Meat

Swapping meat for mushroom protein may be better for reducing cholesterol

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Close-up of a mycoprotein burger with vegan cheese sauce
Mycoprotein may be a better alternative to meat for reducing cholesterol, research shows. Marta Mauri/Stocksy
  • Protein is a critical diet component, but the source — animal or plant-based — does make a difference.
  • Mycoprotein is derived from a fungus and used in some meat substitute products.
  • Research on its benefits is ongoing.
  • A recent study found that swapping meat and fish for mycoprotein may help significantly lower cholesterol levels.

Diet plays a crucial role in all the body’s systems. Protein is often part of a well-balanced diet and can come from various sources. Researchers are interested in non-animal protein sources and their benefits for consumers, including how they influence components like cholesterol and blood glucose levels.

A study published in Clinical Nutrition compared eating mycoprotein or fungal protein products with eating fish and meat over four weeks.

The results of the study indicated that the group that ate mycoprotein experienced up to a 10% drop in certain cholesterol levels.

Should future research confirm these findings, consuming mycoprotein might become another tool to help people keep their cholesterol levels in a healthy range.

What is mycoprotein?

Mycoprotein comes from a fungus and is high in protein. Products with mycoprotein could be a substitute for animal sources of protein like meat or fish. Mycoprotein also contains high amounts of fiber.

Researchers of the current study wanted to see how eating mycoprotein instead of meat and fish influenced cholesterol levels, specifically in people who were overweight and had elevated cholesterol levels. Researchers noted that these individuals were more at risk for cardiovascular disease.

People can influence their cholesterol levelsTrusted Source through lifestyle interventions, including diet changes. Beata Rydyger, a registered nutritionist based in Los Angeles, CA, and nutritional contributor to HPVHUB, who was not involved in the study, explained to Medical News Today the importance of controlling cholesterol:

“Controlling cholesterol is crucial because it impacts heart health and the risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), while also being a vital substance the body produces for key functions like forming cell membranes, hormone production, and vitamin D synthesis. The body requires cholesterol, but excess, especially of LDL or ‘bad’ cholesterol, can cause plaque buildup in arteries, leading to atherosclerosis. This increases the risk of blood clots, reduced blood flow, and serious health issues like heart attacks and strokes.”

“Therefore, managing cholesterol through a balanced diet (reducing saturated and trans fats, increasing fiber and healthy fats), lifestyle adjustments (regular exercise, no smoking, limited alcohol), and medication when needed is essential for cardiovascular health and keeping cholesterol at a healthy level,” she added.

Improvements in cholesterol, blood sugar with mycoprotein

The study was a randomized controlled trial. Participants were adults between the ages of 18 and 70. All participants had a body mass indexTrusted Source of 27.5 or higher, which indicates being overweight. The researchers assumed that this criteria would also ensure participants had elevated cholesterol. Participants were excluded if they had an allergy to penicillin or mycoprotein or were already using cholesterol-lowering medication.

Researchers randomly divided 72 participants into two groups. One group received meat and fish products, and the other received mycoprotein products. Researchers sent a particular amount based on participants’ weight. Each week, researchers conducted 24-hour dietary recalls with all participants. Participants then sent in blood samples before and after the intervention for analysis.

Overall, researchers found more improvements in cholesterol levels among the mycoprotein group.

For participants in the mycoprotein group, serum total cholesterol decreased by about 5%. Similarly, serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels decreased by about 10% and 6%, respectively, in the mycoprotein group.

Participants in the mycoprotein group also had lower average blood sugar readings and c-peptide concentrations than the control group.

Study author George Pavis, Ph.D., noted the following to Medical News Today:

“We have known for a while that eating mycoprotein, the main ingredient in Quorn products, has the potential to lower cholesterol. Up until now, this has relied on studies conducted under strict laboratory conditions, so we didn’t know if this would work in ‘real life’ settings. In our new work, we have ventured away from the laboratory and into the community.”

“We show that when participants are provided with Quorn products to eat at home for 4 weeks, their levels of ‘total’ and ‘bad’ cholesterol drop by 5-10%. This is a really promising decline over such a short amount of time. We now need to look at what happens if we extend this time, perhaps to 3 or 6 months.”
— Dr. George Pavis, study author

The study adds to growing evidence of mycoprotein’s health benefits, including its potential to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease.

More research needed on mycoprotein and cholesterol

This research does have certain limitations. First, it only lasted a short time and included only a few participants. It also doesn’t establish a causal relationship between any of the factors.

Some data collection relied on participant self-reporting, which is not always correct. Measurement of blood sugar did not include an A1C testTrusted Source, so more research is needed to see the true effects of mycoprotein on blood sugar levels.

The reduction in cholesterol also did not change specific cholesterol ratios, warranting further research into mycoprotein’s impact on cholesterol.

Researchers acknowledge that the way they collected blood samples may have influenced the results. The study also occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, which could have affected metabolic health. The group Marlow Foods Ltd also helped sponsor the study.

More research is needed to understand why mycoprotein may affect cholesterol and the underlying mechanisms involved.

“Exactly how this change in cholesterol occurs isn’t clear. We think this is caused by the type and amount of fiber found in Quorn food, in particular in mycoprotein, but more work is needed!,” Dr. Pavis further noted.

Is mycoprotein a good source of protein?

Future researchTrusted Source may need to focus more on the long-term health benefits of mycoprotein and any adverse long-term consequences. People who want to switch to eating less meat and more mycoprotein can consult professionals like doctors or nutritionists for guidance.

