Veggies - why do people keep saying we need (so many of) them?!
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KittensMaster wrote: »I had a nice hunk of beef brisket with one of these grilled
It was good
But the brisket was the main attraction
Some of my favorite veggies right there! I'm so used to having brisket with sauces here in OKC tho. How do you make yours?0 -
fastforlife1 wrote: »
Yummy fermented seal blubber and fermented bird meat! Good article thank you.canadjineh wrote: »The Inuit practice of preserving a whole seal or bird carcass under an intact whole skin with a thick layer of blubber also permits some proteins to ferment, or hydrolyze, into carbohydrates.[14] Furthermore, the blubber,
I will add if people are not eating veggies they should at least be consuming meat and dairy products from animals who are raised outside in sunlight, eating grass and veggies - thereby having a secondary source of the benefits of vegetables. In other words dump the industrial raised meat - it is really really bad.
This is a common assertion that has failed to live up to the hype. Commercially raised beef is as healthy and good for you are grass finished beef. Among those who subsist entirely on meat, many have tested the idea of grass-fed and other trends of animal raising. They haven't found any benefit. In some cases, there is reason to believe the things people promote as better for you (like eggs from vegetarian fed chickens) are actually worse nutritionally.
Just because these individuals provide anecdoctal evidence that, subjectively, they haven't found any benefit, doesn't mean they haven't experienced any. I doubt they can tell just how much residue from pesticides, antibiotics and hormones reside in their fat cells, livers, or elsewhere in their bodies, and what consequences might accrue to them in the future from such residues. Consumption of hormones in beef products (including milk) has been linked to males developing secondary sexual characteristics common to females, for example. I'm talking growing tits, man.In the end, even the most ardent meat eater is at the end of a food chain that started with plants and sunlight. It might have been several steps away, but the energy came from plants at some point.
I don't do grass-fed beef unless it's been reduced in price to be cheaper than the commercially raised stuff. I won't buy vegetarian-fed eggs even if they are cheaper than commercial ones. Lamb is always grass-fed and finished.
Edit: And, if you're interested in fermented/pro-biotic raw meats, I can point you in the direction of people I know who intentionally rot raw meat for months before consuming it. It's not something I've progressed towards, but it isn't unheard of. It won't be seal blubber, but it could be bird meat or any other animal you can get your hands on.
Mmmm, Mark Sisson disagrees with you.Red Meat (Beef, Lamb, Pork)
Red meat, along with seafood (and derivative fats), will likely provide the lion’s share of your calories. It’s probably best that you get the best stuff possible.
1. Grass-fed/grass-finished/pastured (pork) – Before organic and before local comes grass-fed and finished. While I try to buy beef from local providers – and usually end up doing just that – I’m most concerned that the beef I eat comes from animals raised strictly on grass. Even a few weeks of grain feeding can alter the nutritional content and fatty acid composition of the resultant meat, so grass-fed and finished is the absolute best. These needn’t be certified organic, but I’ve found that many grass-finished ranchers are organic in everything but name. You won’t find grass-fed pork, because pigs aren’t ruminants, but you can find pastured pork who are allowed to forage and often receive farm waste (milk, whey, fruits, vegetables). Note that “pastured” beef isn’t necessarily grass-fed and finished. Bones, organ meat, and tougher cuts like chuck and stew are less expensive – and arguably more nutritious – ways to incorporate truly grass-finished animals into your diet.
2. Organic – According to the USDA, organic beef must come from cows who were born and raised on organic pasture, must never receive antibiotics, must never receive growth-promoting hormones, must have unrestricted outdoor access, and must be fed only organic grasses and grains. So, yeah, grains. Note that there’s no mention of the breakdown between grains and grasses; it could be 80% grains and 20% grass and still qualify as organic. So, while organic is clearly preferable to conventional meat, it’s unlikely to be superior to grass-fed and finished meat without the organic label.
3. CAFO – Most meat you’ll come across in supermarkets and restaurants will be from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, where animals are treated like mere products and maximum productivity is prized above all – even if it means pumping the animals (and their meat) full of antibiotics, hormones, and pesticide-laden feed. The meat doesn’t taste as good, it’s less nutritious, and, at least in the case of pork, it’s extremely high in omega-6 fats.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/action-item-3-make-the-healthiest-choices-across-the-spectrum/
Not to mention the ick factor of supporting such deplorable practices as raising calves in crates, refusing to let them nurse from their mothers, so their meat can become the preferred color for maximum sales. Or the CAFO practice of de-beaking chickens, necessary when you cram so many of them into vertically stacked cages, because they try to assert their "pecking order" by mutilating their cell mates, or ...
When we buy CAFO meat and eggs we support these practices.
I eat vegetables and fruits because it is how our species survived and thrived through millennia. We could debate whether it's easier to gather (lots of walking! lots of digging! be careful when you climb that tree!) than it is to hunt (where there is often the risk of injury or death to the hunter, and the risk that you decimate certain species to the point where they are not a reliable source of food any longer), but I'm just going to go with the fact that we ate whatever we could, wherever in the world our tribes lived. Humans are omnivores. For myself, some salads and veggies break the monotony of a solely animal-based diet. I'm also getting beneficial vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients (some of which perhaps we have not yet identified) -- and yes, some plant-based toxins (defense mechanisms that some plants have to avoid predation). Some of these plants co-evolved with us, bearing nutritious fruit to entice mammals to spread their seeds. Based on these facts, I feel it's healthier for me to eat some vegetation than to avoid it (in judicious quantities, of course). And, of course, the added benefit that I won't have to be rotting carcasses to get probiotics...
