Vegetarian Diet – One Solution to Many Health Problems (excerpt from The Key to Health and Rejuvenation)

Vegetarian Diet – One Solution to Many Health Problems


Vegetarians Live Longer and Healthier Lives

It is not necessary to be a vegetarian to enjoy benefits from an Ayurvedic diet and lifestyle. However, a balanced vegetarian diet is often considered necessary, particularly when the body is afflicted with disease. Vegetarians have believed all along that living on a purely vegetarian diet can improve health and quality of life. More recently, medical research has found that a properly balanced vegetarian diet may in fact be the healthiest diet. This was demonstrated by the over 11,000 volunteers who participated in the Oxford Vegetarian Study which for a period of 15 years had analyzed the effects of vegetarian diet on longevity, heart disease, cancer, and various other diseases.
The results of the study stunned the vegetarian community as much as the meat producing industry: “Meat eaters are twice as likely to die from heart disease, have a 60 percent greater risk of dying from cancer and a 30 percent higher risk of death from other causes.” In addition, the incidence of obesity, which is a major risk factor in many diseases, including gallbladder disease, hypertension, and adult onset diabetes, has been found to be much lower in those following a vegetarian diet. Those who take less meat in their diet have also been found to have fewer problems with cholesterol. The American National Institute of Health, in a study of 50,000 vegetarians, found that the vegetarians live longer and also have an impressively lower incidence of heart disease and a significantly lower rate of cancer than meat-eating Americans.
Our diet is very important for our health. According to the American Cancer Society, up to 35% of the 900,000 new cases of cancer each year in the United States could be prevented by following proper dietary recommendation. Researcher Rollo Russell writes in his Notes on the Causation of Cancer: “I have found of twenty-five nations eating flesh largely, nineteen had a high cancer rate and only one had a low rate, and that of thirty-five nations eating little or no flesh, none had a high rate.”
Could cancer lose its grip on modern societies if they turned to a balanced vegetarian diet? The answer is “yes” according to two major reports, one by the World Cancer Research Fund and the other by the Committee on the Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy in the UK. The reports conclude that a diet rich in plant foods and the maintenance of a healthy body weight could prevent four million cases of cancer worldwide. Both reports stress the need for increasing intake of plant fiber, fruits and vegetables and reducing daily red and processed meat consumption to less than 80-90g.
If you are currently eating meat on a regular basis and wish to change over to a vegetarian diet, unless you suffer from a major cardiovascular illness do not give up all flesh foods at once! Start by reducing the number of meals that include red meat, beef, pork, veal, etc., and substituting poultry and fish during these meals. In time, you will find that you are able to take less poultry and fish also, without creating strain on the physiology.
Note: Although the uric acid content of fish, turkey and chicken is less than in red meat and, therefore, not quite as taxing to the kidneys and tissues of the body, the degree of injury that is sustained to the blood vessels and intestinal tract from eating these coagulated proteins is no less than it is with the consumption of meat (more details on this subject follow).


