I've been researching the most common and devastating diseases Americans are dealing with, with the aim of finding a common thread running throughout both cause and reversal. As it is now, one out of every two of us will get cancer or heart disease, and one out of every three children born after the year 2000 will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. These are devastating diseases, certainly to those who are burdened by them, but also to a health care system that is struggling to keep up.
The extraordinary doctors and nutritional scientists I've talked with seem to be saying - and saying fervently - the same thing: a diet high in animal protein is disastrous to our health, while a plant-based (vegan) diet prevents disease and is restorative to our health. And they say this with peer-reviewed (the gold standard of studies) science to back them up. Even the very conservative ADA (American Dietetic Association) says: "Vegetarian diets are often associated with a number of health advantages, including lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure levels, and lower risk of hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index (BMI) and lower overall cancer rates."
Diabetes does not just mean you take a pill or injection every day. It means you can lose a decade of life. And you while you inch toward that uncomfortable end, you deal with an increased risk of heart attack, blindness, amputation, and loss of kidney function. It's a very serious disease. The good news is that diabetes can be halted and reversed in a very short time through some diet modifications.
To understand diabetes better, and to learn how to reverse it, I've talked with Dr. Neal Barnard, president of The Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine. He is an adjunct associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine, and the author of numerous scientific articles in leading peer-reviewed journals, and a frequent lecturer at the American Diabetes Association's scientific sessions. His diabetes research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Government's research branch. He is also the author of Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes.
KF: Why is type 2 diabetes suddenly so prevalent?
NB: Diets are changing, not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Diabetes seems to follow the spread of meaty, high-fat, high-calorie diets. In Japan, for example, the traditional rice-based diet kept the population generally healthy and thin for many centuries. Up until 1980, only 1-5% of Japanese adults over age 40 had diabetes. Starting around that time, however, the rapid westernization of the diet meant that meat, milk, cheese, and sodas became fashionable. Waistlines expanded, and, by 1990, diabetes prevalence in Japan had climbed to 11-12%.
The same sort of trend has occurred in the U.S. Over the last century, per capita meat consumption increased from about 150 pounds per year (which was already very high, compared with other countries) in the early 1900s to over 200 pounds today. In other words, the average American now eats 50 pounds more meat every year, compared with a century ago. In the same interval, cheese intake soared from less than 4 pounds per person per year to about 32 pounds today. Sugar intake has gone up, too, by about 30 pounds per person per year. Where are we putting all that extra meat, cheese, and sugar? It contributes to body fat, of course, and diabetes follows. Today, about 13% of the U.S. adult population has type 2 diabetes, although many of them are not yet aware they have it.
KF: What causes diabetes?
NB: Normally, the cells of the body use the simple sugar glucose as fuel, the way a car uses gasoline. Glucose comes from starchy or sweet foods we eat, and the hormone insulin escorts it into the muscle cells to power our movements. Glucose also passes into our brain cells to power our thoughts. In type 2 diabetes, the cells resist insulin's action, so glucose has trouble getting into the cells.
KF: What happens to the body when one develops diabetes? What's the fallout?
NB: If glucose can't get into the cells, it builds up in the blood. It is as if gasoline coming out of a gas pump somehow can't get into your gas tank, and it ends up spilling over the side of your car, coming in through your car windows, and dribbling all over the pavement. It is a dangerous situation. The abnormally high levels of glucose circulating in the bloodstream are toxic to the blood vessels, especially the tiny blood vessels of the eyes, the kidneys, the extremities, and the heart.
KF: Is it really that serious, or can we just take a drug for it?
NB: A person with diabetes loses more than a decade of life, on average; about three-quarters will die prematurely of a heart attack. It is also a leading cause of blindness, amputations, and loss of kidney function. Many drugs are available, from insulin to oral medications and an ever-increasing variety of other medications. In order to protect the heart, many patients are also put on medications to lower cholesterol and blood pressure. A person with diabetes who walks into my office is typically using $3,000 to $5,000 worth of medications each year. And yet these medications only slow the progression of the disease; many people have serious complications despite being on medications.
Let me emphasize that this grim scenario does not have to occur. If an unhealthy diet is the cause, a better diet can provide the answer to this problem.
KF: How can we avoid it?