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Yeah, but I don't really value Mark Sisson's opinion. You might as well tell me that Ancel Keys disagrees with me. Actually, Keys was at least a scientist and did real research. I might disagree with Keys' conclusions, but he had the credentials. Sisson is just a random primal advocate who is vocal and well known.
The hormone concern is just nonsense: https://nefb.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/whats-the-beef-mms-and-hormones/ There's more hormones in vegetables than there are hormone residues in beef treated with hormones. Same kind of thing with antibiotics. It's just a non-issue.
We're (that is pure carnivores) not eating any plants so our pesticide intake would be only those that remain in the fats of the animals we eat, which isn't a real concern. The contamination risk is much higher from directly consuming the plants than from consuming the animal meat.
I'm not saying cruelty and horrible practices are something good, but the quality of the meat isn't the part that is questionable. It's true that the animals are often treated poorly. That should change. Me being fooled into paying more for meat won't help that cause, especially when many of the labels (cage-free, for example) are nearly meaningless and don't actually guarantee a better life for the animal.
If you want to eat vegetables, more power to you. No one is saying you can't. You can eat them for whatever reasons make sense to you: variety, micronutrients, phytochemicals, potentially unknown things that might provide some trace benefit as yet unrecognized, fiber, etc. But, they are absolutely unnecessary for health. If you were denied access to them and forced to live off of fresh meat (even meat that was raised conventionally), you would be perfectly fine.0 -
Yeah, but I don't really value Mark Sisson's opinion. You might as well tell me that Ancel Keys disagrees with me. Actually, Keys was at least a scientist and did real research. I might disagree with Keys' conclusions, but he had the credentials. Sisson is just a random primal advocate who is vocal and well known.
If you do the research, you become an expert, regardless of your degree. Sisson's done the research. However, you don't have to value his opinion.The hormone concern is just nonsense: https://nefb.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/whats-the-beef-mms-and-hormones/ There's more hormones in vegetables than there are hormone residues in beef treated with hormones. Same kind of thing with antibiotics. It's just a non-issue.
This woman saying so doesn't make it so. She also has a vested interest in people buying her products. The links she provides point to websites where the owners also have a vested interest in people buying more of products.We're (that is pure carnivores) not eating any plants so our pesticide intake would be only those that remain in the fats of the animals we eat, which isn't a real concern. The contamination risk is much higher from directly consuming the plants than from consuming the animal meat.
I disagree, because the animals have been consuming these chemicals throughout their lives, and thus accumulating the residues of such products in their bodies. Further, CAFO techniques of preemptively dosing all their animals with antibiotics (and overuse and misuse of antibiotics in humans) have created drug-resistant strains of bacteria that pose a risk to everyone - carnivore and vegans alike.I'm not saying cruelty and horrible practices are something good, but the quality of the meat isn't the part that is questionable.
actually, the Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio is different in CAFO animals than strictly pastured and organically certified meat.It's true that the animals are often treated poorly. That should change. Me being fooled into paying more for meat won't help that cause, especially when many of the labels (cage-free, for example) are nearly meaningless and don't actually guarantee a better life for the animal.
Cage-free chickens that live in barns and never see the sunlight still have more room to move about and establish their own social order than ones crammed into in cages so tight they tend to peck each other to death. Further, unlike the caged chickens, the barn-raised chickens aren't being shat upon by chickens in cages above them. I'd call that a better life.
also,Author (and small-scale cattleman) Michael Pollan describes what happens to cows when they are taken off of pastures and put into feedlots and fed corn:
“Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which is normally expelled by belching during rumination. But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the animal’s lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure (usually by forcing a hose down the animal’s esophagus), the cow suffocates.
“A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio.”
http://foodrevolution.org/blog/the-truth-about-grassfed-beef/
Strictly pastured animals do not suffer these ills. I'd say that's a better life.If you want to eat vegetables, more power to you. No one is saying you can't. You can eat them for whatever reasons make sense to you: variety, micronutrients, phytochemicals, potentially unknown things that might provide some trace benefit as yet unrecognized, fiber, etc. But, they are absolutely unnecessary for health.
Um, you don't know this. Perhaps they are unnecessary in the short term. I'm not saying YOU should eat vegetables. But we don't know the long term [read: decades] effects of dismissing them entirely from our diets.
Of interest: total intake of animal proteins is positively associated with early [read: TOO early] onset of menarche (of course, this doesn't impact you personally), in this study:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7924542&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1368980010001461
I'm just guessing here, but I'd bet that more of the families tracked in the study ate CAFO meats than strictly pastured...
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MistressPi wrote: »The hormone concern is just nonsense: https://nefb.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/whats-the-beef-mms-and-hormones/ There's more hormones in vegetables than there are hormone residues in beef treated with hormones. Same kind of thing with antibiotics. It's just a non-issue.
This woman saying so doesn't make it so. She also has a vested interest in people buying her products. The links she provides point to websites where the owners also have a vested interest in people buying more of products.
