Is being vegetarian healthy?

Is being vegetarian healthy?

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The proteins in food are critical building blocks to our health.

From time to time studies come out about the benefits of eating plant protein, rather than animal protein.

These are very politicized studies.

But many of them have problems with them due to the agenda-driven approach to funding studies like this.

It is true that people can sometimes live longer and healthier eating less animal protein.

But it is not necessarily because eating vegetarian is better.

It can also be because they are eating imbalanced animal protein.

For the last million years, man has been eating animal protein.

The difference is that up until very recently when you ate animal protein, you ate the entire animal.

Eating an animal meant eating every part of it, including the eyes, brain, liver, bones, tendons — everything.

As they used to say when slaughtering a pig, “we ate everything but the squeal.”

Nowadays, we eat mostly muscle meat and very little organ meat.

And very few of us eat much in the way of connective tissue.

So we are getting an extremely imbalanced form of protein when we eat animal protein.

There are several problems with too much muscle meat.

Muscle meat is very high in phosphorus, and very low in calcium.

Higher levels of phosphorus promote cancer.

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There are many other problems with higher levels of phosphorus.

But this study shows how higher levels of phosphorus activate cancer — including skin cancer:

Thus, we conclude that elevated phosphate promotes cell transformation and skin tumorigenesis…and defines reducing dietary phosphate as a novel target for chemoprevention.

It’s easy to counter when you have gotten too much phosphorus.

You can simply drink some milk, or eat some cheese.

Dairy products are high in calcium and relatively low and phosphorus.

Problem solved.

There is another problem with a diet high in muscle meat.

Eating the steak and not the bone and connective tissue and organs is a  big problem.

The problem is that muscle meat is very high with methionine.

When you eat the whole animal, you do not absorb so much methionine.

The reason for this is the amino acids that are in the connective tissue.

The amino acids counteract the methionine and block it from being absorbed.

To live a lot longer, you need to lower your methionine consumption or find ways to block it.

And eating just muscle meat gives you very high methionine levels.

This study shows the benefits of methionine restriction on longevity.

Mice given a methionine-deficient diet can live 30 to 40% longer.

And the same thing probably goes for people too.

What blocks methionine in a big fat steak is gelatin or collagen.

These are the proteins found in the rest of the animal — the parts that we’re not eating.

So now you know the problems with just eating red meat, and how to combat it with dairy.

Now you’re ready to look at this study that claims eating vegetarian is healthier than eating animals.

The first warning sign I found in this study is that there were 130,000 participants.

Studies with very minimal or nonexistent effects nearly always use large numbers of participants.

They have to use this many people, or they will be able to show any result at all.

In this case, the study shows a very slight advantage for the people eating mostly plants over people eating animal protein.

The advantage didn’t help them live longer than people eating meat, though.

People eating a lot of meat did NOT have any shorter lifespans than the vegetarian people.

In fact, for lifespan to be shorter, the meat eaters also had to engage in OTHER unhealthy behaviors.

They had to smoke, use heavy amounts of alcohol, be overweight or obese, or be physically sedentary.

If they were ANY of these, they had a very slightly shorter lifespan according to this study.

These associations were confined to participants with at least 1 unhealthy lifestyle factor based on smoking, heavy alcohol intake, overweight or obesity, and physical inactivity, but not evident among those without any of these risk factors.

The difference in lifespan we’re talking about is tiny — it’s almost nonexistent.

This whole study is half-baked and expensive.

And its conclusions are completely false according to its own data.

This is a classic example of a study that starts with a conclusion and massages the data to match it.

They had to manipulate the data to show even a very tiny result.

And then they blew up the result with an outlandish and outrageous study title — as if they had reached an important conclusion.

Which, they had not.

Instead, they proved something extremely interesting.

They proved how little a diet high in meat muscle actually affects lifespan.

Both vegetarians and meat eaters can be healthy and fine.

The key for meat eaters is minimizing methionine by getting plenty of gelatin and collagen.

And eat plenty of dairy to get the right amount of calcium, and you’ll control the excess phosphorus.

You can have the long life of our ancestors this way.

Now you know the truth.

You could eat meat.

You can eat plants.

Eat either or both and be healthy — you’ll live a long time either way.


Matt Cook is editor-in-chief of Daily Medical Discoveries. Matt has been a full time health researcher for 26 years. ABC News interviewed Matt on sexual health issues not long ago. Matt is widely quoted on over 1,000,000 websites. He has over 300,000 daily newsletter readers. Daily Medical Discoveries finds hidden, buried or ignored medical studies through the lens of 100 years of proven science. Matt heads up the editorial team of scientists and health researchers. Each discovery is based upon primary studies from peer reviewed science sources following the Daily Medical Discoveries 7 Step Process to ensure accuracy.
Elevated Phosphate Activates N-ras and Promotes Cell Transformation and Skin Tumorigenesis
http://cancerpreventionresearch.aacrjournals.org/content/3/3/359.long  

Association of Animal and Plant Protein Intake With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality  
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2540540  

Methionine-deficient diet extends mouse lifespan, slows immune and lens aging, alters glucose, T4,
IGF-I and insulin levels, and increases hepatocyte MIF levels and stress resistance 
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1474-9726.2005.00152.x/full 

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