Nutritionist Lera Krasovskaya: The Most Harmful Food of All Is Meat
Throughout the developed world, governments consider promoting healthy eating one of their main responsibilities. Ministries of health and other agencies are responsible for providing the public with reliable information about healthy eating. Millions are spent on this from public budgets every year, because treating chronic diseases caused by poor nutrition costs governments more than preventive measures.
Almost every country has official guidance for its citizens on how to eat. In plain language, it explains how much of what one should eat each day and why. For those who want to explore the subject in depth, serious scientific research underpinning the recommendations is publicly available. Agencies responsible for promoting healthy eating often create visual guides in the form of pyramids, plates, rainbows and so on, showing what we should eat during the day. These guides are understandable to children and to people who cannot read.
So developed countries recommend that their citizens eat meat “in moderation.” This amount is usually expressed in grams. The recommendation of the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), which developed countries follow, is no more than 500 grams of red meat per week. To be precise, red meat means the muscle meat of mammals, including beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, horse and goat.
Where did this recommendation come from, and why this amount? More than half a million scientific studies indicate that regular meat consumption substantially increases the risk of cancer. By how much? As noted above, 50 grams of meat a day increases the risk of illness by 18%.
Let's continue.
It is recommended that processed meat products be avoided completely. These are meat products made by processing meat through salting, curing, fermentation, smoking or other preservation methods intended to enhance flavor or extend shelf life. Most meat products contain pork and beef, but some may also contain other types of red meat, poultry, offal or by-products such as blood. Examples include frankfurters, ham, sausage, corned beef, dried beef, canned meat, meat-containing convenience foods and sauces. Even in small amounts, these products are considered carcinogenic.
There is no element in meat that our bodies need and cannot obtain from other foods. What about protein?
Worldwide, the recommended protein intake is considered to be 0.8 g per 1 kg of body weight. So, if you weigh 60 kg, 48 g of protein a day is enough for you (this does not refer to professional athletes or special population groups). Meat is far from the only source of protein. Fish, dairy products and eggs are other examples of animal protein foods. Developed countries strongly recommend that their citizens get protein from plant foods whenever possible. Good plant sources of protein include soy and other legumes, lentils and, to a lesser extent, grains, nuts and seeds.
People in the West, including Belarusians, consume far more protein than recommended. Protein deficiency undoubtedly harms health, but so does excess protein. High-protein diets raise uric acid levels, which can in turn trigger or worsen kidney disease and cause joint inflammation in people predisposed to gout.
Here is another fact: producing animal protein requires five times more land than producing the same amount of plant protein.
Now, cholesterol. Meat contains saturated (that is, harmful) fats. The fattier the meat, the more of these fats it contains. Saturated fats raise blood cholesterol. Cholesterol is essential to life, so regardless of our diet, our liver produces a certain amount of this substance each day. The rest is obtained from food through the intestines.
The daily recommended intake of dietary cholesterol is about 300 mg. Cholesterol harms health when its level is too high, that is, when more cholesterol accumulates in the blood than the body needs and can process. Excess cholesterol can lead to deposits in blood vessels. For reference: 100 g of chicken liver contains 565 mg of cholesterol, while 100 g of lean red meat contains 185 mg.
Not long ago I was in Minsk, giving a lecture on vegetarianism at the “ЦЭХ” venue. At the beginning, some audience members argued passionately and at length: they could not believe the shocking facts about the meat industry and tried to convince me that I had misplaced the zeros. But they immediately went online to check the information and then listened attentively. This was after I said that producing 1 kilogram of beef requires more than 15,000 (fifteen thousand!) liters of water, while producing 1 kilogram of pork requires 9,000 liters. Producing the same amount of chicken requires 4,325 liters (data from World Watch). Water is only one aspect of the environment.
Here are a few more facts, which I find alarming.
According to the World Wildlife Fund data, we have lost more than half of the world's wild animals over the past four decades. This is the result of our insatiable hunger. Almost one hectare of tropical forest is cleared every minute to feed cattle.