Do you have a source for the belief that her facts are wrong? Or do you just feel like they should be? I don't disagree that she has an interest in suggesting that conventionally raised beef is safe, but that doesn't mean she's wrong.We're (that is pure carnivores) not eating any plants so our pesticide intake would be only those that remain in the fats of the animals we eat, which isn't a real concern. The contamination risk is much higher from directly consuming the plants than from consuming the animal meat.
I disagree, because the animals have been consuming these chemicals throughout their lives, and thus accumulating the residues of such products in their bodies. Further, CAFO techniques of preemptively dosing all their animals with antibiotics (and overuse and misuse of antibiotics in humans) have created drug-resistant strains of bacteria that pose a risk to everyone - carnivore and vegans alike.
Again, do you have a source that compares pesticide and chemical composition of grass-finished vs grain-finished beef?I'm not saying cruelty and horrible practices are something good, but the quality of the meat isn't the part that is questionable.
actually, the Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio is different in CAFO animals than strictly pastured and organically certified meat.
As far as I know, this is true. Is it actually beneficial once you've removed the sources of the excessive Omega-6s? That's pretty debatable. As such, this is probably the best argument that exists for grass-finished beef. But, it's like going from 99.98% perfect to 99.99% perfect, it's just not a big improvement. Not a big enough improvement for the costs, at least.It's true that the animals are often treated poorly. That should change. Me being fooled into paying more for meat won't help that cause, especially when many of the labels (cage-free, for example) are nearly meaningless and don't actually guarantee a better life for the animal.
Cage-free chickens that live in barns and never see the sunlight still have more room to move about and establish their own social order than ones crammed into in cages so tight they tend to peck each other to death. Further, unlike the caged chickens, the barn-raised chickens aren't being shat upon by chickens in cages above them. I'd call that a better life.
Chickens naturally live in communities many orders of magnitude smaller than even the smallest of the free-range warehouses. Being at the bottom of a pecking order (literally here) of 12 is a very different thing from being at the bottom of a pecking order of 1200. Some chickens live very, very miserable lives in these massive confinements. Not a single egg or piece of chicken you buy at a store is cruelty free. Chickens are, by far, the most abused animal in our food system.Author (and small-scale cattleman) Michael Pollan describes what happens to cows when they are taken off of pastures and put into feedlots and fed corn:
“Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which is normally expelled by belching during rumination. But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the animal’s lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure (usually by forcing a hose down the animal’s esophagus), the cow suffocates.
“A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio.”
Yeah, I've read this before. This condition isn't universal and is a terrible side-effect of grain feeding. Cows aren't meant to eat grains. But, it's not the end of the world. A lot of the problems caused by feeding grain would be alleviated by going back to grass for two weeks before slaughter, as one of the major side-effects is acid-tolerant e-coli.Strictly pastured animals do not suffer these ills. I'd say that's a better life.
Again, a better life does not mean better meat nutritionally.If you want to eat vegetables, more power to you. No one is saying you can't. You can eat them for whatever reasons make sense to you: variety, micronutrients, phytochemicals, potentially unknown things that might provide some trace benefit as yet unrecognized, fiber, etc. But, they are absolutely unnecessary for health.
Um, you don't know this. Perhaps they are unnecessary in the short term. I'm not saying YOU should eat vegetables. But we don't know the long term [read: decades] effects of dismissing them entirely from our diets.
There are ample examples of cultures where plant intake was minimal or nonexistent. There are many modern people who have survived decades without issues and avoided plants the entire time. We do have a pretty solid idea of what a lifetime of no plants will do to a group of people (hint: it's not much of anything special).Of interest: total intake of animal proteins is positively associated with early [read: TOO early] onset of menarche (of course, this doesn't impact you personally), in this study:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7924542&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1368980010001461
I'm just guessing here, but I'd bet that more of the families tracked in the study ate CAFO meats than strictly pastured...
It also said that higher intakes of PUFAs (which are mainly those found in plant oils) was positively associated with it, as was higher energy intake. Of course, people eating more and gaining more weight are more likely to mature faster. I don't know that this is proof of anything. It certainly can't be said that if the girls were eating grass-finished beef they wouldn't have reached menarche as soon as they did. That's a logical leap too far.0 -
MistressPi wrote: »The hormone concern is just nonsense: https://nefb.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/whats-the-beef-mms-and-hormones/ There's more hormones in vegetables than there are hormone residues in beef treated with hormones. Same kind of thing with antibiotics. It's just a non-issue.
This woman saying so doesn't make it so. She also has a vested interest in people buying her products. The links she provides point to websites where the owners also have a vested interest in people buying more of products.
Do you have a source for the belief that her facts are wrong? Or do you just feel like they should be? I don't disagree that she has an interest in suggesting that conventionally raised beef is safe, but that doesn't mean she's wrong.We're (that is pure carnivores) not eating any plants so our pesticide intake would be only those that remain in the fats of the animals we eat, which isn't a real concern. The contamination risk is much higher from directly consuming the plants than from consuming the animal meat.
I disagree, because the animals have been consuming these chemicals throughout their lives, and thus accumulating the residues of such products in their bodies. Further, CAFO techniques of preemptively dosing all their animals with antibiotics (and overuse and misuse of antibiotics in humans) have created drug-resistant strains of bacteria that pose a risk to everyone - carnivore and vegans alike.
