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My last article, on the pros and cons of eating meat, got quite a lot of comments. Clearly, it’s an issue the members of our community have given a lot of thought, and one we often struggle to reconcile within ourselves. On the pros side, many people feel healthiest when meat is part of their diet. Some have numerous sensitivities to plant foods, eggs, and dairy products, and meat is one of the few things that sits well in their body. Indeed, one could argue that the human race would have ended millennia ago if we hadn’t eaten meat.
On the cons side, large scale meat production has many destructive impacts on the environment. Farm animals are often raised in a way that lacks a reverence for life, and sometimes is downright cruel. And numerous studies claim that a high meat diet increases one’s risk of certain cancers and ischemic heart disease. (It should be noted, however, that some large studies have found no significant difference in all-cause mortality rates between vegetarians/vegans and meat-eaters.)
So, where do we go from here? First, I feel I should tell you my qualifications to lead such a discussion. In addition to being a nutritionally-oriented medical provider, I have a degree in plant and soil sciences from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where I focused on sustainable and organic agriculture. I've been studying ecology for over 25 years, and although I still wouldn't call myself an expert, I know more about this stuff, and have more clinical experience with the human health elements of it, than the average zealous blogger.
I specifically try not to be a zealot because zealotry makes us intolerant to opposing viewpoints and therefore keeps us from seeing the whole truth. You can trust that I have looked at this from many angles and I am passionate about saving the planet and finding long-term solutions that are in the best interests of the greatest number of people.
Now, let’s look closer at these pros and cons.
Some people feel better and have better objective measures of health when meat is part of their diet. In my opinion, there’s really no arguing with this. Bodies are different and some bodies thrive on meat. Does this mean everyone thrives on meat? No.
Does this mean we need meat to thrive? No, but for some, it may take work (and sacrifice) to thrive as a vegetarian or vegan.
Does this mean those who do well with meat should have lots of it? Probably not. One of the things the longest lived cultures of the world have in common is that they all consume little meat.
Meat production has many destructive impacts on the environment and public health. If we care about the planet and the future of our species, this point needs our attention. With just a few exceptions, production of animal-based foods is much more resource-intensive than plant-based foods. Animal food production (especially red meat) uses much more land than plant crop production does. It also uses much more water, and simultaneously contributes to water pollution. Meat production (again, especially red) has a massive carbon footprint – both through greenhouse gases and deforestation (we need trees to sequester carbon like giant sponges).
Farm animals contribute in a big way to antibiotic resistance. 70 to 80 percent of the world’s antibiotics are administered to animals, and this is often done in a “preventive” way that’s totally unnecessary. (It’s worth noting that part of the reason this percentage is so high is because farm animals greatly outnumber humans, and doses for large animals are much larger than those for people.)
In short, the world can’t all consume animal products in the quantities that Americans and Europeans do. There isn’t enough Earth to support it. We can’t expect the rest of the world to bear this burden. We must eat less meat and also change the way we produce animal products to make them more sustainable.
Aren’t there sustainable ways to raise animals? Yes, animal husbandry can even restore poor land. But such practices represent a tiny minority of total agriculture and simply couldn’t be scaled to meet current demand.
Can plant farming be destructive too? Absolutely, though not as destructive in as many ways as meat production. We need to make all agriculture more sustainable.
Does the world need to go vegan? No, I have seen models that allow for some meat, egg, and dairy consumption – especially if they’re produced intelligently – but we do need to shift to a primarily plant-based diet if we endeavor to feed everyone and maintain a healthy planet.
Eating meat usually entails the mistreatment of animals. Chances are, if you eat meat at restaurants and you buy meat at the store, you are supporting agricultural practices that are unkind to animals. Animal welfare regulations have gotten a little better in the past few decades, but in the “factory farms” where about 95% of our food supply originates – humanity is generally not a core value. Are there exceptions? Definitely. Look for products from humanely-raised animals and get to know local farms. Because raising animals with compassion requires more space, expect the price to be higher – but isn’t it worth compensating farmers for giving animals a more natural and dignified existence?