NB: The key is to help our body's insulin to work normally. So long as your body's insulin can escort glucose into the cells normally, diabetes will not occur. The resistance to insulin that leads to diabetes appears to be caused by a build-up of fat inside the muscle cells and also inside the liver. Let me draw an analogy: I arrive home from work one day, and put my key in my front door lock. But I notice the key does not turn properly, and the door does not open. Peering inside the lock, I see that someone has jammed chewing gum into the lock. Now, if the insulin "key" cannot open up the cell to glucose, there is something interfering with it. It's not chewing gum, of course. The problem is fat. In the same way that chewing gum in a lock makes it hard to open your front door, fat particles inside muscle cells interfere with insulin's efforts to open the cell to glucose. This fat comes from beef, chicken, fish, cooking oils, dairy products, etc. The answer is to avoid these fatty foods. People who avoid all animal products obviously get no animal fat at all, they appear to have much less fat build-up inside their cells, and their risk of diabetes is extremely low. Minimizing vegetable oils helps, too.
And we can go beyond prevention. When people who already have diabetes adopt a low-fat vegan diet, their condition often improves dramatically. In our research, funded by the U.S. Government, we found that a vegan diet is more effective than a traditional current diabetes diet, and is much safer than a low-carb diet.
KF: What about the claim that a vegetarian diet has too many starches, which raises blood sugar?
NB: Starchy foods, such as whole grains, beans, and vegetables, are healthful foods, and the body is designed to use the glucose that they hold. In type 2 diabetes, the body has lost some of this ability. But the answer is not to avoid starches, but to restore the body's ability to use them. After all, cultures whose diets are traditionally high in carbohydrate--Japan, China, Latin America, etc.--have had very low diabetes rates until meat, cheese, and other fatty foods displace their healthy carbohydrate-rich diets; only then does diabetes becomes more common.
The Atkins fad unfortunately left many people imagining that carbohydrate (that is, starch) is somehow risky. That notion is as unscientific as suggesting that water or oxygen is dangerous. The body needs all these things for good health.
A similarly persistent but misguided idea is the blood-type diet approach. A popular book on this subject said that people with type A blood should follow a vegetarian diet but that people with type O blood should not. Unfortunately many readers with type O blood followed this advice, which turned out to be quite wrong. The fact is, people with type O blood do as well as everyone else on a plant-based diet. A vegan diet is helpful and effective, regardless of blood type.
KF: Can diabetes be reversed?
NB: Yes. When people begin a healthful diet, most see big improvements in weight, cholesterol, and their blood sugar. Their need for medications diminishes, and some may not need medications at all. In some cases, you would never know they had had diabetes. However, I caution people not to simply throw their medications away. They need to speak with their doctors so they can alter their medication regimens only when and if it is appropriate.
Let me describe a case: A man named Vance joined our study. His father was dead by age 30, and Vance was 31 when he was diagnosed with diabetes. As our study began, he started a low-fat, vegan diet and gradually lost about 60 pounds over a year's time. His blood sugar control returned to normal, and his doctor discontinued his medications. Imagine what it feels like to see family members assaulted by this disease, but then to realize that you have effectively tackled it by making healthful adjustments to your diet.
Vance also encouraged me to mention that it is not only blood sugar that gets better, his erectile dysfunction also improved dramatically, too--in case anyone needs an extra motivator.
For more information, go to http://www.pcrm.org/health/
Erin N. Marcus, M.D.: Preventing Diabetes on a Budget
For example, take ground beef, a relatively cheap meat as I understand it. 5 pounds of good quality ground beef costs ~$18.00 and cooks up to only be 3.75 pounds of food. Contrast this with brown lentils, which you can purchase for around $7.00/5 lb., and which, when you cook 1 cup of dried, you get 2 cups cooked.
Brown lentils are extremely healthy. A serving of cooked lentils has just 1g of fat with its 18g of protein and 37% of your RDA for iron. Lentils are versatile and can be used in any context where you may use ground beef. The beef has, if it's 80% lean, 15g of fat, 23g of protein, and just 13% of your iron RDA. That 15g of fat is cholesterol laden, saturated, insulin-resistance-building fat, and it's about as much fat as a person should eat in a day if they're trying to lose weight. It's not worth the extra 5 grams of protein, which is easily found more cheaply elsewhere.
[Nutrition info from http://www.nutritiondata.com/]
The evidence that vegetarianism makes diabetes worse is irrefutable. Diabetes is a disease where the body's ability to cope with sugars is overwhelmed. Starch, the key component of vegetarian diets, breaks down into sugar in the body, exacerbating the health issues faced by diabetics.