Chelsea Johnson, registered dietitian with Memorial Hermann in Houston, who was not involved in the study, noted the following:

“Plant-based proteins are always encouraged for heart health so mycoprotein would be another type of plant protein that can be introduced in adults’ diets.”

“Some people may have adverse and severe GI or allergic reactions to mycoprotein, so it’s important to monitor your individual reaction the first time consuming it. Sometimes processed mycoprotein can be high in sodium or fat, so checking the ingredient label is vital. When prepared in a healthy way, mycoprotein is a great protein and fiber source that can be incorporated into any diet.”
— Chelsea Johnson, registered dietitian

The Carnivore Diet Says to Only Eat Meat – Is This Healthy?

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What is the carnivore diet and does it work? Research is limited, but some have seen some health improvements.

Man cooking meat for carnivore diet

Man cooking meat

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While a plant-based diet avoids animal products, a carnivore diet allows its followers to consume only meat and other animal products — a limit, some say, that comes with a host of health benefits.

Philip Ovadia, a Florida-based cardiothoracic surgeon is one of the diet’s avid proponents. Ovadia, who first went low-carb before transitioning to fully carnivore five years ago, credits the lifestyle change for helping him lose weight and increase his energy and mental clarity.

“During the eight years that I have been on various forms of low-carbohydrate diets, I have lost 100 pounds and greatly improved my overall wellbeing,” Ovadia says. “[I] feel better as I approach 50 than I did in my 20s and 30s.”

What Is the Carnivore Diet?

The carnivore diet first became popular around 2018 and is credited to a former orthopedic surgeon, Shawn Baker. It takes the concept of other low-carb meal plans such as the paleo or ketogenic diets and strips out the carbohydrates completely (along with all non-animal protein sources). Similar to the paleo diet, it attempts to replicate food sources available to our early ancestors with an idea that humans were built to eat more like lions and other predators and less like the largely plant-eating primates.

Ovadia says the diet — which may also include spices and seasonings for some — has shown to improve or even reverse a wide range of health conditions from diabetes, auto-immune conditions, and inflammatory bowel disease.

How Does the Carnivore Diet Impact the Body?

Research on the diet, however, is limited. In a 2021 study researchers gathered information on more than 2000 people who had been on a carnivore diet for at least six months. The most notable was the self-reported improvement in diabetes. Of the roughly 400 people affected by diabetes, 74 percent reported that the diet resolved their diabetes completely and another 24 percent reported that it improved their diabetes.

Roughly half of the participants reported being overweight or obese. Among those participants, 52 percent credit the diet for resolving their weight issues entirely while another 41 percent reported some weight loss.

Of the participants roughly 25 percent had mental health issues before starting the diet and reported improvement in psychiatric conditions. Among those participants, nearly all credited the diet change with at least improving their condition if not resolving it entirely.

Lipid abnormalities were the one category in the study with more mixed responses from the participants. Roughly 20 percent of the participants reported having lipid abnormalities before beginning a carnivore diet and while 56 percent of those participants said the diet resolved or improved those issues, the remainder stated that those abnormalities remained unchanged on the diet or got worse.

Is it Bad to go on the Carnivore Diet?

For decades, health professionals have encouraged humans to consume a variety of healthy food from the various food groups. And although dietary guidelines have shifted through the years, eating entirely from just one or two food groups flies in the face of these long-held recommendations.

“I don’t have anything good to say about the carnivore diet,” says Christopher Gardner, director of nutrition studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. “There aren’t any carbs there, there isn’t any fiber […] and there’s lots of vitamins and minerals that you get from fruits, grains, beans, nuts, seeds that you wouldn’t be able to get and meet the recommended daily allowance.”

Negative Impacts from the Carnivore Diet

Gardner, who himself follows a plant-based diet, has conducted various diet-related studies over the years. In a recent study, Gardner and his colleagues compared the effects of a healthy vegan diet to a healthy omnivore diet by closely following 22 sets of identical twins over an eight-week period.

In the study, a twin in each set was randomly assigned to either a plant-based diet or an omnivore diet for the eight-week period. A team of health professionals coached the participants on how to exercise and eat healthy in their assigned diets. They also collected various health statistics from body fat, cholesterol levels and even more obscure factors such as libido and aging. The results spoke highly in favor of a plant-based diet.

Over the course of eight weeks, the bad cholesterol levels stayed the same for those following the omnivore diet but decreased an average of 10 percent for those following the vegan diet. The plant-based participants also saw a boost in their beneficial microbiome bacteria and, perhaps even more surprisingly, came out of the eight-week study biologically younger than their omnivore twin. They did this by lengthening their telomeres — protein structures that shorten with age and eventually lead to disease.

What Happens When You Cut Out Everything but Meat?

One of the criticisms often cast on the carnivore diet is the lack of fiber from eating only animal products. Ovadia says that fiber isn’t necessary to prevent constipation and points to a 2012 study to back up that claim.

“People on carnivore diets do tend to move their bowels less often,” Ovadia says. “However this is not accompanied by symptoms of constipation and is likely due to the body better utilizing the food and producing less waste from the digestive process.”

Red meat and especially processed red meat have long been linked to cancer. Ovadia points to a 2019 study which states that the risk is negligible. However, a more recent study highlights a link between red and processed meat consumption to various types of cancer.

Meat consumption can also increase trimethylamine N-oxide, which studies show may raise the risk of heart disease and other ailments

Future Research Is Needed

Gardner says he’s been approached by carnivores about doing a carnivore versus plant-based study. But he says it’s problematic because participants would have to agree to be randomly chosen to follow either diet and typically they have a strong preference for one over the other.