Death In The Meat

Research has shown that all meat eaters have worms and a high incidence of parasites in the intestines. This is hardly surprising given the fact that dead flesh is a favorite target for micro-organisms of all sorts. A 1996 study by the Department of Agriculture (USA) showed that nearly 80% of ground beef is contaminated with disease-causing microbes. The primary source of these bugs is feces. A study conducted by the University of Arizona found there are more fecal bacteria in the average kitchen sink than in the average toilet bowl. This would make eating your food on the toilet seat safer than eating it in the kitchen. The source of this biohazard at home is the meat you buy at the typical grocery store.
The germs and parasites found in meat weaken the immune system and are the source of many diseases. In fact, most food poisonings today are related to meat-eating. During a mass outbreak near Glasgow, 16 out of over 200 infected people died from the consequences of eating E. coli contaminated meat. There are frequent outbreaks reported in Scotland and many other parts of the world. More than half millions Americans, most of them kids, have been sickened by mutant fecal bacteria (E. coli) in meat. These germs are the leading cause of kidney failure among children in the United States. This fact alone should prompt every responsible parent to prevent their children from eating flesh foods.
Not all parasites act so swiftly as E. coli though. Most of them have long term effects that are noticed only after many years of eating meat.
The government and the food industry are trying to divert attention away from the escalating problem of meat contamination by telling the consumer it his fault that these incidents happen. It is very obvious that they want to avoid hefty law suits, and bad mouthing of the industry. They tell you that you don’t cook your meat long enough. It is now considered a crime to serve a rare hamburger. And if you haven’t committed this “crime,” any infection will be attributed to not washing your hands every time you touch a raw chicken, or letting the chicken touch your kitchen counter or any other food. Yet, the meat, they say, is totally safe and meets the standard safety requirements imposed by the government. It evades all good reason, except a strong vested interest on behalf of the government and meat industry, to even propose such a “solution” to 76 illnesses a year.
The new mutant bugs found in today’s meat are extremely deadly. For you to come down with Salmonella poisoning, you have to consume at least a million of these germs. But to become infected with one of the new mutant bugs, you just have to ingest a measly five of them. In other words, a tiny particle of uncooked hamburger making it from a kitchen utensil to your plate is enough to kill you. Scientists have now identified more than a dozen food-borne pathogens with such disastrous effects. The Center of Disease Control admits that we don’t even know the bugs behind most food-related illnesses and deaths.
Much of the problem resulting from the germ-infestation of meat is caused by feeding the farm animals with foods that are unnatural to them. Cattle are now fed corn, which they are unable to digest, but makes them fat very quickly. Cattle feed also contains chicken feces. The millions of pounds of chicken litter (feces, feathers, and all) scraped of the floors of chicken houses are recycled as cattle feed. The cattle industry considers it good protein. The other ingredients of cattle feed is ground up parts of animals, like deceased chicken, pigs and horses. Giving the cattle natural, healthy feeds would be far too costly and so unnecessary. Who really cares about what the meat is made of, as long it look like meat?
Combined with the hefty doses of growth hormones, the corn and special feeds shortens the duration of fattening up a steer for market from a normal of 4-5 years to 16 months. Of course, the unnatural diet makes the cows sick. Like their human consumers, they suffer from heartburn, liver disease, ulcers, and diarrhea, pneumonia and other infections. To keep the cattle alive until the deadline for slaughter at the “ripe old age” of 16 months, the cows need to be fed massive doses of antibiotics. In the meanwhile, the microbes responding to the massive biochemical assault with antibiotics, find ways to become immune to these drugs by mutating into resistant new strains.
Those unfortunate cows that don’t drop dead prematurely due to all the poisons fed to them during their short earthly existence, experience an undignified and gruesome end of in the slaughterhouse or meat-packing plant. From there, the diseased, germ-infested meat ends up in your local grocery store, and a little later, on your dinner plate, if you so dare.


Is Meat Natural For Humans?