For every 100 calories of grain fed to livestock, we get only 40 new calories of milk, or 22 calories of eggs, or 12 calories of chicken, or 10 calories of pork, or 3 calories of beef (data from the National Geographic report).
Another literally very dirty problem is excrement. The animals we eat produce 130 times more excrement than the entire human population. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency data, a farm with 2,500 cows produces as much feces as a city of more than 400,000 people. With all the consequences that entails.
At present, globally, we produce enough units of energy or calories to feed 11 billion people (there are about 7 billion of us now). Paradoxically, most of these calories go to feeding animals rather than people who are hungry (800 million people).
For example, people who regularly eat beef, the most resource-intensive meat, use on average 150-160 times more of the planet's water, land and energy resources than vegetarians.
So why am I saying this? I believe the environment is not something external and independent of us. What we see around us and breathe is the result of our actions. I personally feel troubled when I come to Minsk and see someone leave the tap running while brushing their teeth, or systematically throw away food because they cannot judge their appetite.
What we see around us is us. We walk around gloomy but want people around us to smile. We think negatively but want everything around us to be positive. We drive cars but want to live in a city with fresh air. Each of us has an enormous influence on the environment. Each of us makes a choice. I am sure that an individual's conscious choice can change everything around us (and within us, when we are talking about health). Partially giving up meat can have a positive effect on your health and the health of the planet.
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CHOCOLATE, AYURVEDA, DEPRESSION AND NOT UNDERSTANDING YOURSELF: WHAT IS THE CONNECTION?
In Ayurveda, modern milk chocolate (we will discuss dark chocolate with more than 80% cocoa and no sugar in another article) is considered a classic blocker of srotas. Srotas are the body's channels, which, when unobstructed, provide good health and vitality, but when blocked can lead to all kinds of serious diseases.
The main culprit behind the harmful properties of milk chocolate is powdered milk. So, if possible, first try to find varieties of chocolate without powdered milk. Organic and good-quality (European) varieties are usually the best.
The antidote is hot, boiled water with cardamom seeds. Hot water helps “melt” foods that are poorly digested, and cardamom seeds are known for reopening srotas (channels). Water with cardamom seeds is also useful after heavy cheese dishes or rich desserts.
According to Ayurveda, chocolate is a moderately nourishing substance, a stimulant and an aphrodisiac. Unfortunately, so much sugar is usually added to it that all its nutritional qualities are lost.
Cocoa beans are very bitter and have many medicinal properties that are lost in the production of chocolate candies.
Pure cocoa or chocolate is considered rajasic. This means that it stimulates the intellect, causing increased mental activity. If too much cocoa is consumed (or too often), it can lead to chronically overstimulated mental activity.
Ayurveda explains that the abuse of stimulants leads to a depressed state. An old saying applies here: “The higher you climb, the harder you fall.” A depressed state is called “tamas,” which also means “inertia.”
The danger of modern life and stimulants is that we enter a vicious circle of “stimulation - depressed state - stimulation - depressed state,” and so on. It would not be so bad if this were simply movement back and forth, but unfortunately it is more like a downward spiral. As a result, conditions such as emotional burnout, chronic fatigue and depression develop.
For example, lack of sleep leads to exhaustion (depression). To compensate, we use stimulants such as coffee, chocolate, Coca-Cola and the like, which give us a short-lived boost. We do this every day until one day we get sick.
In youth, this may be only a temporary deviation, like a bad mood for a few days. Our immunity decreases because of depression, and we may catch a severe cold or some other infection. If we continue to live this way for many years, this behavior eventually becomes part of our program, a habit carved in stone.
Breaking a habit is very difficult, and it leads you deeper and deeper into chronic depression. This is the danger of stimulants, not only chocolate but all modern forms of sensory stimulation, including music, video, television, computers, constant conversations on mobile phones and so on.
Is eating chocolate a symptom or a cause of depression? Ayurveda would say it is both.