“You can’t be in the study if you just want the one because that means you may be predisposed to something and I can’t generalize that finding,” says Gardner. “I don’t know a lot of people who’d voluntarily be vegan or a carnivore.”

But there is something carnivores and health-conscious vegans can likely agree on. Eliminating added sugars and white flours from the diet can only be an asset for a healthy lifestyle.

“I think one of the main things they’re doing on that carnivore diet is they’re getting rid of all their added sugar and refined grain,” says Gardner. “That is 40 percent of the American diet and getting rid of that has got to do good things for your health.”

New Research on Why Eating Meat is Associated with Heart Disease

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A study from the Cleveland Clinic and Tufts University found a 22 percent greater risk for heart disease for every 1.1 serving of meat per day (3.3 oz. cooked lean meat). This study followed more than 4,000 men and women older than 65 for an average of 12.5 years, and the increased heart attack risk was directly related to blood levels of TMAO and its precursors (Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, Aug 1, 2022;42(9):e273–e288). TMAO comes from L-carnitine found in red meat. TMAO blood levels were a far better predictor of heart disease than high blood pressure or high cholesterol levels. This study found that fish, poultry, and eggs were not associated with increased risk for heart disease.

The same group of researchers found that higher levels of TMAO were associated with significantly increased risk for death from any cause, and death from heart attacks in particular (JAMA Network Open, May 20, 2022;5(5):e2213242). Other associated risk factors for heart disease included high blood sugar, high insulin and markers of inflammation.

Dozens of earlier studies have shown that eating mammal meat is associated with increased risk for heart attacks, strokes, certain cancers, diabetes and premature death (Circulation, April 22, 2019). The association between TMAO levels and heart disease may be stronger than with dietary saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, nitrites, or high-temperature cooking.

TMAO and Heart Attack Risk
Meat is loaded with choline and carnitine, which pass to your colon where bacteria there convert them to a gas called trimethylamine (TMA) that is absorbed into the bloodstream and passes to the liver where liver enzymes convert TMA to TMAO. Choline and carnitine are found in large amounts in meat, in significantly lower amounts in poultry, fish, dairy, and egg yolks, and in very low amounts in plants. Mammal meat raises blood levels of TMAO much higher than poultry, and it also changes the bacteria in your colon to the ones that make TMA. When you switch from eating mammal meat to eating primarily chicken, fish and plants, blood levels of TMAO drop markedly as do the concentrations of colon bacteria that make TMA (Eur Heart J , Feb 14, 2019;40(7):583–594). The amount of saturated fat eaten had no effect on blood levels of TMAO (Am J Clin Nutr, 2021 May; 113(5): 1145–1156).

TMAO may increase risk of heart attacks by:
• reducing cholesterol clearance from the bloodstream,
• increasing cells that deposit cholesterol in plaques,
• increasing the cytokines that promote inflammation to form plaques, and
• increasing clotting that is the ultimate cause of heart attacks (Cell, March 24, 2016;165(1):111-124).

Other foods and supplements that contain the chemicals that can form TMAO include:
• Processed foods that contain phosphatidylcholine, also known as lecithin
• Dietary supplements that include choline or carnitine
• Energy drinks and protein supplements that contain lecithin or choline

Fish also contain carnitine and choline, and may slightly raise blood levels of TMAO. However, eating fish is not associated with increased risk for heart attacks (Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease, May 19, 2017:28(1)), possibly because the omega-3 fatty acids in most fish help to reduce inflammation and clotting that increase heart attack risk.

My Recommendations
In the United States and many other parts of the world, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death and meat is a major risk factor. While the risk of developing cardiovascular disease (including heart attacks and strokes) increases with age, other risk factors are influenced by lifestyle at any age. Lifestyle and behaviors that are known to improve cardiovascular health include:
• eating healthful foods –fruits, vegetables, whole un-ground grains, beans and seeds
• exercising regularly
• getting sufficient sleep
• maintaining a healthy body weight
• stopping smoking
• restricting or avoiding alcohol
• controlling high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood sugar

What Would Happen if You Only Ate Meat?

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It’s not as much fun as you’d think.

Plenty of diets encourage lowering, or increasing your meat consumption – the Mediterranean diet wants you to eat less meat, and if you’re on the paleo diet you’ll probably eat more – but what would happen if you exclusively ate meat?

 

Well, it turns out, we’re just not built for it.

According to the video below by AsapSCIENCE, without the good old fibre in legumes and vegetables you’d be very constipated – this actually happens with body builders who eat too much protein.

Besides that, the easiest way for your body to create energy is to convert carbs into glucose, when you take that away your body starts burning fat and important proteins.

Interestingly enough, lean meats like rabbits are so low in fat and high in protein that you can get something called protein poising if you don’t find fats from other sources.

The US Military Arctic Light Infantry Training (ALIT), it’s taught that rabbit takes more vitamins to digest than eating it does, and in survival situations they recommend not eating at all if rabbit is the only thing to eat.

As the video below explains, another potential killer to consuming just meat could be the lack of vitamin C.

Humans are unfortunately one of the few animals which doesn’t produce our own, meaning we have to get it from fruits and veggies. Without it, our body doesn’t produce collagen, and we can get every pirate’s favourite, scurvy.

There’s actually a solution to this, but it’s a bit stomach churning – eating raw meat. As the AsapSCIENCE guys explain, the skin and blubber of raw meat actually contains high amounts of vitamin C, but the cooking process destroys it.

If you were to eat it raw, you’d be all good for your vitamin C intake, but you might also up your count of bacterial diseases depending on how fresh the meat is.

But here’s the thing – Inuit populations in Canada pretty much exclusively ate fish and other sea creatures, with minimal fruit, veggies, animal products, or carbs.