Vegetarians have been warned that they are not getting enough of the essential proteins humans are supposed to eat on a daily basis. Although it is known that the eight amino acids making up these proteins can be found in a simple meal of rice and beans (rice contains the amino acids that are missing in beans, and beans contain the amino acids missing in rice), meat as a source of protein is still considered to be the better option. Yet there are many more meat-free foods that contain these proteins than there are types of meat. The fact that eating too much protein is linked to many more serious health problems than eating too little protein is only rarely or not all considered in the protein discussion.
Typical disorders caused by over-consumption of protein are osteoporosis, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and cancer. By contrast, those who never eat animal protein as contained in meat, fish, eggs, or dairy products, have very low rates of these diseases and don’t suffer from protein deficiency either, provided they eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, grains, etc. There is no scientific evidence as yet that might indicate a protein deficiency in persons who never eat animal protein, such as myself and billions of others. By contrast, our modern societies consume at least 50 percent more protein than they actually need to. We may not be suffering from lack of protein at all, regardless whether essential or nonessential, but from over-consumption of protein. By filling up the connective tissues of our body with unused protein, we turn the body into an overflowing pool of harmful acids and waste, thereby laying a fertile ground for disease, including arteriosclerosis and bacterial or viral infection. To consider meat a natural food for humans is, therefore, more than far-stretched, especially when it kills so many people.
At the root of the problem lies man’s inability to properly break down meat protein into amino acids. Chunks of undigested meat pass into the intestinal tract and, along with them, parasites. Most of these parasites, also known as intestinal flukes, can neither be destroyed by the heat applied during cooking or frying nor by human stomach acid. Carnivorous animals, on the other hand, kill them instantly while passing through the stomach. Their stomachs produce twenty times more hydrochloric acid than we do. This massive amount of acid helps the animal break down the meat proteins into their essential components. If a healthy young man eats a piece of meat, he may be lucky to digest 25 percent of it. By contrast, carnivorous animals can digest the whole thing, including bones and fibrous tissue. Parasites and other bugs cannot survive the acid “assault.”
The main digestive work in carnivorous animals takes place in their stomach and not in the small intestine. Meat stays in their relatively short intestinal tract for only a little while. Our small intestine which is about 5-6 meters long (16-20) feet processes most natural foods within a matter of several hours. But if the food happens to be meat, it may stay in the small intestine for as long as 20-48 hours, by which time much of it is putrefied or decayed. The rotting process results in the generation of the meat poisons cadaverine, putrescine, and other toxic substances. These poisons begin to act as pathogens (causal factors of disease) in the body. Since the remnants of undigested meat can be held in the large intestinal walls of humans for 20-30 years or longer, it is not surprising to find colon cancers to be so highly prevalent among meat-eaters, but virtually non-existent among carnivorous animals and vegetarians. Colon cancer, in most cases, is just another name for constant poisoning through putrefying meat. While being digested, meat is known to generate steroid metabolites possessing carcinogenic (cancer-producing) properties.
The kidneys, which extract waste products from the blood, also suffer from the overload of meat poisons, consisting mostly of nitrogenous wastes. Even moderate meat-eaters demand three times more work from their kidneys than do vegetarians. Young people generally may still be able to cope with this form of stress, but as they grow older the risk of kidney damage greatly increases.
After many years of regularly consuming meat the body may suddenly succumb to the floods of poisonous substances emanating from undigested meat. A research study conducted in Germany showed that middle-aged persons who consumed meat in the evening were more prone to suffer a heart attack during the next morning. Too many proteins entering the blood can thicken it and drastically cut oxygen supplies to the heart and other organs such as the brain.
Animal cells, unlike plant cells that have a rigid cell wall and a simple circulatory system, die very rapidly once they are cut off their blood supply. When the animal dies, its cell proteins coagulate and destructive enzymes immediately begin to break down the cells. This, in turn, results in the formation of a degenerative substance called ptomaine, which is a known cause of many diseases. Cellular destruction applies to the cells of all types of dead animal flesh, as well as chicken and fish; all meat is poisoned with decomposed and putrefied protein. A dead animal, bird, or fish is no longer “fresh.” Regardless what you do with it. Putrefaction and bacterial growth start immediately after death and are very advanced when the meat is several days or weeks old, as is in most cases.
Whether it is E. coli, other bacteria, or enzymes acting on the dead ingested protein, they effectively send the body’s immune system on a “mission of war,” hence the stimulating effect of meat. Depending on one’s physical resources and immune capacity, the body may eventually get overwhelmed by the influx of virulent poisons and destructive germs and begin to signal “dis-ease.” Those with the weakest immune system are usually the first ones to suffer from meat poisoning.
Yes, food can actually become poisonous and kill someone! The kinds of poisons resulting from the putrefaction (decomposition) of meat or fish in the body are some of the most potent ones found in the natural world. Many of the hundreds of thousands fragile, elderly people lying in hospitals today will be dying unnecessarily simply because they are given meat or fish to eat – an impossible feat for the digestive system after an operation, a heart attack or during a treatment for a chronic illness. These patients don't succumb to their illness, but to the putrescine, cadaverine, and infectious germs these foods flood their digestive system with.
Man’s entire anatomy (jaw, teeth, and digestive system, hands and feet) shows that he must have evolved for millions of years living on fruits, grains, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, etc. Before the pole shift and sudden ice-age, no humans inhabited the cold regions of the world. They all lived in the warm, tropical places where food was plant foods were plenty and accessible. But suddenly, without warning, the tropical areas, such as Siberia, experienced a massive drop in temperature. Animals froze to death within a moment while still chewing on tropical fruit. They were recently found fully intact with the fruits in their mouth, yet thousands of years later. Those humans and animals that happened to live in other tropical areas of the world experienced more moderate climate shifts and survived the ice age. But they had to learn to live with the seasons as we know them today. During the cold season, they had no other option but to kill animals for food. This is when meat-eating and hunting became a necessity. Yet, this has nothing to do with the original constitutional design of the human body.
Non-carnivorous animals, including the human animal, have long bowels, designed for the slow digestion of nutrient-rich vegetables and fruits. Our dental structure is only conducive to the cutting of vegetables with incisors and to the grinding of grains and fruits with molars. Our short, dull canines have no real capacity for slashing or tearing meat. We have, indeed, nothing in our anatomy that compares with the sharp claws of a tiger or an eagle. The human hand with its opposable thumb is better suited for harvesting fruits and vegetables than to killing prey. Had it been in our nature to eat flesh, we, too, would have been equipped with the same or similar hunting faculties as carnivorous animals.