If you care about these issues – health, animal welfare, the environment, hunger, etc. – I encourage you to read more and challenge your assumptions. As I said last time, we tolerate the negative impacts of meat consumption through a collective practice of willful ignorance. The food industry depends on it. As I see it, the global solution depends on a large-scale willingness to be uncomfortable – to recognize the cost of our choices, to seek out more conscientious sources even if they’re less convenient or more expensive, to reduce our consumption of factory-grade animal products, and so on.
What’s your story? What are your solutions? What changes are you willing to make? Share below!
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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When I sit down to write an article, I often feel like I’m having a conversation with you, the reader. Except that it’s a one-sided conversation, in which I never ask you about yourself and I just monopolize the whole exchange. So. . . how about a little more about me? I grew up building robots, programming my own video games, and distributing surveys on bizarre topics around my high school. In the enneagram system of personality analysis (remotely like Myers-Briggs), I’m what’s known as a “number five” – AKA “The Investigator” or “The Scientist.” I have spent many a night jumping from one Wikipedia article to the next, or curled up with a thousand page book on herbs.
One of the topics I like investigating the most is major historical shifts in human health, behavior, and life expectancy – i.e., big changes in small periods of time. If you were to follow the trend of human life expectancy over the course of our existence, you’d see a very, very gradual slope upward and then a sharp jump in just the tiniest, most recent slice of time. This sharp upward jump began at different times in different parts of the world, but in the United States, as recently as 1850 the life expectancy at birth for a white male was just 38. Today it’s about 76.
It’s really a profound thing. Modern humans have been around for about 200,000 years. This 150 year revolution of life expectancy has occurred in just the last 0.00075% of our existence. Incidentally, a historical graph of world population shows a similar trend. It increased very, very slowly, and took a few massive hits, especially during the fourteenth century. (As centuries go, the 1300s were pretty much the crappiest ever. They were marked by famine, plague, crime, and general idiocy.) After that, the population continued to grow again, but still rather slowly compared to what began to happen around 1800. In 1800, the world population was 1 billion. In March of 2012, it hit 7 billion.
An anthropologist from another planet looking at a graph of these trends would probably point to that last slice of time and ask, “What the hell happened there?” Well, there are two very important words I used in a sentence about life expectancy a couple paragraphs ago: “at birth.” At birth, a white baby boy in 1850 was expected to live to 38.3 on average. But if he survived to age ten, his revised life expectancy would be 58 – a huge improvement.
At birth, a white baby boy in 2011 was expected to live to 76.3. If he survived to age ten, his revised life expectancy would be 76.9. There’s barely a difference.
If that child from 1850 made it to age 50, his life expectancy would then be 72. Today’s white boy at age 50 would have a life expectancy of 79.6. Again, there’s barely a difference. So, as you can see, the narrowing of the gap has occurred almost entirely in the early years of life. And there are two important conclusions to be made from this.
First, the tremendous increase in life expectancy at birth can be attributed primarily to three things - better sanitation and cleaner living conditions, better safety standards, and better medicine, including vaccinations. Whatever issues we may have with vaccines (and there certainly are some), it’s undeniable that they’ve hugely decreased child mortality.
Second, we’ve made a much smaller dent in the maximum human lifespan. As an adult British aristocrat in the 1200s, you could expect to live to age 64. By the 1500s, if you made it to age 21, you’d probably live to be about 71. And in the past several centuries, these numbers have barely changed.
Nowadays, if we want to live longer we need to take the long view, since most of us won’t die of infections or accidents. The things old people die of are often decades in the making. The primary killers are coronary heart disease (disturbance in blood supply to heart muscle) and stroke (disturbance in blood supply to the brain), both of which are blood vessel issues. Blood vessels don’t just get hard, clogged, or weak overnight, so there’s a huge opportunity to make a positive difference in this process.
As I see it, there are three main interventions that have the most impact. The first is nutrition, and my nutshell recommendation is to strictly limit consumption of sugars and flour, moderately limit red meat and dairy consumption, and have plenty of vegetables, herbs and spices, fruits and fish. The second is exercise, and the best exercise is a form you enjoy and that you can happily do every day. The third is connection – connection to people, connection to nature, connection to whatever you call the greater power that keeps it all going.