But the problem is not chocolate; it is not understanding yourself. People are no longer accustomed to studying themselves and their bodies. I do not mean academic study or following health news (which mostly adds to confusion rather than providing useful guidance). I mean learning to listen to your body and to fine-tune your lifestyle habits based on your body's immediate feedback. It is free, simple and requires no special training.
Ayurveda taught me this. In the past, it was easy for me to ignore certain things, to miss small details and minor difficulties. Through Ayurveda, by understanding my doshas and how to observe them every day, I have become more attuned to my body and its needs.
I may crave chocolate, and I will eat it. If the craving comes up more than once, I ask myself why I am craving chocolate. Looking at the situation, I realize that I am a little depressed and in a bad mood. Perhaps the weather is making me gloomy. At that point, I can choose whether to eat more chocolate (an immediate response) or do something else to lift my mood, such as put on positive music and dance for half an hour.
The main thing to know about stimulants, including sweets, is that they provide a false boost of energy.
Most people turn to stimulants for a quick burst of energy. This is acceptable from time to time, for example, to stay awake during a very long car journey. But in everyday life, if you use stimulants (coffee, tea, chocolate, etc.) as support, you will soon have to pay for it.
Low energy and chronic fatigue, which so many people experience, result from several factors coming together:
- A mentally overactive, overstimulated lifestyle and lack of sleep. This quickly leads to sporadic periods of mental and physical fatigue. The immediate solution is coffee or sugar.
- A diet low in unprocessed whole foods and high in processed and nutritionally poor foods. This disrupts metabolism and leads to toxin accumulation, resulting in low or fluctuating energy levels.
- A lifestyle that does not encourage sufficient physical activity or deep breathing. The whole body becomes stagnant, leading to reduced energy distribution.
Ayurveda looks at energy from three perspectives:
- how it is absorbed;
- how it is distributed;
- how it is spent.
For example, Ayurveda explains that energy is absorbed through the skin, the lungs (the respiratory system) and the large intestine. Therefore, maintaining the health of these systems is part of the equation for keeping energy levels balanced.
According to Ayurveda, optimizing energy and maintaining health and happiness depend on a daily routine (dinacharya), which includes:
- personal hygiene (cleaning the tongue, oiling the skin and using oil drops in the nose);
- sufficient physical activity adapted to your constitution;
- a whole-food diet adapted to your constitution as well as climate, season and other lifestyle factors;
- yoga practices, including breathing techniques, poses, relaxation and meditation;
- enough sleep.
When this basic support is in place, you are much less likely to suffer from low energy, stimulant abuse and, ultimately, disorders such as depression.
So enjoy chocolate! Find a good-quality variety and eat a small piece. But if you become a chocoholic, eating a whole bar every day, this is a sign that an imbalance has arisen in your body and should be corrected.
I have noticed that when my clients begin eating more vegetables and whole grains along with mild spices such as cumin, fennel, turmeric and coriander, they naturally crave stimulants and sweets less, suffer less from digestive disorders and experience improved cleansing of the body.
I think that in exchange for reading this tirade I should offer you some useful advice, so here it is!
Anyone can have the following spice mixture with food to experience benefits for metabolism and energy levels. I would need more than the fingers of both hands to list all of its beneficial properties.
A universal spice mixture to balance digestion, improve absorption, raise energy levels, reduce chocolate cravings and much more:
Mix the following spices in a small jar:
- 15 teaspoons ground turmeric
5 teaspoons ground cumin
5 teaspoons ground fennel
5 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Immediately before a meal (twice a day), put ¼–½ teaspoon (level) of the mixture into a small glass with a little warm water and drink it all, including the powder. If you like, you can add the mixture to food, but this is slightly less effective.
Marina Olbi: If a Person Wants to Be Healthy, They Should Be Vegetarian
I came up with my own television project about vegetarianism and a healthy lifestyle. I plan to shoot the pilot at my own expense and then take it to television channels for discussions.