Misleading Theories

Unfortunately, mainstream medical and nutritional science base their theories not so much on the basic processes that occur in the body, but rather on the contents of food. This can be very misleading, to say the least. We are being told, for example, that when we lack calcium we should drink milk because it contains a lot of calcium. We are not being told, however, that in order to digest and metabolize milk calcium, we first must dispose of the phosphorus contained in milk. To process and remove the phosphorus, though, we require calcium. Since there is more phosphorus in milk than there is calcium, the bones, teeth, muscles, etc. have to supply the extra calcium. This fact alone makes milk to be a major calcium-depleting food. Loss of calcium can cause osteoporosis and such diseases as Crohn’s and Irritable Bowel Syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, respiratory ailments and cancer.
The above principle can be applied to almost everything else we believe is so good for us. Giving vitamins to people with vitamin deficiencies can make their bodies even more deficient (more details in Chapter 14). Those lacking in Omega-3 fats don't necessarily get rid of this deficiency by eating these fats (contained in such foods as fish or linseeds). People whose digestive functions have been impaired don't suddenly make better use of certain foods or nutrients simply because they eat more of them.
Just because fish has good things in it (ignore the mercury or other metals they absorb from the sea, lakes, rivers, or the antibiotics, coloring agents and other food additives that are being fed to farmed fish) doesn't mean that the body can actually absorb and make of them.
As previously explained, once a fish or an animal has been killed, the oxygen supply to the cells is cut off. This immediately starts the process of cell-destruction through intracellular enzymes. Unless you eat the fish or chicken right away after it dies, and yes, raw, all you will get is degenerated and putrefied protein. Unless treated with carcinogenic coloring agents, meat would start to look greenish/gray in a matter of hours. Making matters worse, the cooking, baking or frying of meat, fish, eggs, etc., applies enough heat to cause any proteins that may still be intact to coagulate.
The body cannot utilize coagulated protein for cell building. As a result, these now toxic foods (coagulated protein is treated as a pathogen or disease-causing agent by the body) may at best stimulate the immune system in the small intestine and enforce a strong eliminative response in the large intestine. This immune response makes you feel as if you are being energized by these foods, but this is far from being the truth. Deceiving as it may be, with each immune response, the body becomes actually weaker; more liver bile ducts get clogged up with stones; and the cardiovascular system is becoming congested with protein deposits in the blood vessel walls. These are the main causes of almost all chronic diseases. Eating meat also stimulates the body’s growth hormones and male hormones, which can lead to overgrowth of tissues. Many young men today are extra large, very tall, and have bulgy muscles, something you rarely see in most regions of Asia, South America, and Africa, where meat is scarce and plant foods plenty. Having an oversized, bulky body is a great disadvantage, for it can predispose one to diabetes heart disease, and other physical, as well as mental problems later in life.
As is the case with the strongest animals in the world, e.g., elephant, water buffalo, giraffe, horse, cow and gorilla, humans don’t need to eat protein in order to produce it or make it available to the cells in the body. A healthy newborn baby triples its size and the number of protein-consisting cells within its first year, without ever eating any protein foods at all. You might object here by saying “But isn’t mother’s milk filled with protein?” Not by along shot! Human breast milk contains only a trace of protein, namely 1.1 – 1.6 grams of protein per 100 grams of milk. Most of the healthy children in the world don’t receive any other food than mother's milk during their first year. With, let’s say, 1.4 percent of protein in breast milk, this is by far not enough to account for the 15 pound weight increase within the first year.
Humans and most other non-carnivorous animals don't depend on protein foods to make or maintain their muscles, cells and organs. Actually, we all derive our most essential nutrients come from the air we breathe. Everyone knows that in order to live we need oxygen molecules from the air, but very few of us know that we also need and make use of the nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen molecules that the air is so densely saturated with. These four molecules are the ingredients of every amino acid. Our DNA and the liver, like theirs, are perfectly able to synthesize these molecules into amino acids, and complete proteins.
A protein deficiency occurs only in people whose liver and immune functions are seriously impaired. I personally have not eaten any protein foods, i.e., fish, meat, cheese, milk, eggs, etc. for 32 years of adulthood, and my body has hardly changed during all those years (being over 50 years old at the time of writing this). But I have seen thousands of people who have aged prematurely or suffered debilitating illnesses because of eating too much of it. There is no other time in human history where so much meat and other concentrate protein foods have been consumed as today.
Especially the Pitta body type susceptible to becoming poisoned by protein foods, such as meat, fish and cheese. They have a very limited ability to digest these foods. Naturally, the body doesn’t want to digest something it doesn’t need and cannot make use of. I would be suspicious of any person or institution handing out general food guidelines without regard to a person’s individual body type or possible physical imbalance.
It is also worth noting that carnivorous animals have an unlimited capacity to handle saturated fats and cholesterol. Dogs, for example, who receive one half pound of butterfat with their daily ration of meat for two years, show no signs of damage to their arteries or change of serum cholesterol. By contrast, the purely vegetarian rabbits quickly develop arteriosclerosis if they are fed with meat or if as little as 2 grams of cholesterol is added daily to their food. Humans, too, have a very limited capacity to digest and process meat proteins and meat fats. If you placed a hungry infant into a cage with a chunk of meat on one side and an apple on the other, which of the two do you believe would the infant choose to eat? Correct, the apple! Place a lion cub in the same cage, and you will see the cub heading straight towards the meat. If we listened to our basic instincts, we would discover that meat was never meant for humans.