They still need the same nutrients as the rest of us – so what gives?

We’ll let the video above explain that one, but for everyone else, we would definitely recommend eating your fruit and veggies – it’s literally a life saver.

The Secret Reason We Eat Meat, According To Psychologist Dr. Melanie Joy. 

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Why do humans eat meat? If you ask the average Joe, they’ll tell you it’s because meat tastes good. If you ask Dr. Melanie Joy, however, who has been studying the psychological drive behind eating meat for decades, she’ll give you a much darker — albeit interesting — answer.  As EducateInspireChange reports, Dr. Joy believes humans eat meat due to the long-engrained ideology of carnism, versus veganism.

“Carnism is a dominant ideology, which means it’s embedded deeply in society to the point that it’s considered ‘just the way things are,’” Joy explained. “But just because something isn’t recognized or is viewed as ‘how things are’ doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Racism wasn’t recognized as a problem or ideology at a point in history but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. It [carnism] has just been around for so long that it’s taken for granted.”

Referring to kids eating chicken wings in her example, she added: “When we’re born into a world with a dominant ideology, we can’t help but see the world through that lens. There are people in this world who absolutely need to eat meat because geographically or socially, that’s where they are. Most people, though, have a choice when it comes to eating animals, they’re just not aware of it because they’re blinded by the ideology.”

Watch the animated video below:

The psychologist explains that one of the methods which perpetuates carnism is keeping the process of slaughter and processing out of sight. When cows, chickens, pigs and other livestock are milked, butchered, or kept in tiny crates away from the public’s eye, it remains easy to keep the populace ignorant about what takes place in modern-day agricultural factories.

 During her lesson, Joy presented a few examples that stamp out the notion that carnism is “right” or “intelligent.” For instance, she shared that an average pig has the intelligence of a 3-year-old human being. She also relayed that chickens are able to distinguish between 100 different faces of members of their species — they also have about 30 different calls to signal types of threats. Additionally, she explained that scientists have determined that certain fish have intelligence and pain receptors; this is why in some places in the world, it is illegal to keep fish in small bowls or to boil lobsters alive.

Joy added that agro-businesses go to great lengths to keep the public ignorant about how violent and cruel the process of making meat actually is. Like Paul McCartney said, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.” Joy’s ultimate goal is to prompt people to acknowledge that there is, in fact, an ideology. She elaborates on this in her TEDX Talk, “Beyond Carnism and Toward Rational, Authentic Food Choices,” which has become one of the top one percent most viewed talks of all time.

Watch her TEDX Talk below:

 

The Big Fat Lie You’ve Been Told About What’s Hurting Your Heart

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Despite multiple studies showing that carbohydrates hurt your heart, and not saturated fats, misguided advisories and Big Pharma profiteering both persist.

There is no need to stay away from meat, butter, cheese and eggs to keep your heart healthy. Credit: RitaE/pixabay

There is no need to stay away from meat, butter, cheese and eggs to keep your heart healthy.

I’ve been taught since my undergraduate days in medical college that eating saturated fats was to ask for trouble. Meat (red or white), cheese, butter and egg yolk were prohibited. Repeated guidelines from the American Heart Association (AHA), the American College of Cardiology and even the World Health Organisation were clear that fats in general, and saturated fats in particular, were to be strictly avoided to prevent a heart attack. The message was to reduce fats to less than 30% of the total calories consumed in a day, and with saturated fats to be kept well below 10%. Why, most people on the planet followed these dietary commandments from the two most powerful and respected cardiology associations.

The AHA declared in 1961 that saturated fats were bad because they increased blood cholesterol, which blocked coronary arteries and caused heart attacks. Surprisingly, the AHA was driven this conclusion by the hypothesis of one physiologist who didn’t bother to submit a shred of evidence. Ancel Benjamin Keys, a physiologist with a PhD from Cambridge University, stamped his ‘diet heart’ hypothesis into the consciousness of Paul Dudley White, a founder-member of the AHA. White was attending to Dwight Eisenhower, then the US president, who suffered his first heart attack in September 1955. Many middle aged Americans were succumbing to heart attacks in the 1950s and the situation demanded convincing answers from the health community. Eisenhower had helmed NATO and, before that, had been the supreme commander of the Allied forces that wrenched Europe back Europe from the Nazis.

Eisenhower managed the brilliant generals George Patton and Bernard Montgomery, and famously warned the American public in his farewell address of the “military-industrial complex”. But as president, he had no clue of the new and rapidly developing “health-pharmaceutical-industrial complex.”

Keys was able to launch his ‘diet heart’ hypothesis because there was little science available in the 1950s that could explain the near-epidemic heart attack among middle-aged Americans. He presented his “seven countries study” that displayed a clear association between eating greater amounts of saturated fats and deaths due to heart disease. The seven countries were the US, Japan, Yugoslavia, Netherlands, Italy, Greece and Finland. The method behind the study was seriously flawed, however.

The biggest was that Keys had cherry-picked these countries because they supported his hypothesis. He left out 15 countries that did not reveal any association between saturated-fat consumption and heart mortality. He conveniently ignored Denmark, Sweden and Norway, each of which had relatively few deaths from heart attacks in spite of sporting diets with lots of saturated fats. And Chile, on the other hand, had a high cardiac mortality despite eating little saturated fats. An unbiased investigator would have realised these problems in Keys’ hypothesis – as they do now – but didn’t: they hadn’t been presented with the complete data.

