Living Healthy: animal

Showing posts with label animal. Show all posts

Friday, October 19, 2012

Lead Poisoning Risk From Venison

The reason animal products trigger inflammation in the body within hours of consumption is thought to be due to the residual bacterial toxins that survive the cooking process. This is all detailed in my Care2 article Why Meat Causes Inflammation. The saturated animal fat then helps ferry these endotoxins across the gut wall into our bloodstream. As concluded in a 2012 review, “while the most obvious solution to metabolic endotoxemia appears to be to reduce saturated fat intake, the Western diet is not conducive to this mode of action, and it is difficult for patients to comply with this request.” Thus, researchers have looked to wild animals for less inflammatory meat options.

Wild pheasants, for example, have been found to have significantly less saturated fat than farmed pheasants, so one would assume wild pheasant meat would trigger less inflammation. This concept wasn’t put to the test until recently. In my 3-min. video, Modern Meat Not Ahead of the Game, I profile a study performed by a group of Australian researchers that compared the amount of inflammation triggered by domesticated animal meat to wild kangaroo meat.

They found that eating kangaroos did trigger an inflammatory response, but not as much as the store-brought meat. This would suggest that venison, for example, would cause less inflammation than chicken, but the way in which the deer is killed makes a difference. See my NutritionFacts.org video pick above for the results of a study that raised food safety concerns about conventional ammunition. Note, lead has also been found in protein powder supplements, ayervedic medicine supplements, and other animal products. Like mercury in tuna, no level of lead consumption can be considered safe.

For more depth, the inflammatory effects of animal foods are explored in my 3-part video series:

Most whole plant foods are anti-inflammatory–see:

In health,
Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my full 2012 presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: LouisvilleUSACE / Flickr

Source : care2[dot]com

Friday, October 12, 2012

How Much Soy Is Too Much?

If animal proteins promote cancer because they boost our blood levels of the growth hormone IGF-1, what about the few plant proteins that have amino acid ratios similar to animal proteins such soy foods? One of soy’s selling points is that it has “high quality” protein, but as we saw in my Care2 article on Wednesday, Animal Protein and IGF-1, higher quality may mean a higher risk of cancer.

In my 2-min. video, Animalistic Plant Proteins, I show that animal protein consumption is associated with significantly higher levels of the cancer promoter IGF-1 and non-soy plant protein is associated with significantly lower levels. There was no significant association with soy protein, though. This suggests that if all we do is replace animal protein with soy protein, we may not see as dramatic a drop in IGF-1 as that enjoyed by those replacing meat, eggs, and dairy with a variety of plant proteins. You can see what lower IGF-1 levels can mean for prostate and breast cancer growth in my videos Ex Vivo Cancer Proliferation Bioassay and The Answer to the Pritikin Puzzle.

In my NutritionFacts.org video pick above I show that vegans consuming the equivalent of 7-18 servings of soy foods per day may end up with circulating IGF-1 levels comparable to those who eat meat. For more on the cancer reversal study mentioned in the video, see Cancer Reversal Through Diet. It’s important to remember in this discussion that soy food consumption is associated with an array of health benefits. See, for example, Breast Cancer Survival and Soy, The Effect of Soy On Precocious Puberty, and Soy Foods & Menopause. But how much may be too much?

From the above video it seems that 7 to 18 servings of soy a day may neutralize some of the beneficial effects of avoiding animal protein. At the same time, studies have repeatedly found that women who eat a lot of soy appear to have a lower risk of getting breast cancer and a better chance of surviving breast cancer than those who don’t. So is there some magic number of soyfood servings we should shoot for?

In my 2-min. video, How Much Soy Is Too Much, I run through all the studies to date that have measured the effects of varying levels of soy consumption on IGF-1 levels. Five to ten servings per day increased IGF-1 levels, but two to three servings did not. The bottom-line is that legumes are one of the healthiest things we can eat and should be a part of everyone’s daily diet. This means lentils, peas, and/or beans every day—in fact, ideally every meal! Soy is an excellent choice, but we should probably stick to no more than 3-5 servings a day.

In health,
Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my full 2012 presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: Andrea_Nguyen / Flickr

Source : care2[dot]com

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Gallup Asks Americans if They’re Vegan for the First Time

In a July 2012 Gallup poll, Americans were questioned about whether or not their diets included animal and dairy products, and 2 percent of the population responded that they were vegan. This amounts to about 6 million people in the U.S. alone, an impressive number for the diet’s relatively recent prominence.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the poll also asked if respondents were vegetarian, and 5 percent (or 15 million) reported positively. This figure is down 1 percent from 2001, however, overall the number of people reporting themselves as vegetarian has remained steady over the past 13 years.

More surprising, perhaps, than the overall numbers of vegetarians or vegans was the self-reported demographics of those choosing a meatless diet. Stereotypes of typical vegetarians seem to have little basis in fact, as nearly all segments of the population reported similar percentages.

Slightly more women (7 percent) than men (3 percent) said they were vegetarian, while vegetarian individuals were more likely to be unmarried (8 percent) than married (3 percent).

Instances of vegetarianism were very similar whether a person considered themselves politically conservative, moderate, or liberal. This was also the case regardless of what level of education they’d completed. Additionally, older Americans were more likely to be vegetarian than younger adults, although the percentages were close.

More than 1,000 Americans were polled by telephone in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In a larger 2008 study conducted by Vegetarian Times and carried out by the Harris Interactive Service Bureau, 3 percent of the population said they followed vegetarian diets. Of those, 0.5 percent considered themselves vegan.

Do these figures mean more people are choosing a diet free of animal products? Perhaps, although polls always have margins of error. More than anything, the questions about the kind of people choosing vegetarianism show us that there is not a characteristic type of person choosing a meatless diet, but people from all walks of life have embraced it.

By Sarah Shultz for Diets In Review | photo via istock

Source : care2[dot]com