Meat -- A Major Cause Of Disease and Aging

Populations who eat meat regularly have the shortest life spans and the highest incidence of degenerative diseases. According to published reports on national health statistics from around the world, one out of two people in the industrialized world will die from heart disease or related blood vessel disease. In other words, heart disease is the leading killer disease in the world. In June 1961, at a time when medical institutions were still unbiased and could be trusted, the American Medical Association reported that a vegetarian diet could prevent 90% of our thrombo-embolic disease and 97% of our coronary occlusions. This means, by adopting a vegetarian diet we would be able to almost completely eradicate heart disease. Compared with meat-eating, smoking seems to be only a minor risk factor for heart disease.
Heart disease is virtually unheard of in societies where meat consumption is low and the majority of the population eats mostly traditional foods. A group of Harvard doctors and research scientists examined 400 people in a remote mountain village in Ecuador and were surprised to find that except for two men none of the people above 75, including all the centenarians and a 121 year-old man, showed any signs of heart disease. All the villagers turned out to be complete vegetarians. Examinations of similar age groups in the United States would typically reveal a 95 percent incidence of heart disease.
Cancer, the second most common killer disease, may largely be caused by meat-eating, too. Modern cancer research claims to have found specific protein compounds responsible for certain types of cancers. This in itself may be a very important finding, but it is even more important to find out where these protein particles come from. Putrefying meat is one answer and decaying protein of dead human cells another. Meat consumption slows or hinders the complete removal of dead cells in the body by using up its resources of energy, enzymes, minerals, and vitamins. Both, undigested meat proteins and decaying cell protein can, therefore, damage the human cells and impair genetic programming.
Another reason why meat-eaters have more cancers than vegetarians may be the fact that they ingest large quantities of sodium nitrates and sodium nitrites, which are carcinogenic preservatives that are used to make the meat look “fresh.” But meat is no longer fresh after the animal is dead. As already mentioned, if left untreated, animal flesh begins to turn into a sickly gray-green color within several days. Since nobody would buy the meat in that condition, the meat industry uses these toxic chemicals to make it look red and palatable, whereas in reality it is already decomposed and highly toxic.
The most appalling news from cancer research, however, is that secondary amines, prevalent in beer, wine, tea, and tobacco, react with chemical preservatives in meat and form nitrosamines. The American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has labeled nitrosamines to be “one of the most formidable and versatile groups of carcinogens yet discovered.” In other words, if you are a smoker or if you drink beer, wine, or tea and eat meat, you produce one of the most deadly toxins that can be found anywhere. As it turns out, most meat-eaters also drink wine or beer and many of them smoke, too. When fed to test animals, nitrosamines produced malignant tumors in one hundred percent of the animals; the cancers appeared everywhere, including the lungs, pancreas, stomach, adrenals, intestines, and the brain.
There are many other cancer-producing agents that a meat-eater’s immune system has to combat. Farm animals are regularly injected with hormones to stimulate growth, are fed appetite stimulants to “force” them to eat non-stop, and are given antibiotics, sedatives, and chemical feed mixtures. There are already over 2,500 drugs routinely given to animals to fatten them and to keep them alive. Most of the harmful chemicals are still in the animals at the time of death. Many other drugs are added after the animal has been slaughtered. These drugs will still be present in the meat when it is eaten. But the law does not require to list the cocktail of drugs added to the meat. So, you have no way of knowing what kind of drug interactions and allergic reactions you could become a victim of when you eat a juicy steak at your favorite restaurant. It is hard to imagine how many people today become sick for no apparent reason, due to being drugged with poisonous medicines contained in the meat they eat. And when they go to see their doctor, they are most likely get even more drugs to the already ingested ones.
One of the chemicals added to animal feed in the United States is the growth hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES). The FDA estimates it saves meat producers in the United States $500 million annually. DES is highly carcinogenic and is banned as a serious health hazard in thirty-two countries. According to another report by the FDA, the antibiotics penicillin and tetracycline alone save the meat industry $1,9 billion a year. Yet the drugs may be breeding deadly antibiotic resistant organisms in the consumer’s body.
Perhaps some of the worst effects that can emanate from eating meat are generated by the tragic conditions farm animals are exposed to today. Most animals never see the light of day. They spend their entire lives in cramped and cruel surroundings, merely to die a brutal death. High rise chicken farms breed animals without exposure to fresh air or allowing them to even take one step. This not only greatly upsets their body chemistry, but also causes malformations and growth of malignant tumors. The sick animals are slaughtered and sold to unsuspecting customers. In the United States, chicken with airsacculitis (a pneumonia-like disease), which causes pus-laden mucus to collect in the lungs, are permitted for sale. Other examples of common diseases include eye cancer and abscessed livers among cows. Carcasses contaminated with rodent feces, cockroaches, and rust are routinely found in meat-packing companies, but meat inspectors feel very lax about enforcing regulations because this would effectively close down the whole business.
Modern research on disease such as cancer and diabetes is mostly focused on how to combat only the effects of a disruptive lifestyle and unhealthy eating habits. Billions of dollars are spend on discovering everything about the symptoms of disease, with little or no attention on their underlying causes. By contrast, some parts of the population in our Western society have adopted vegetarianism as a way of life and subsequently shown to have significantly lower disease rates, especially cancer and heart disease. These groups have no advanced medical knowledge or training to treat such diseases. Yet, they can claim to have the highest success rates.