First there was Dean Ornish reversing heart disease, and now he has also reversed prostate cancer. There is Dr Caldwell Esselstyn from the Cleveland Clinic who reverse heart disease and prevented any further heart attacks in his patients. There is Dr John McDougall who has been helping people lose weight and reverse hearth disease on a starch and plant based diet. There is Dr Neal Barnard who has reversed diabetes in his pateints. And then there is The China Study showing the results for thousands of Chinese and that those who were the most vegan were also the least likely to develop western diseases like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Starch in fact is the mainstay of a vegan diet and I myself have reversed my abnormal blood sugar lab tests by becoming vegan. Do avoid refined carbohydrates though. Sugar and white flour are out.
I have heard so many people TALK about the health and environmental benefits of a vegan diet but it seems what they really CARE about is animal suffering, etc.
What if everyone starting eating vegetarian and people became healthier and the planet became healthier BUT...we would be TWICE as cruel to animals.
Would you be ok with that outcome?
I am interested in seeing the planet helped first and foremost. I think people should live healthier. I could care LESS about animals.
I don't think people should try to hurt or be cruel to animals, but like most people, beyond that I don't care. I have NO problem using animals for food and other products.
So, when I and people like me suspect that YOUR only goal is the animal cruelty angle and that the health and environmental benefits you speak of are just lies to further your PETA agenda, you lose us.
So, that is why I ask again, what if we could achieve extraordinary health and environmental goals but it would result in MORE animal cruelty, would that be ok?
2 out of 3, eh? That is a great success. OR, were those two just lies that you don't care about to hide your true goal, the PETA angle.
If you cared about other people and the planet, you'd be willing to make that trade off, but I suspect most of the people here would not...and, they show their true colors.
I would add that the laboratory testing they do on animals also is a concern especially if you realize that most of the diseases are caused from eating animals to begin with.
And then there is the huge tax burden for subsidizing the dairy and beef industries and all the purchasing programs for school lunches and nursing homes and healthcare subsidies.
There is really no end to where it stops, eating animals is a big problem.
http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/alpha-lipoic-000285.htm
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/03/24/Why-HighFructose-Corn-Syrup-Causes-Insulin-Resistance.aspx
Don't get me wrong; I fully agree that the modern diet is nothing like what humans ate for the last 2 million years. I also think it's likely that many chronic diseases can be helped, somewhat, from radical diet changes. But hyper-processed Canola oil is NOT something found in nature. Pure butter and animal fats have been safely consumed - in moderation - for thousands of years.
Additionally, where would pregnant moms and kids get calcium, if not for dairy products? How much broccoli and shellfish can we eat - enough to grow strong bones?
While I applaud the point that a healthy diet mainly consists of fresh fruits and veggies and limited whole grains, I know that meats, fish, and particularly dairy products are a vital part of our calcium and protein needs. A variety of healthy foods is a better idea than avoiding all animal products, particularly for growing kids. Don't trade fresh butter for overprocessed veggie oils "for your health". Human beings need a human diet.
I'd say if you look at OUR canine teeth versus our other most common omnivore (yes, dogs CAN survive and thrive on a vegetarian diet) I would say that the insignificant size of human canines is an indicator that we are evolving past the need for eating dead animals.
Hey, didja know that HORSES occasionally grow canine teeth? What do you make of that?
Though the cynical pet food industry uses huge amounts of grain extenders in dog food, it's bad for dogs and gives them diabetes...just like humans.
The current epidemic of type 2 diabetes is caused by increased consumption of "foods" made from plants, e.g. corn syrup, sugar, and flour.
True, red meat is bad for your heart and carcinogenic, with a terrible carbon footprint, but that is not true of poultry or fish. A recent study found that vegans develop about 40% less cancer than meat-eaters, but those who ate no meat but ate fish had 17% less cancer than the vegans. (The study did not study those like me who eat only chicken and fish.)
The most thorough test, recently done in Israel, put people on one of three diets: low-fat (therefore low animal product), reduced portions, or low-carb. Those on the low-carb diet lost the most weight, found it easiest to stay on the diet, and had the healthiest blood chemistry: lower LDLs, lower trigycerides, lower blood pressure, higher HDLs.
The research is conclusive: type 2 diabetes is caused by consuming high GI foods, all of which are made from plants. A low-GI diet is the healthiest. Eggs BTW are full of choline and extremely healthy, and because of "oleic acid" dairy fat is not so bad either.
Don't let your vegan morality get in the way of science and the health of your readers. People like me who eat fish, poultry and a low-GI diet will outlive you vegans.
Incorrect causal analysis. If people are able to eat more meat, this means an increased standard of living in general, which leads to a better quality of life with or without eating meat.
Ugh! stop trying to defend the indefensible. Just state that you like to eat meat and you do you it just like you like enjoy a can of coke or pepsi once in a while.