Again, do you have a source that compares pesticide and chemical composition of grass-finished vs grain-finished beef?I'm not saying cruelty and horrible practices are something good, but the quality of the meat isn't the part that is questionable.
actually, the Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio is different in CAFO animals than strictly pastured and organically certified meat.
As far as I know, this is true. Is it actually beneficial once you've removed the sources of the excessive Omega-6s? That's pretty debatable. As such, this is probably the best argument that exists for grass-finished beef. But, it's like going from 99.98% perfect to 99.99% perfect, it's just not a big improvement. Not a big enough improvement for the costs, at least.It's true that the animals are often treated poorly. That should change. Me being fooled into paying more for meat won't help that cause, especially when many of the labels (cage-free, for example) are nearly meaningless and don't actually guarantee a better life for the animal.
Cage-free chickens that live in barns and never see the sunlight still have more room to move about and establish their own social order than ones crammed into in cages so tight they tend to peck each other to death. Further, unlike the caged chickens, the barn-raised chickens aren't being shat upon by chickens in cages above them. I'd call that a better life.
Chickens naturally live in communities many orders of magnitude smaller than even the smallest of the free-range warehouses. Being at the bottom of a pecking order (literally here) of 12 is a very different thing from being at the bottom of a pecking order of 1200. Some chickens live very, very miserable lives in these massive confinements. Not a single egg or piece of chicken you buy at a store is cruelty free. Chickens are, by far, the most abused animal in our food system.Author (and small-scale cattleman) Michael Pollan describes what happens to cows when they are taken off of pastures and put into feedlots and fed corn:
“Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which is normally expelled by belching during rumination. But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the animal’s lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure (usually by forcing a hose down the animal’s esophagus), the cow suffocates.
“A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio.”
Yeah, I've read this before. This condition isn't universal and is a terrible side-effect of grain feeding. Cows aren't meant to eat grains. But, it's not the end of the world. A lot of the problems caused by feeding grain would be alleviated by going back to grass for two weeks before slaughter, as one of the major side-effects is acid-tolerant e-coli.Strictly pastured animals do not suffer these ills. I'd say that's a better life.
Again, a better life does not mean better meat nutritionally.If you want to eat vegetables, more power to you. No one is saying you can't. You can eat them for whatever reasons make sense to you: variety, micronutrients, phytochemicals, potentially unknown things that might provide some trace benefit as yet unrecognized, fiber, etc. But, they are absolutely unnecessary for health.
Um, you don't know this. Perhaps they are unnecessary in the short term. I'm not saying YOU should eat vegetables. But we don't know the long term [read: decades] effects of dismissing them entirely from our diets.
There are ample examples of cultures where plant intake was minimal or nonexistent. There are many modern people who have survived decades without issues and avoided plants the entire time. We do have a pretty solid idea of what a lifetime of no plants will do to a group of people (hint: it's not much of anything special).Of interest: total intake of animal proteins is positively associated with early [read: TOO early] onset of menarche (of course, this doesn't impact you personally), in this study:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7924542&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1368980010001461
I'm just guessing here, but I'd bet that more of the families tracked in the study ate CAFO meats than strictly pastured...
It also said that higher intakes of PUFAs (which are mainly those found in plant oils) was positively associated with it, as was higher energy intake. Of course, people eating more and gaining more weight are more likely to mature faster. I don't know that this is proof of anything. It certainly can't be said that if the girls were eating grass-finished beef they wouldn't have reached menarche as soon as they did. That's a logical leap too far.
Do you have a source for the belief that her facts are wrong? I don't need a source. It's the responsibility of a person making a scientific conclusion to provide references for those conclusions.
do you have a source that compares pesticide and chemical composition of grass-finished vs grain-finished beef?
I haven't done the research, and am not willing to spend my Sunday doing it. But CAFO cattle eat a large amount of commercially grown corn, soy, etc. Much of this produce is grown with pesticides that are carcinogenic to humans. Where do these pesticides go? Meat? Liver? Bones? Milk? Is it really all passed through the urine and feces? The Masai (which is one of the tribes to whom you refer as traditionally subsiding predominantly [not exclusively] on animal products, graze their cattle on fodder that is not contaminated with pesticides.
Not a single egg or piece of chicken you buy at a store is cruelty free. Some practices are less cruel than others.
It also said that higher intakes of PUFAs (which are mainly those found in plant oils) was positively associated with it, as was higher energy intake. Of course, people eating more and gaining more weight are more likely to mature faster.
What the study actually said was,Higher energy intakes at 10 years were positively associated with the early occurrence of menarche, but this association was removed on adjusting for body size.
Humans who ate only grass-fed beef had an improved ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 in their plasma and platelets, according to the British Journal of Nutrition in this study:
http://cdn.marksdailyapple.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/McAfeeGrassfedbeefbettern3thanconventionalbeefBJN2011-2.pdf
It certainly can't be said that if the girls were eating grass-finished beef they wouldn't have reached menarche as soon as they did. That's a logical leap too far.
Perhaps, but I'm not claiming cause and effect. Also, the study compares animal protein, not just meat. Is it the meat? The milk? A combination? Prior to current animal husbandry practices, which use estrogen to induce cows to lactate for as long as possible, the average age for menarche was 15. And the incidence of boys developing sexual characteristics of femals (boobs) was much lower.
That's all I have time for today.