Keys also checked food samples for fats in less than 4% of the 12,000 participants he studied, and when the food was studied it was checked for a single day among the American and for less than a week among the European participants. Keys had been impressed by the large number of long-lived people on the Greek island of Crete, but had tested them when they’d been fasting for more than a month during a religious festival. In this period, more than 60% of the population abstained from meat, butter and cheese. This led Keys to the wrong conclusion that a low-fat diet was the key to longevity.

The AHA was so impressed by the ‘diet heart’ hypothesis that it made an official policy of it, and voila! By 1977, more than 220 million Americans were being urged by the US government to adhere to a low-fat diet. The British, true to form, officially imposed the same diet guidelines by 1984 on their subjects.

Remarkably, the AHA ignored no fewer than six randomised studies – including almost 2,500 heart patients – that showed no difference in mortality between the intervention group (low saturated-fat diet) and the control group (which continued with its regular eating habits). Both the intervention and control cohorts had 370 deaths each. Moreover, no women were being studied, and in the absence of a single primary prevention trial, the AHA and the US government had formulated their advisories.

The food industry also got in on the action. Vegetable oils started being manufactured in the millions of tons. Leading them all was Procter and Gamble, which began to aggressively market cottonseed oil – as well as make a sizeable donation to the AHA, an amount worth $20 million today. The corresponding “diet-food-health-industrial complex” has not looked back in the 60 years since.

The largest randomised trial assessing the effects of a low-fat diet on heart and cardiovascular diseases was the Women’s Health Initiative. It followed up 49,000 postmenopausal women who had been on a low-fat diet (alongside an increased intake of fruits, vegetables and grains) for eight years but had failed to lower their risks of death, heart attack, stroke or diabetes.

Two large reviews and meta-analyses (this and this) involving more than 600,000 participants have also failed to show any reduction in cardiovascular events, or death, by replacing saturated fats with vegetable oils. There was an increase in cardiovascular events due to trans-fats.

The Minnesota, DIRECT, Framingham and PURE studies

In 1967-1973, doctors intervened in the diets of a group of people randomly picked from a cohort of 9,000 for the famous Minnesota Coronary Experiment. The intervened group had saturated fats replaced by a polyunsaturated vegetable oil. The control group continued with their regular American diet. These people were from enrolled from mental institutions and from homes for the elderly. More than 2,500 participants continued on their respective diets for at least a year, and autopsy reports were available for about 140 deaths. This trial’s results were never published until a group of investigators got its hands on all the raw data.

They were dumbstruck to learn that the autopsies revealed 42% of the people in the intervention group had suffered a heart attack against only 22% in the control group. Both groups had similar amounts of atherosclerosis in their coronary arteries.

The other major finding was that, in spite of a 13% reduction in blood cholesterol with a vegetable-oil diet, there was a paradoxical 30% higher mortality in people older than 65 years. To explain this, the investigators hypothesised that the lowered cholesterol had the denser LDL particles that are oxidised more easily and so invade the coronary faster. As it happened, the principal investigator of the Minnesota Coronary Experiment was none other than Ancel Keys.

The other distinct possibility (to explain the mortality paradox) is that polyunsaturated vegetable oils produce hundreds of oxidised molecules that are toxic to the human body. For example, the aldehydes are carcinogenic apart from being able to compromise cognition. Another randomised trial assessing the replacement of saturated fats by corn oil also showed an increased mortality against the control group.

More recently, the DIRECT trial finished up in Israel in 2008. It divided participants into three groups. The first was kept on a low-fat diet; the second, a Mediterranean diet; and the third, a low-carbohydrate high-fat diet. At the end of follow-up period, the low carbohydrate high fat group was found to have lost the most weight, have the highest levels of HDL (a.k.a., ‘good cholesterol’) and have triglyceride levels lower than the high-fat group. In fact, the low-carbohydrate high-fat group also had better metabolic markers across the board.

The Framingham study, which began in 1948 and still continues, has been following the consumption of dietary fats and the development of heart disease among its 5000+ inhabitants, chosen from Framingham, Massachusetts. At the end of the first follow-up, the investigators were unable to find any correlation between fat-intake, cholesterol and heart disease.

But like with the Minnesota Coronary Experiment, the data was never deliberately published. In William Kannel, who served as the study’s the chief investigator in 1969-1979, at one point even stated: “That blood cholesterol is somehow intimately related to coronary atherosclerosis is no longer subject to reasonable doubt.” After a 30-year follow-up, the study reported that 1 mg% per year reduction in cholesterol was associated with 14% increased cardiovascular mortality and 11% total mortality.

Finally: the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiological (PURE) survey examined cardiovascular risk factors around the world in 2003-2009, with more than 150,000 participants. Though the results are yet to be published, a recently leaked (and now unavailable) video stated that there seemed to be no correlation between saturated fats (red meat, white meat, dairy products) and heart disease but a positive correlation between carbohydrates and heart disease. Moreover, a very sensitive cardiac-risk-factor marker was found to have increased with carbohydrates and reduced by saturated fats. Vegetables and fruits had no effect on the marker.

Though the PURE trial was very large, it was an observational that, strictly speaking, can’t explain causality.

So, based on the evidence obtained from well-conducted clinical trials, Keys’s ‘diet heart’ hypothesis is wrong. However, it remains to be seen when the big cardiac bureaucracies will begin to edit their guidelines. The ‘big cholesterol is bad’ maxim remains firmly in place because its persistence allows drugmakers to persist with large profit margins on drugs that may not even be necessary. Precisely this was confirmed by the FOURIER trial presented in the American College of Cardiology Meeting held in March 2017.

