I tend to need proof. I'll go on sketchy incomplete information, sometimes, but really, I'd like to know why.
This is part of what has gotten me recently into health and nutrition. There are just scads of information out there, and so much of it is just wrong!
I start with the 'sniff test.' If it sounds wrong from the start, there are pretty good odds that it's a lemon. (warning, I have my mix-o-matic blender going for when I run into metaphors. I may even mix my mixed metaphors.)
So here is where it all began. We were at the Brookfield Zoo, in the Chicago suburbs, on my mom's birthday, and they had an exhibit titled something like "The world connected" Or some such thing. I figured that would be cool to check out, so why not?
They had an illustration of people fishing, and under it was 'fish are caught off the coast of Chile.' OK, I am on board with that. The following sequence came along.. 'Fish are then flash frozen,' 'fish are shipped to the USA,' 'fish are ground into fish pellets/meal,' 'the fish meal is fed to cattle,' 'voila, you eat them!' (Or some such nonsense for the last picture of a cheeseburger on a plate.'
So... I wandered on, but mentally I kept returning to that last picture, and the picture that had the cow munching happily away on some cattle kibble. To myself, I kept thinking 'cows don't EAT FISH. WTF is wrong with this picture??!?!'
Within a few days of this, I had my conversation with Ash who turned me on to FatHead, and the rest is long sleepless nights reading study after study, blog after blog, gathering up information. Learning. Unlearning. Re-learning.
I have spent hours... and I mean days worth of hours, just trying to find a single study that says HFCS is good for you. Yeah, I know, but there must be ONE. Surely our loving government would not approve a foodstuff/additive/substitute for general consumption (it's in roughly 30,000 of the 35-40,000 items in a major city grocery store) without knowing the long term effects of introducing it into the food supply, would it?? Honest??
So about 2 weeks ago I posted some of the things I have found in the last year, and I will be backing them up one at a time, with footnotes, references, etc, so it is taking me a while to collect all the information right now. So sit tight, sports fans!
I've read more than I ever thought could be written about cholesterol. There is more to read. But I can tell you this right now, we're the only country in the world that is afraid of cholesterol. Here is a good sniff test question-- Would your body, all things being equal, and under normal circumstances, make anything for itself that was harmful?
Of course not. We would not have survived as a species. Period.
Well, your body makes cholesterol. Your diet (defined as what you eat, not a 'Diet,') has almost nothing to do with 'blood serum' levels of cholesterol. In fact, you are not measuring cholesterol in any of the tests, you are measuring the size of the proteins that carry the cholesterol around. LDL, HDL... Low Density Lipoprotein, High Density Lipoprotein. Cholesterol itself is not water soluble, so it can't dissolve in blood; it needs something to 'ferry' it around.
If you had no cholesterol in your diet, your body can manufacture all you need. This should tell you something. This is a BIG MONSTER clue that maybe this is something we need, not something we should be getting RID OF.
This will piss some people off- There are no historically vegan cultures. And vegetarians should be careful. Even historically vegetarian cultures eat some eggs, or trade for fish or fish roe, or drink milk (whole raw milk, not that low fat crap we have here.) Enjoying that low slow decline in your nervous system from lack of B12? If you MUST take supplements to support your diet, then there is probably something wrong with your nutrition.
There is an interesting concept called Bioavailability. Basically, it means how much nutrition can we absorb or take in of something before it exits the system. Bioavailability of human mother's milk is a perfect 100 for protein. For eggs it is also 100. Beef scores about 78-85, depending upon the cut/organ. This continues down until we reach the plants. Animal proteins are called 'whole proteins' due to their complete amino acid profile (This should be another one of the BIG CLUES.) If you are eating animal tissue, you can get your entire protein requirement from it. If you are eating plants for your proteins, you can get most of the amino acids, but not all.
So the bioavailability of meats tends to be quite a bit higher, so it is easier to 'access.' So in an 8 oz serving of beef liver, you would easily get a day's protein requirements for a fairly sedentary individual, but to get it from plants would require a good 2 lbs of plant. Makes my jaws hurt just thinking about it. (numbers are not exact, but the exact numbers ARE coming.)
So much more to come!
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