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So you don't have actual sources for their beliefs? You just really feel this way? BTW: You're the one making a positive claim (conventionally raised beef has dangerous levels of hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides compared to grass-finished or organic beef). So, it really is your responsibility to back up that claim. But, I'll provide some support for my side... you know... because it actually exists.
7 ng / 0.5 kg for hormone treated beef
5 ng / 0.5 kg for non-treated beef
Pre-pubescent children 41,000 ng/day ... so a child eating a kg of meat a day (2.2 pounds) will see an increase of 0.009% over baseline levels. Is that really an amount to raise concern over? And that's the best case scenario. Men are 136,00 ng/day and women range from 513,000 - 19,600,000 ng/day. For me, the difference in treated and non-treated beef would mean an increase of 0.0029% over the amount my body produces naturally.
Source: http://www.iowabeefcenter.org/information/IBC48.pdf
Yeah, it's another beef paper. But, at least it's a resource.
Here's another source:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/x6533e/x6533e01.htm
Hmm, such small amounts compared to the baseline. The same page also has a comparative table for hormones from hormones treated steers relative to total food intake. The amount of hormones consumed is a small percentage compared to the amount we get through other foods.
Average age of menarche has been decreasing for a very long time, even before the modern hormones were being used in beef and milk production in the US.
The data is from Norway, but hormones weren't frequently used in cattle until the 1950s**. And, you can see that the age was dropping well before that. The age of menarche actually levels off right around the introduction of hormones into the beef supply. There are likely other factors at play than hormones added to cows and steers. We're healthier, we are fatter, we have more stable food sources and less stress. There are many possible environmental factors that might make menarche age decrease.
If you're determined to only eat meat from organic and grass-fed animals, more power to you. But, you've been misled as to what the benefits are.
** https://www.asas.org/docs/publications/raunhist.pdf?sfvrsn=0The first demonstration of growth stimulation in cattle with hormone supplementation took place in 1947 by investigators at Purdue University [. . .]0 -
I should probably say, I don't really mind if you want to support better farming practices. I want people to know that, even if they can't afford to buy organic, they can still feel good about buying and eating meat when it comes to their health. In an ideal world, we would stop wasting grain on feeding cattle because it's extremely inefficient and it's better for the environment to just raise cattle in fields and slaughter them directly after that.
But, if someone has to choose between not having meat because they can't afford organic or buying the conventionally raised meat, they can feel good about their healthy choice of beef. Conventionally raised beef is a heck of a lot healthier than most plant-based foods you could think to stick in your mouth.0 -
Re? more hormones or pesticide residue in plants than in the animals that eat them... I have three letters that describe the opposite: DDT - ever look into why it was banned in North America/Europe? Because concentrations increase as we go up the food chain - also why there is much more mercury in tuna & shark than in sardines, etc.
As far as meat goes... more hormones are stored in the fat than in the muscle tissue. That goes for humans as animals too.0 -
canadjineh wrote: »Re? more hormones or pesticide residue in plants than in the animals that eat them... I have three letters that describe the opposite: DDT - ever look into why it was banned in North America/Europe? Because concentrations increase as we go up the food chain - also why there is much more mercury in tuna & shark than in sardines, etc.
As far as meat goes... more hormones are stored in the fat than in the muscle tissue. That goes for humans as animals too.
Only certain compounds are bioaccumulative. DDT and methylmercury being two examples.
Cows are only one rung up the food chain from plants. So that argument is largely moot (though could be better argued for pork and poultry, both of which are omnivores and eat a few rungs up), especially given the fact that glyphosate (aka RoundUp, the main herbicide in use) isn't a bioaccumulative compound and most of it is excreted. As a result, you very likely get far more exposure to pesticides in your produce and bread than you do in meat (unless you're living off of apex predators).
As for hormones. If you're actually worried about hormones, the bigger contributor of exogenous hormones is, by far, soy and soy products, followed not far by several varieties of beans (not surprising, given that they're all legumes). Its ubiquity in the food supply further compounds that issue.0 -
Clearly we need to look at the hormone sources in our food and decide which if any should be avoided at all cost. The ability to even know there are hormones and what kind are in our food is a concern to me even if we are growing our own.0
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I avoid soy beans for that reason
I eat a male hormone friendly diet and have more muscle mass at 54 than at 34.
There is definitely a correlation between health and food!0 -
KittensMaster wrote: »There is definitely a correlation between health and food!
Hippocrates had it right, eh?
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Only if you are eating GMO soy, and of course in Canada dairy products cannot be produced from cows that need antibiotics for medical treatment. Hormones & steroids too.