FOURIER was a ‘mega-trial’ that randomised 28,000 cardiac patients to a statin-plus-evelocumab versus a only-statins for two years. The annual cost of an evelocumab regime is $14,000 (Rs 9 lakh). In the end, LDL cholesterol levels had plunged to about 30 mg% in the evelocumab group versus about 90 mg in the only-statins group. There was also a 1.5% absolute reduction in stroke and myocardial infarction risks but – get this – no reduction in mortality. Implication: 75 patients will need to be treated for two years to prevent a single heart attack or stroke, at a total cost of Rs 13.5 crore. You’re likely to get a better deal without spending a penny by following the Copenhagen study: 10 minutes of slow-jogging per day reduced mortality by 70% compared to being sedentary the whole day.

It’s difficult to not feel dizzy when confronted by organisations like the AHA and the WHO, which have converted hypotheses into dogma etched on stone without any evidence in the past. But what then would be good and sane dietary advice to a layperson? There has to be an application of common-sense, a request to continue to eat fruits, vegetables, whole grains and nuts. At the same time, there is no need to stay away from meat, butter, cheese and eggs. There is no evidence that eating saturated fats along with reasonable amounts of proteins, with about 45% of calories as carbohydrates will, trigger a heart attack. Au contraire: evidence has emerged that increasing carbohydrates to 55% or more can actually be harmful to the heart. Even the current obesity epidemic and type-2 diabetes are most likely the handiwork of an increased carbohydrate intake that has replaced fats in people’s diets.

Source:thewire.in

Five things would happen if everyone stopped eating meat

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We’ve come to the end of World Week for the Abolition of Meat, but people in the west still won’t make a simple change that could change the fortunes of the whole world.

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Livestock are responsible for consuming the majority of the world’s grains and soy crops. 

Today marks the end of World Week for the Abolition of Meat – an appropriate time to ask ourselves what would happen if those of us who live in the developed world, with its ample choices, opted for a beet burger instead of a beef burger every time we sat down to eat. (Hint: cows would not take over the world.)

The world’s hungry would no longer be hungry

Yes, your beef or pork may be locally grown, but what about the animals’ feed? Vegetarians and vegans aren’t gobbling up all the grains and soybeans – cattle are. A staggering 97 per cent of the world’s soya crop is fed to livestock.

It would take 40 million tons of food to eliminate the most extreme cases of world hunger, yet nearly 20 times that amount of grain is fed to farmed animals every year in order to produce meat. In a world where an estimated 850 million people do not have enough to eat, it is criminally wasteful to feed perfectly edible food to animals on farms in order to produce a burger rather than feeding it directly to people, especially when you consider that it takes roughly six pounds of grain to produce one pound of pork. As long as a single child goes hungry, this kind of waste is unconscionable.

There would more land available for our growing population

Countries around the globe are bulldozing huge swathes of land in order to make room for more factory farms to house all the additional chickens, cows and other animals as well as for the huge quantities of crops needed to feed them. But when you eat plant foods directly, instead of indirectly eating bushels and bushels of grain and soya that have been funnelled through animals first, you need a lot less land.

Vegfam, a charity which funds sustainable plant-food projects, estimates that a 10-acre farm can support 60 people by growing soybeans, 24 people by growing wheat or 10 people by growing maize, but only two by raising cattle. What’s more, Dutch scientists predict that 2.7 billion hectares of land currently used for cattle grazing would be freed up by global vegetarianism, along with 100 million hectares of land currently used to grow crops for livestock.

With the population of the UK expected to exceed 70 million by 2030, we’ll need all the land we can get to accommodate the extra demand for living space and food.

Billions of animals would avoid a lifetime of suffering

On many industrial farms, animals are kept in cramped conditions and will never raise families, forage for food or do anything else that is natural and important to them. Most won’t even get to feel the warmth of the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto lorries headed for the abattoir. There is no better way to help animals and prevent their suffering than by choosing not to eat them.

The risk of dangerous antibiotic resistance would reduce

Factory-farmed animals are disease-ridden as a result of being crammed by the thousands into filthy sheds, which are a breeding ground for new strains of dangerous bacteria and viruses. Pigs, chickens and other animals on factory farms are fed a steady diet of drugs to keep them alive in these unsanitary, stressful conditions, increasing the chance that drug-resistant superbugs will develop.

A senior officer with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation called the intensive industrial farming of livestock an “opportunity for emerging disease”, while the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that “much of antibiotic use in animals is unnecessary and inappropriate and makes everyone less safe”.

Sure, the overprescribing of antibiotics for humans plays a part in antibiotic resistance. But eliminating the factory farms from which many antibiotic-resistant bacteria emerge would make it more likely that we could continue to count on antibiotics to cure serious illnesses.

The NHS would be under less strain

Obesity is literally killing British people. The NHS has warned that, if left unchecked, the country’s obesity rates will bankrupt the health service. Meat, dairy foods and eggs – all of which contain cholesterol and saturated fat – are the main culprits in obesity, which contributes to the UK’s top killers: heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and various types of cancer.

Trump can be stopped from winning the Republican nomination

Yes, there are overweight vegetarians and vegans, just as there are skinny meat-eaters. But, on average, vegans are about one-tenth as likely to be obese as their meat eating counterparts. Once you replace high-fat animal-derived foods with healthy fruits, veggies and grains, it becomes a lot harder to pile on the pounds. What’s more, many health problems can be alleviated and even reversed by switching to a plant-based diet.

Going vegan might not make the world a perfect place, but it would help make it a kinder, greener, healthier one.

Meat contributes to obesity as much as sugar, research suggests

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Has the growing availability of meat contributed to the boom in obesity as much as sugar?

