Interesting stuff, which I wasn't aware of. He nearly died. He's now more active than 99% of people I know, and there's not an ounce of fat on him (he's never been overweight in his life, backed up by his wife).
So, first up, the myth about meat rotting in your stomach for up to 2 weeks (as I was told in my early teens when I went vegetarian for close to a decade). Does it?
Short answer, contrary to popular belief, no. http://www.gnolls.org/1444/
So why then, is meat bad for you?
Joe told me that the guy who operated on him, strongly urged him, to go totally vegan, and eat no oils whatsoever either. There's apparently no such thing as a healthy oil apparently. Not even your cold pressed virgin olive oil (guilty as charged).
The surgeon himself, after carving up people for many years, and having some problems of his own along the same lines, started painstakingly researching what could be done about the issue. He discovered heart disease amongst people who never ate meat, was almost non-existent.
Some interesting reading backing up his findings:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/study-points-to-new-culprit-in-heart-disease.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The researchers had come to believe that what damaged hearts was not just the thick edge of fat on steaks, or the delectable marbling of their tender interiors. In fact, these scientists suspected that saturated fat and cholesterol made only a minor contribution to the increased amount of heart disease seen in red-meat eaters. The real culprit, they proposed, was a little-studied chemical that is burped out by bacteria in the intestines after people eat red meat. It is quickly converted by the liver into yet another little-studied chemical called TMAO that gets into the blood and increases the risk of heart disease.
That, at least, was the theory. So the question that morning was: Would a burst of TMAO show up in people’s blood after they ate steak? And would the same thing happen to a vegan who had not eaten meat for at least a year and who consumed the same meal?
The answers were: yes, there was a TMAO burst in the five meat eaters; and no, the vegan did not have it. And TMAO levels turned out to predict heart attack risk in humans, the researchers found. The researchers also found that TMAO actually caused heart disease in mice. Additional studies with 23 vegetarians and vegans and 51 meat eaters showed that meat eaters normally had more TMAO in their blood and that they, unlike those who spurned meat, readily made TMAO after swallowing pills with carnitine.
“It’s really a beautiful combination of mouse studies and human studies to tell a story I find quite plausible,” said Dr. Daniel J. Rader, a heart disease researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research.
Researchers say the work could lead to new treatments for heart disease — perhaps even an antibiotic to specifically wipe out the bacterial culprit — and also to a new way to assess heart disease risk by looking for TMAO in the blood.
Of course, critical questions remain. Would people reduce their heart attack risk if they lowered their blood TMAO levels? An association between TMAO levels in the blood and heart disease risk does not necessarily mean that one causes the other. And which gut bacteria in particular are the culprits?
There also are questions about the safety of supplements, like energy drinks and those used in body building. Such supplements often contain carnitine, a substance found mostly in red meat.
Reasons to eat less meat:
http://www.womenshealthmag.com/nutrition/vegetarian-benefits
The Japanese diet contains almost no meat whatsoever. I've been there a few times, if meat is served, it's usually cut exceedingly thinly, and there's not a lot of it per serve.
The oldest man in the world died yesterday (aged 118), he was Japanese. It led me to post this.
I'm going to try and cut down my intake, I don't eat much as it is, but that conversation really affected me, particularly after being shown his zipper scar and told in great detail how the surgical procedure goes...
Pretty much any animal product will add to your bad cholesterol count. I told him mine was registered as fine and well within the recommended range (LDL: 2.1-4.0 - mine was 2.6). It should be well under 2.0 in reality, his surgeon said, if you really want to avoid heart disease.
Believe what you will from scientists, I mean one time everyone thought the world was flat, but I'm taking this information on board.
Balance is the key, as in most things. I think the majority of us (those that do) would probably benefit from eating less animal products, and being more active. Is the lifestyle choice worth the sacrifice? I wonder what I'll think about this on my death bed.
Be well!