"If a dairy cow is being treated for an illness and is taking antibiotics, she is temporarily removed from the milk producing herd and her milk is discarded. Once she has recovered and the antibiotics have cleared her system, her milk is again suitable for human consumption. All milk is rigorously tested for antibiotics prior to it being accepted at the milk processing plant. If milk contains traces of antibiotics, the milk is dumped and the producer is penalized. As we answered in Bea’s Question, growth hormones to stimulate milk production in dairy cows are not permitted for use in Canada. This means that no milk, cheese or yogurt produced in Canada contains these added hormones. As we explained in our answer to Nick’s question, rBST, short for recombinant bovine somatotropin, is a type of artificial growth hormone that increases milk production. It is illegal for use in our Canadian dairy cows, but legal in the USA. Steroids can be used for medicinal purposes in dairy cattle health. They are issued as an aid in the treatment of dairy cow illnesses, such as milk fever and bovine ketosis, as well as an anti-inflammatory agent (like when you use Advil® to bring a fever down.) When administered, steroids are only given to cattle under veterinary direction, strictly for animal health purposes. The prescription’s label explains the proper dosages and milk withdrawal times that the cow needs to adhere to before she is brought back to the herd as a productive member once again. If you want to be certain that the dairy product you would like to enjoy does not contain rBST, just look for the 100% Canadian Milk logo with the blue cow. - See more at: http://www.albertamilk.com/ask-dairy-farmer/ive-started-buying-organic-milk-based-on-the-assum/#sthash.d8twNKxB.dpuf"0 -
I'm not gonna meddle in the health discussion above. IMO, it's too narrow to look at only ONE variable concerning antibiotic use in meat industry. Look at the bigger picture. These are my thoughts:
Kill off completely. When going on antibiotics, we're told to complete the cycle, because when the bacteria survives the cure, the chance of it developing resistance is higher. Just like when babies are born they get sick easily, cause their immune system hasn't "learned" how to fight threats. Bacteria swaps DNA (yes, they have sex) rapidly.
Misusing antibiotics has gotten us into a situation where the current antibiotics are increasingly non-effective as treatment. Especially in countries like India, where the use and manufacture of antibiotics is totally unregulated. A friend of mine was treated repeatedly with antibiotics for ear infections etc as a kid. She can't use it anymore, because her body now does NOT respond to antibiotics. Tough luck if she gets a really dangerous infection where she actually needs antibiotics.
Misuse for protfits. The practice of the meat industry to use antibiotics as a strategy to beef up the livestock is appalling and should be banned, IMO. I really, really don't understand the logic of advising against lowgrade antibiotics use in humans, while feeding the meat we are to eat the same lowgrade antibiotics. Bacteria are much faster to adapt to changing environments than humans are to discover and manufacture stable antidotes. There are plenty of examples that bacteria indeed can swap hosts as transport method: soil, feces, different livestocks to humans, between humans to name a few. My guess is that this lowgrade use of antibiotics in the meat industry has greatly contributed to the antibiotics becoming increasingly ineffective as treatment. Individual treatments here and there making resistance isn't producing high enough volume and scale for the resistance to spread to the extent we now see. The most likely culprit are the meats and the production methods, IMO. 13 mins TEDtalk about superbugs and resistance. He says 7.7 million pounds of antibiotics is used for human treatment, but a whopping 30 million pounds is used in livestock production.
Minding the mitochondria. According to David Perlmutter's "Grain Brain" (ty @kirkor for reminding me pick it up), babies who are treated with antibiotics within the first years have an increased chance of getting obese later in life. Mitochondria, the part of the cells that produce energy in the form of ATP, are from a bacterial origin. Some time long ago, bacteria invaded our ancestors and fused with them in a symbiotic manner that the mitochondria give us the power to live, breathe and move. Mitochondria is one of the pillars of life as we know it. To finish off the chain of thought. Antibiotics does not only interfere and kill off the "bad bacteria", it also wipes out many of the "good guys in the gut". So would it be too far fetched to think that antibiotics somehow can in some cases disturb mitochondrial function? Evidently, people are NOT dying off from eating meats propped up with antibiotics and insulin (yes, they get insulin as well to fatten up) in epidemic numbers. But the effects could be much more insidious than previously thought.
Beefy politics. Curiously enough, one of the negotiations between the EU and USA, is the issue of US meat industry wanting to export cheap beef to EU. EU naturally knows it's own industry will be outconquered on pricing. Because when you can "beef" up the margins by 20% using hormones, antibiotics and whatnot it does matter on the bottom line. EU uses the argument of the higher doses of antibiotics as a way to stave off US beef industry for now.
Happy meat tastes better. On a personal note, I wish I could afford grassfed, "happier" meat. Atm, I can't. Slaughterhouses have changed practices in the killing moment, because apparently pigs pumped up on cortisol from fear taste bad...
Fortunately I live in a country where the rules for any food manufacturing borders on insanity. But at least I can trust that the governmental agencies involved always mostly have the public safety on top of their list rather than what is easiest or most profitable for the food industry.
Why does it matter ? Consider how people were killed off due to infections pre 1940's. Consider that when people have to amputate their legs TODAY due to diabetes (60% of all non-trauma amputations in the USA in 2012 according to diabetes.org), the risk of getting serious infections leading to further complications are much higher. Many open surgery operations will become high risk without antibiotics that work. Chemotherapy as treatment for cancer relies on antibiotics as part of the process. Etc, etc. This is NOT sometime vague happening in the future. According to this videotaped lecture from University of Edinburgh
at ca 19:06 claims just one strain of resistant bacteria kills off 14 000 in the USA alone every year. The numbers he's quoting are from the CDC Threat Report 2013. So do you still think using lowlevel antibiotics feeding the meat you eat is a good idea ?
I'm not even gonna go into the research and theories about protecting a healthy gut microbiome for general health, overweight, serotonin levels, hunger regulation. You can look it up if you're interested.
I eat meats, I love it, but I try to pick higher quality when I can afford it.