The consumption of meat contributes just as much as sugar to the growing prevalence of global obesity, new research suggests.

According to scientists at the University of Adelaide, fats and carbohydrates can provide us with enough energy to meet our demands, and are digested faster than protein, meaning the energy stored in meat is used later, or if surplus to requirements, is converted and stored as fat in the body.

This means that increased availability of meat may be making a significant contribution to global waist sizes.

University of Adelaide PhD student Wenpeng You examined the global availability of sugar and meat and the impact it had on obesity rates in 170 countries, and found a strong correlation between the two.

After accounting for differences between countries, including levels of urbanisation, physical activity and calorific intake, the research found the availability of meat could account for 13% of the obesity rate – the same level as sugar.

Speaking about his research to the University of Adelaide website, Mr You said: “There is a dogma that fats and carbohydrates, especially fats, are the major factors contributing to obesity.

“Whether we like it or not, fats and carbohydrates in modern diets are supplying enough energy to meet our daily needs. Because meat protein is digested later than fats and carbohydrates, this makes the energy we receive from protein a surplus, which is then converted and stored as fat in the human body.”

Raising a child to eat meat is more extreme than veganism

The study differs from previous research into links between meat and obesity, which have linked meat’s fat content to weight problems.

But Mr You says it is the protein in meat which is directly responsible.

Professor Maciej Henneberg, head of the university’s Biological Anthropology and Comparative Anatomy Research Unit said: “Our findings are likely to be controversial because they suggest that meat contributes to obesity prevalence worldwide at the same extent as sugar.

“While we believe it’s important that the public should be alert to the over-consumption of sugar and some fats in their diets, based on our findings we believe meat protein in the human diet is also making a significant contribution to obesity.”

Mr You presented the findings of his work at the 18th International Conference on Nutrition and Food Sciences in Zurich, Switzerland.

Here Is How To Recognize Which Meat Is Carcinogenic?

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After the World Health Organization has reported that these foods can cause cancer, anxiety has increase among many people.

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Selecting ingredients requires great caution, which is why we present you a brief guide on how to avoid the dangers that hide in your favorite foods.

These are cases when you should not add bacon, sausages, hot dogs and meat spreads in your shopping cart.

First of all, get a magnifying glass in order to be able to read about what you are buying. Not always, but usually the declarations are written in tiny letters, so even if you do not have vision problems – it will be difficult to read this declaration.

After that, you need to remember these useful advices:

It is mandatory to read the declaration

– If there is a mark “MSM” it means the meat is mechanically separated, ground together with the bones, in which antibiotics, hormones, heavy metals and other toxins that have been in the animal have been deposited.

– The same applies when you find on the declaration emulgator nitrites, which are labeled as E249, E250, E251 and E252.

These emulgators together with the amino acids from meat produce carcinogenic nitrosamine compounds.

– The emulgators Е451, Е252 and Е453 are genotoxic or rather “plastic” and damage the genes.

– You should be extremely careful for the product you purchase not to contain E407, carrageenan mark. This substance sticks to the walls of the intestine, and create wounds which later can turn into colon cancer.

– If the product contains a flavor enhancer, glutamate, it may mean that it has no meat in the product at all.

All the above mentioned information applies to durable and semi-durable meat products.

When it comes to meat, for example, if you are buying pork cutlets, pay attention whether the meat is interspersed with fatty veins. This is proof that the animal has not been fed as bad.

If there is not even one gram of white fat and water is dripping from it, it is proof that besides food the pig received growth hormones and antibiotics.

– See more at: http://www.timefornaturalhealthcare.com/here-is-how-to-recognize-which-meat-is-carcinogenic/#sthash.9azYQWt3.dpuf

Probiotics may save patients from deadly chemotherapy.

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If you or someone you love is facing the possibility of cancer or chemotherapy, make sure they read this story. Breakthrough new science conducted at the University of Michigan and about to be published in the journal Nature reveals that intestinal health is the key to surviving chemotherapy.

 

The study itself is very difficult for laypeople to parse, however, so I’m going to translate into everyday language while also offering additional interpretations of the research that the original study author is likely unable to state due to the nutritional censorship of medical journals and universities, both of which have an anti-nutrition bias.

The upshot is this: A clinical study gave mice lethal injections of chemotherapy that would, pound for pound, kill most adult human beings, too. The study authors openly admit: “All tumors from different tissues and organs can be killed by high doses of chemotherapy and radiation, but the current challenge for treating the later-staged metastasized cancer is that you actually kill the [patient] before you kill the tumor.” (See sources below.)

Chemotherapy is deadly. It is the No. 1 cause of death for cancer patients in America, and the No. 1 side effect of chemo is more cancer. But certain mice in the study managed to survive the lethal doses of chemo. How did they do that? They were injected with a molecule that your own body produces naturally. It’s production is engineered right into your genes, and given the right gene expression in an environment of good nutrition (meaning the cellular environment), you can generate this substance all by yourself, 24 hours a day.

The substance is called “Rspo1″ or “R-spondon1.” It activates stem cell production within your own intestinal walls, and these stem cells are like super tissue regeneration machines that rebuild damaged tissues faster than the chemotherapy can destroy them, thereby allowing the patient to survive an otherwise deadly does of chemo poison.

As the study showed, 50 – 75 percent of the mice who were given R-spondon1 survived the fatal chemotherapy dose!

The cancer industry needs to find a way to stop killing all their customers

The problem with the cancer industry today is that all the conventional cancer treatments keep killing the patients. This is bad for business. So the purpose of research like the R-spondon1 research mentioned here — which was funded by a government grant — is to find ways to keep giving patients deadly doses of high-profit chemotherapy without actually killing them. You slap a patient with a dose of R-spondon1 (sold at $50,000 a dose as a patented “drug,” of course), dose ‘em up with a fatal injection of chemotherapy, and then thanks to the R-spondon1 you get a repeat cancer customers instead of a corpse.