I am thinking of making nine episodes, about an hour each. It should be an engaging educational program, and the main goal is to interest young people in my ideas. It is quite difficult to talk about the culture of vegetarianism with adults who have firmly established habits. Perhaps it is simply too late. Young people, by contrast, respond and understand very easily when you begin talking with them about the philosophy of vegetarianism or yoga. For example, when I opened the Botanika café in St Petersburg, everyone told me I would not be able to find cooks and that no professionals in St Petersburg cooked without meat. In the end, my head chef really is Indian, while very young people work in the kitchen and dining room, some without specialized education. They all learned remarkably quickly to cook delicious vegetable dishes from our chef's recipes, and they do it wonderfully - you can hardly tell whether the chef or one of his assistants prepared a dish.
I am now developing ways to present information that will interest an active young audience, while carefully collecting scientific articles about vegetarianism. If I once had doubts about the benefits of a vegetarian diet, I no longer have any. I can feel from my own body that vegetarianism is beneficial, and I have nothing to prove to myself. But of course, facts are needed to speak to a wide audience. The other day I found data from a recent study by Oxford University scientists in the British Journal of Cancer. It has been shown that vegetarians are 45 percent less prone to blood cancer than meat eaters.
These are, frankly, revolutionary results. The study was extensive: it lasted 12 years and involved 61,000 people. During that time, 3,150 people were diagnosed with cancer. Of these, 68% (2,204) ate meat, 24% (800) were vegetarians, and 9.5% (300) ate fish but not meat. Specifically, blood cancer developed in 180 people in the meat-eating group, 49 vegetarians and 28 pescetarians.
“We already knew that people who eat only vegetables and fish have a lower likelihood of developing stomach cancer, and these results did not surprise us. But this is the first serious study to establish a link between blood cancer and meat consumption,” said Naomi Allen, one of the leaders of the Oxford research group, in an interview with The Guardian. She insists that diet was studied separately from smoking, alcohol consumption and excess weight. How can such a significant difference between meat eaters and vegetarians be explained? “That remains to be determined. We have not finished the study yet,” Naomi says. “And for now we do not know for sure: is it the high fiber content of a vegetarian diet that is so beneficial, or is meat itself so harmful?”
Opponents find many reasons to dispute this study and want to discuss the accuracy of its methodology, but personally I need no further proof: I am sure that if a person wants to be healthy, they should be vegetarian.
Unless they are Chukchi or Inuit: unlike us, their bodies cannot do without meat. We are vegetarians by nature: we have intestines like herbivores and teeth like herbivores - what more is there to say? The important thing is that the diet be right. I recommend that everyone eat according to Ayurveda. It has not yet been studied by scientists (which, by the way, would be interesting), but it is an Indian science of the art of living, tested for thousands of years. It describes three different types of food. This is a system that is very simple to use in practice. The first type is sattvic food: it increases vitality, beauty and health, gives you a good mood and a wonderful appetite. This food strengthens the body, its organs and muscles, as well as the soul. It includes almonds, rice, honey, fresh sweet fruit, mung beans and easily digested seasonal vegetables, as well as leafy greens. Milk and honey are included too. Animals give milk and honey willingly, without violence, which is why they are so beneficial. The second type is rajasic foods. These bring passion. They are beneficial for the body but neutral for the mind. Usually they are sour, bitter, very dry, very hot or spicy. This category also includes our favorite stimulants: coffee, tea, sugar, chocolate and cocoa. The third type is tamasic food. This is spoiled or partly processed food; it also includes meat, eggs and sweets, as well as alcohol, tobacco and drugs. Such food contains no energy and must be excluded entirely from the diet if a person wants a deep spiritual life. In addition, the right diet depends to some extent on the season: in winter, one can sometimes eat tamasic products. In summer, there is absolutely no reason to.
Yoga Improves Men's Sperm Quality
Geneticist names yoga as the best way to increase the chances of becoming pregnant
A geneticist at the University of Delhi, Reema Dada, discovered in a study how to increase the chances of becoming pregnant and improve sperm quality.
According to the specialist, psychological stress significantly worsens male fertility and negatively affects sperm quality, which can cause attempts to conceive to fail, reports Men's Health. To improve the chances of becoming pregnant, men need to practice yoga regularly, Dada says.