Everything in life is cost benefit. What each individual chooses to do is their own making.
Edit: a slight downplay of words, visual in formatting. Forgot some words, inserted in italic.
Australian documentary: The Rise of Superbugs Resistant to Antibiotics.0 -
Foamroller wrote: »I'm not gonna meddle in the health discussion above. IMO, it's too narrow to look at only ONE variable concerning antibiotic use in meat industry. Look at the bigger picture. These are my thoughts:
Kill off completely. When going on antibiotics, we're told to complete the cycle, because when the bacteria survives the cure, the chance of it developing resistance is higher. Just like when babies are born they get sick easily, cause their immune system hasn't "learned" how to fight threats. Bacteria swaps DNA (yes, they have sex) rapidly.
Misusing antibiotics has gotten us into a situation where the current antibiotics are increasingly non-effective as treatment. Especially in countries like India, where the use and manufacture of antibiotics is totally unregulated. A friend of mine was treated repeatedly with antibiotics for ear infections etc as a kid. She can't use it anymore, because her body now does NOT respond to antibiotics. Tough luck if she gets a really dangerous infection where she actually needs antibiotics.
Misuse for protfits. The practice of the meat industry to use antibiotics as a strategy to beef up the livestock is appalling and should be banned, IMO. I really, really don't understand the logic of advising against lowgrade antibiotics use in humans, while feeding the meat we are to eat the same lowgrade antibiotics. Bacteria are much faster to adapt to changing environments than humans are to discover and manufacture stable antidotes. There are plenty of examples that bacteria indeed can swap hosts as transport method: soil, feces, different livestocks to humans, between humans to name a few. My guess is that this lowgrade use of antibiotics in the meat industry has greatly contributed to the antibiotics becoming increasingly ineffective as treatment. Individual treatments here and there making resistance isn't producing high enough volume and scale for the resistance to spread to the extent we now see. The most likely culprit are the meats and the production methods, IMO. 13 mins TEDtalk about superbugs and resistance. He says 7.7 million pounds of antibiotics is used for human treatment, but a whopping 30 million pounds is used in livestock production.
Minding the mitochondria. According to David Perlmutter's "Grain Brain" (ty @kirkor for reminding me pick it up), babies who are treated with antibiotics within the first years have an increased chance of getting obese later in life. Mitochondria, the part of the cells that produce energy in the form of ATP, are from a bacterial origin. Some time long ago, bacteria invaded our ancestors and fused with them in a symbiotic manner that the mitochondria give us the power to live, breathe and move. Mitochondria is one of the pillars of life as we know it. To finish off the chain of thought. Antibiotics does not only interfere and kill off the "bad bacteria", it also wipes out many of the "good guys in the gut". So would it be too far fetched to think that antibiotics somehow can in some cases disturb mitochondrial function? Evidently, people are NOT dying off from eating meats propped up with antibiotics and insulin (yes, they get insulin as well to fatten up) in epidemic numbers. But the effects could be much more insidious than previously thought.
Beefy politics. Curiously enough, one of the negotiations between the EU and USA, is the issue of US meat industry wanting to export cheap beef to EU. EU naturally knows it's own industry will be outconquered on pricing. Because when you can "beef" up the margins by 20% using hormones, antibiotics and whatnot it does matter on the bottom line. EU uses the argument of the higher doses of antibiotics as a way to stave off US beef industry for now.
Happy meat tastes better. On a personal note, I wish I could afford grassfed, "happier" meat. Atm, I can't. Slaughterhouses have changed practices in the killing moment, because apparently pigs pumped up on cortisol from fear taste bad...
Fortunately I live in a country where the rules for any food manufacturing borders on insanity. But at least I can trust that the governmental agencies involved always mostly have the public safety on top of their list rather than what is easiest or most profitable for the food industry.
Why does it matter ? Consider how people were killed off due to infections pre 1940's. Consider that when people have to amputate their legs TODAY due to diabetes (60% of all non-trauma amputations in the USA in 2012 according to diabetes.org), the risk of getting serious infections leading to further complications are much higher. Many open surgery operations will become high risk without antibiotics that work. Chemotherapy as treatment for cancer relies on antibiotics as part of the process. Etc, etc. This is NOT sometime vague happening in the future. According to this videotaped lecture from University of Edinburgh
at ca 19:06 claims just one strain of resistant bacteria kills off 14 000 in the USA alone every year. The numbers he's quoting are from the CDC Threat Report 2013. So do you still think using lowlevel antibiotics feeding the meat you eat is a good idea ?
I'm not even gonna go into the research and theories about protecting a healthy gut microbiome for general health, overweight, serotonin levels, hunger regulation. You can look it up if you're interested.
I eat meats, I love it, but I try to pick higher quality when I can afford it.
Everything in life is cost benefit. What each individual chooses to do is their own making.
Edit: a slight downplay of words, visual in formatting. Forgot some words, inserted in italic.
Australian documentary: The Rise of Superbugs Resistant to Antibiotics.
Well said. Thank you for expanding on this important issue. It's a big problem that affects us all.
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canadjineh wrote: »Only if you are eating GMO soy
For what? The massive amounts of phytoestrogens it contains? No, that's not a GMO thing (soy's genetic modifications are for being glyphosate resistant and to improve oil output). That's a soy thing.
