, humanity has brought
Earth's systems to the point of collapse. To reverse this we need to
demand grass fed animal products from cell grazed animals and quickly
establish perrenial plants before it is too late. PETRA is pushing
soy vegelinks
as an alternative Christmas dinner for a “cruelty free Christmas”.
I am all for a cruelty free Christmas but will be tucking in to a
local organic grass fed ham this Yule, knowing that the pig had a
happy life sequestering carbon from air to soil, a quick death and
that I am doing the best thing I can do to combat global warming.
Bee
Winfield 2014