I’ll be writing more about these trends and, in particular, the nutrition factor, this month. Meanwhile, I encourage you to choose one of these areas of positive intervention to focus on each day this week – food, exercise, or connection.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Big Changes in Small Periods
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In the past month's series on nutrition, I explained how the manner in which we eat can affect us as much as our food choices can. We looked at the vital roles that cooking and chewing play in digestion, and the importance of eating slowly and not too much. And I described the digestive tract from the mouth to the stomach. I think it’s important that everyone understands at least the basics of how their organs work, so let's look at the rest of the digestive tract this time.
Although we may have teeth and reality TV, we’re more like worms than we like to think. We’re all just a bunch of cylinders, with a tube of the outside world running through us. Worms put dirt in theirs, we put marshmallows in ours.
After the mouth, esophagus, and stomach, food enters the small intestine, which is about 23 feet long. It's where most nutrient absorption takes place, and all the value of good nutrition hinges on good absorption. At the beginning of the small intestine, a bunch of gastric juice is injected from the pancreas and gallbladder, which neutralizes the acidic food coming from the stomach, and makes the nutrients more absorbable. The pancreas produces a blend of digestive enzymes that break down the different components of food - fat, carbohydrates, and protein. The gallbladder squirts out bile (which is produced in the liver) to make fats absorbable.
The lining of the small intestine is composed of many folds, covered with tiny hair-like protrusions called villi (which are further covered with tinier hairs called microvilli). These greatly increase the surface area of the small intestine to maximize nutrient absorption. Some inflammatory conditions, such as celiac disease (gluten intolerance) and bacterial overgrowth of the small intestine (SIBO) can damage this membrane, leading to malnutrition.
The small intestine is followed by the much shorter but wider large intestine (most of which is called the colon). Food spends a very long time in the large intestine, where water and some remaining nutrients are absorbed, and stool is compacted and waits to be liberated. Finally, the stuff we can’t digest, along with waste products from throughout the body, leaves the rectum as stool. About 60 percent of its dry weight is bacteria.
Where does it come from? Riding along with us in our intestines are about 100 trillion microorganism passengers. There are about 500 different kinds, most of which are bacteria. They’re known as our “gut flora,” and they do all sorts of useful things for us, such as helping us digest things, protecting us from harmful microbes, synthesizing some vitamins, stimulating growth of intestinal cells, and assisting the immune system. We acquire these microscopic pals by eating food that’s contaminated with them or deliberately cultured with them (like yogurt and sauerkraut), and by taking them in supplements known as probiotics.
So, as we’ve seen, our environment (what we select from it based on taste) literally passes through us. We make the outside world into ourselves. It’s a practice worth taking seriously. Besides the healthy eating practices I discussed previously, some of the main factors in good absorption are having enough gastric juice, having healthy gastric membranes, having a strong and healthy population of gut flora, and having a relaxed nervous system.
Cultivating a relaxed nervous system has many additional benefits, so spend time in nature, eat in a calm environment, get massages, meditate, do whatever works for you to become peaceful. As for gastric juice, insufficient enzyme secretion is pretty common. Consider a good digestive enzyme complex, taken at the beginning of a meal. I’ve had at least a hundred patients who have overcome longstanding digestive problems just by supplementing for a while with digestive enzymes. Some people who have trouble digesting fat do well to take a product that also contains ox bile. Finally, promote healthy gut flora by eating live, fermented/cultured foods on a regular basis, and occasionally taking a course of probiotics (especially after using antibiotics).
If you’re interested in learning more about the big picture of eating and nutrition, check out the four week course I developed for The Dragontree, called How to Eat.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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My last article, on the pros and cons of eating meat, got quite a lot of comments. Clearly, it’s an issue the members of our community have given a lot of thought, and one we often struggle to reconcile within ourselves. On the pros side, many people feel healthiest when meat is part of their diet. Some have numerous sensitivities to plant foods, eggs, and dairy products, and meat is one of the few things that sits well in their body. Indeed, one could argue that the human race would have ended millennia ago if we hadn’t eaten meat.