Legumes in general tend to be high in phytoestrogens. Red Clover (also a legume) is another plant that has high phytoestrogen levels. So high and potent, in fact, that's its medicinal use is specifically contraindicated in people that have conditions caused by excess estrogen.0 -
I would just suggest that people go on Craigslist to the "farm and garden" sale section, find someone who is selling pastured eggs (when you buy the eggs make sure this is true), fry 'em up , maybe throw a store bought one next to the pasture raised, and see which is best. I can't really afford much grassfed beef except for hamburger ($6 a pound), but I love pastured eggs, and they are often cheaper than grocery store ones. (I pay $3 a dozen.)0
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fastforlife1 wrote: »I would just suggest that people go on Craigslist to the "farm and garden" sale section, find someone who is selling pastured eggs (when you buy the eggs make sure this is true), fry 'em up , maybe throw a store bought one next to the pasture raised, and see which is best. I can't really afford much grassfed beef except for hamburger ($6 a pound), but I love pastured eggs, and they are often cheaper than grocery store ones. (I pay $3 a dozen.)
great idea!
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There are ample examples of cultures where plant intake was minimal or nonexistent. There are many modern people who have survived decades without issues and avoided plants the entire time. We do have a pretty solid idea of what a lifetime of no plants will do to a group of people
I know of no cultures where plant intake was nonexistent. To whom do you refer?
The effects of diet on an species show up over time, some effects not revealing themselves until the second or third generation.You’re the one making a positive claim (conventionally raised beef has dangerous levels of hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides compared to grass-finished or organic beef).
I have made no such claim. Review the thread. However, based on some of the data you have linked, and other sources I have read, my statement that, “Consumption of hormones in beef products (including milk) has been linked to males developing secondary sexual characteristics common to females…” is incorrect. It is the increased consumption of animal fats and animal proteins that is correlated with early onset of menarche (and subsequent development of certain diseases and mortality from same of those that do reach menarche early). Why this is, we do not know, nor do I know what confounding factors may exist.
I do not know which of the many chemicals used in raising CAFO animals leave residues in the meat, fat, bones, organs and milk we consume from them. Except as reported here:
http://whatsonmyfood.org/food.jsp?food=MK
shows residues of four pesticides found in milk tested from commercially-raised animals, and none of which were found in milk from organically raised cattle.
and for beef fat:
http://whatsonmyfood.org/food.jsp?food=BA
A lot of pesticide residues have been found in some species of conventionally grown vegetables. I forget which have the most. Best to get organically grown versions of those species.
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The pages you have cited claim that the residues of estrogens in beef are insignificant to human health. This is reassuring, but I’m not fully convinced. I wonder what entities provide funds for research done at Iowa and Wisconsin Universities (two states that produce a lot of beef and milk) and what evidence discovered might not have made it into these papers. I do not claim that the results published are incorrect.
Further, we do not know the long term effects on us of eating animals raised with these added substances. Mammals are extremely complicated creatures: many systems, hormones, etc. working together. What else is stimulated in a cow when fake hormones and other chemicals are used? The chemicals are not bio-identical to the ones which are naturally produced by the organism. They stimulate an increased growth rate and production of more milk. What else is set into motion when such chemicals are introduced to the animals we eat, and how do these other components affect us when we ingest them? The fact that the residue found in beef muscle tissue is small is no guarantee that such substances are benign, and says nothing about the other components involved. Further, the studies say nothing about the additive and synergistic effects that may occur when a food animal is fed a cocktail of ingredients, not to mention all the food industry by-products that make their way into their feed.
We humans are awfully proud when it comes to our scientific advances. Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) in peri- and post-menopausal women, for example. Man-made hormones act in a similar, but not identical, manner in the human body. A correlation has been identified between usage of HRT protocol and incidence of cancers in women. The correlation is apparently strong enough that doctors today are much less likely to prescribe HRT than in previous decades.
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Regarding the following paper,
This paper generally bemoans the fact that the FDA prohibited the usage of DES on cattle, because the money spent in development of an alternative could have been used on something more productive.
It establishes a timeline of usage of estrogens in cattle in the United States. I do not know how cattle were being raised in Norway, or if Norway was consuming beef raised in the United States. Nor do I know if Japan was consuming beef raised in the United States, or using these chemicals themselves.
“Diet for a New America” (Robbins, John. 1987) (p. 267) shows a graph in support of the hypothesis that the rise in consumption of animal fat correlates to the decrease in the age of onset of menarche in Japanese girls. (Age 15.2 in 1950, age 13.9 in 1960, and decreasing to 12.2 in 1970.) He quotes the paper,
Kagawa, Y. “Impact of Westernization on the Nutrition of Japan: Changes in Physique, Cancer . . .” Preventative Medicine, 7:205, 1978.
He also quotes other papers from Japanese scientists who conclude there is a positive correlation between Westernization of their traditional diet (increased consumption of animal fats) and the rise of certain cancers. This is based on data collected and studies conducted at the National Cancer Research in Tokyo, “where as many as 122,000 people have been monitored for decades.” I cannot discern from this publication what confounding factors might have influenced these findings. This book is full of scientific references. Of course, the main thrust of this book is Robbins’ belief that we should all ditch CAFO animal products entirely - for health and for moral reasons - but that does not mean his facts are incorrect.
More to come, but probably not today. I am still doing research on this subject.
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