That’s called “good business practices” in the cancer industry, which is so far best known for turning patients into body bags rather than actually curing cancer.

(Yes, there is a reason why most oncologists would never undergo chemotherapy themselves. They know it doesn’t work on 98% of all cancers.)

Probiotics are likely the key to generating your own R-spondon1

Before I discuss why these findings are so important for followers of natural health and nutrition, let me first offer a disclaimer. The research mentioned here was conducted on mice, not humans, so it isn’t full proof that the same mechanism works in humans. Nevertheless, the reason mice are used for such research is because they are nearly identical to humans in terms of biology, gene expression, endocrine system function and more.

Furthermore, even though this study used an injection of R-spondon1 as the “activator” of gene expression in endothelial cells of the intestinal lining, in truth your cells already possess the blueprint to produce R-spondon1 on their own. In fact, human intestines are coated with a layer of epithelial cells that are regenerated every 4-5 days in a healthy person. This is only possible through the activation and continued operation of intestinal stem cells, a normal function for a healthy human.

And what determines the health of those stem cells more than anything else? Their local environment which is predominantly determined by gut bacteria. If your gut bacteria are in balance, the gene expression of your epithelial cells is normal and healthy. If your gut bacteria are out of whack, so to speak, the gene expression of your epithelial cells will be suppressed, thereby slowing or halting the regenerative potential of your intestinal cells. This is why people who have imbalanced intestinal flora also suffer from inflammatory intestinal conditions such as Crohn’s, IBS and so on.

Thus, probiotics are a key determining factor in the ability of your intestines to maintain the appropriate gene expression for the very kind of rapid cellular regeneration that can help your body survive a fatal dose of chemotherapy.

Meat and dairy cause devastating gut flora imbalances that may increase susceptibility to chemotherapy drugs

This may also explain why people who eat large quantities of processed meat, cheese and dead, pasteurized dairy products — especially when combined with starchy carbohydrates and processed sugars — are far more likely to die from chemotherapy than people who eat more plant-based diets. (There isn’t yet a source to substantiate this claim, but it’s something I’ve noted from considerable personal observation. You may have noticed it too among your own family members who have undergone chemotherapy treatments. Those with the worst diets seem to have far higher fatality rates.)

Those who consume processed meat and dead dairy have their intestines filled with fiber-less, difficult-to-digest proteins that are putrefied and sit in the intestines for 2 – 5 days, typically. Dietary sugars and carbohydrates then feed the bacteria fermentation process, resulting in the rapid growth and replication of sugar-feeding bacteria that displace the kind of healthy flora which best protect intestinal wall cells.

This imbalance, I suggest, increases susceptibility to chemotherapy toxicity while simultaneously impairing the ability of the patient to absorb key nutrients that protect healthy cells from the toxicity of chemo drugs. This may explain why patients who heavily consume meat, cheese and dairy diets tend to die so easily when exposed to chemotherapy.

But there’s something even more alarming about all this that everyone needs to know…

Antibiotics may also set you up to be killed by chemo

Although the research did not directly address this question, its findings seem to indicate that the kind of gut bacteria “wipeout” caused by antibiotics could prove fatal to a chemotherapy patient.

This is especially worrisome because many cancer patients are simultaneously prescribed antibiotics as they undergo chemotherapy. This could be a death sentence in disguise. While neither the antibiotics nor the chemo directly kill the patient, the combination of sterilized gut bacteria and highly-toxic chemotherapy drugs could multiply the toxicity and prove fatal. The death certificate, however, will say the patient died from “cancer,” not from the chemotherapy which is usually the actual cause of death.

And yet, every single day in America, patients who are taking antibiotics are subjected to multiple courses of chemotherapy. This may quite literally be a death sentence for those patients.

There’s also a self-fulfilling death spiral at work in all this: following the first round of chemotherapy, many patients suffer from weakened immune system that result in symptomatic infections. Physicians respond to this by prescribing antibiotics, resulting in the patient undergoing subsequent rounds of chemotherapy with “wiped out” gut flora. So the chemo causes the problem in the first place, and then the response to the problem by western doctors makes the next round of chemo fatal. This is a self-fulfilling death spiral of failed medicine.

Oncologists seem to have no awareness whatsoever of the importance of gut bacteria in allowing patients to protect their own healthy cells from the devastating effects of chemotherapy drugs. Many oncologists, in fact, actively discourage their patients from taking any sort of supplements during chemotherapy out of an irrational, anti-scientific fear that such supplements may “interfere” with the chemo and make the treatment fail.

This is one of the many ways in which oncologists get cancer patients killed.

Takeaway points from this article:

• New research shows that a substance generated by intestinal stem cells allows subjects to survive an otherwise fatal dose of toxic chemotherapy.

• Healthy gene expression of intestinal cells allows them to naturally produce protective molecules that support and boost cell regeneration.

• Probiotics may protect and support the intestinal stem cells that help cancer patients survive toxic chemotherapy. (More studies needed to explore this and document the impact.)

• Antibiotics may be a death sentence when followed by chemotherapy.

• Oncologists need to consider the risks and benefits of postponing chemotherapy in patients who are simultaneously taking antibiotics. The combination may be deadly. Conversely, they need to consider the benefits of encouraging chemotherapy patients to take probiotic supplements before beginning chemotherapy treatment.

Source: naturalnews.com