On the cons side, large scale meat production has many destructive impacts on the environment. Farm animals are often raised in a way that lacks a reverence for life, and sometimes is downright cruel. And numerous studies claim that a high meat diet increases one’s risk of certain cancers and ischemic heart disease. (It should be noted, however, that some large studies have found no significant difference in all-cause mortality rates between vegetarians/vegans and meat-eaters.)
So, where do we go from here? First, I feel I should tell you my qualifications to lead such a discussion. In addition to being a nutritionally-oriented medical provider, I have a degree in plant and soil sciences from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where I focused on sustainable and organic agriculture. I've been studying ecology for over 25 years, and although I still wouldn't call myself an expert, I know more about this stuff, and have more clinical experience with the human health elements of it, than the average zealous blogger.
I specifically try not to be a zealot because zealotry makes us intolerant to opposing viewpoints and therefore keeps us from seeing the whole truth. You can trust that I have looked at this from many angles and I am passionate about saving the planet and finding long-term solutions that are in the best interests of the greatest number of people.
Now, let’s look closer at these pros and cons.
Some people feel better and have better objective measures of health when meat is part of their diet. In my opinion, there’s really no arguing with this. Bodies are different and some bodies thrive on meat. Does this mean everyone thrives on meat? No.
Does this mean we need meat to thrive? No, but for some, it may take work (and sacrifice) to thrive as a vegetarian or vegan.
Does this mean those who do well with meat should have lots of it? Probably not. One of the things the longest lived cultures of the world have in common is that they all consume little meat.
Meat production has many destructive impacts on the environment and public health. If we care about the planet and the future of our species, this point needs our attention. With just a few exceptions, production of animal-based foods is much more resource-intensive than plant-based foods. Animal food production (especially red meat) uses much more land than plant crop production does. It also uses much more water, and simultaneously contributes to water pollution. Meat production (again, especially red) has a massive carbon footprint – both through greenhouse gases and deforestation (we need trees to sequester carbon like giant sponges).
Farm animals contribute in a big way to antibiotic resistance. 70 to 80 percent of the world’s antibiotics are administered to animals, and this is often done in a “preventive” way that’s totally unnecessary. (It’s worth noting that part of the reason this percentage is so high is because farm animals greatly outnumber humans, and doses for large animals are much larger than those for people.)
In short, the world can’t all consume animal products in the quantities that Americans and Europeans do. There isn’t enough Earth to support it. We can’t expect the rest of the world to bear this burden. We must eat less meat and also change the way we produce animal products to make them more sustainable.
Aren’t there sustainable ways to raise animals? Yes, animal husbandry can even restore poor land. But such practices represent a tiny minority of total agriculture and simply couldn’t be scaled to meet current demand.
Can plant farming be destructive too? Absolutely, though not as destructive in as many ways as meat production. We need to make all agriculture more sustainable.
Does the world need to go vegan? No, I have seen models that allow for some meat, egg, and dairy consumption – especially if they’re produced intelligently – but we do need to shift to a primarily plant-based diet if we endeavor to feed everyone and maintain a healthy planet.
Eating meat usually entails the mistreatment of animals. Chances are, if you eat meat at restaurants and you buy meat at the store, you are supporting agricultural practices that are unkind to animals. Animal welfare regulations have gotten a little better in the past few decades, but in the “factory farms” where about 95% of our food supply originates – humanity is generally not a core value. Are there exceptions? Definitely. Look for products from humanely-raised animals and get to know local farms. Because raising animals with compassion requires more space, expect the price to be higher – but isn’t it worth compensating farmers for giving animals a more natural and dignified existence?
If you care about these issues – health, animal welfare, the environment, hunger, etc. – I encourage you to read more and challenge your assumptions. As I said last time, we tolerate the negative impacts of meat consumption through a collective practice of willful ignorance. The food industry depends on it. As I see it, the global solution depends on a large-scale willingness to be uncomfortable – to recognize the cost of our choices, to seek out more conscientious sources even if they’re less convenient or more expensive, to reduce our consumption of factory-grade animal products, and so on.
What’s your story? What are your solutions? What changes are you willing to make? Share below!
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON PROBIOTICS?