Benefits of a Vegetarian Diet

A recent study conducted in California revealed that the cancer rate among Mormons, who are known to eat only very little meat, was 50 percent lower than in the normal population. A more comprehensive controlled study on 50,000 vegetarians of the Seventh Day Adventists, compared with the same number of non-vegetarians of the same sex and age, produced similar results as the Oxford Vegetarian Study. The members of the vegetarian group had an astonishingly low rate of cancer of all types, their life expectancy was significantly longer, and they suffered significantly less from cardiovascular disease than those in the control group.
In the same context, the “forced” vegetarianism of the Danes due to the allied blockage of Denmark in World War I, led to a 17 percent reduction of mortality rates in the first year of meat rationing. Norway had a similar experience during the years of World War II (1940-1945). There was an immediate drop in national mortality rates from circulatory diseases during the period of meat shortage; the rates returned to pre-war levels when the population resumed meat consumption.
Studies from the University of Belgium, testing endurance, strength, and quickness of recovery (from physical exhaustion) in vegetarians, clearly showed that vegetarians were far superior in all three categories. A study at Yale University proved that vegetarians have nearly twice the stamina of meat eaters. Other findings confirmed that during endurance tests, the vegetarians were able to perform two to three times longer than the meat eaters before reaching the point of complete exhaustion, and took only one fifth the time to recover from fatigue after each test than their meat-eating counterparts.
The common belief that eating meat makes you strong is unfounded and misleading. The super-strong elephant, gorilla, rhinoceros and the horse all sustain their great physical strength and stamina by eating only vegetation. On present evidence, there is nothing to suggest that meat is beneficial to our health. The fact that populations like the Eskimos can survive on a meat diet without suffering heart disease is known. But it is lesser known that they also drink the blood of the animal, which is alkaline and capable of neutralizing some of the toxic effect of the meat. Still, the Eskimo’s average life span is not more than 40 years. The Masai tribes of East Africa also live of mostly meat and milk, but they mix their milk with blood. Their lifespan is very short, too. A typical 45-year old man looks closer to 70 or 80 years of age.
Another major benefit of the vegetarian diet is that, statistically, vegetarians are thinner and healthier. On average, vegetarians weigh about 20 pounds less than their meat-eating counterparts. According to the US Worldwatch Institute, 1.1 billion people worldwide are underweight, and another 1.1 billion too fat. In the US, 23 percent of adults are obese and 60 percent are overweight. But obesity besets poor countries too, from Brazil to China. The traditionally “lean,” mostly vegetarian populations in the world are now quickly following in the footsteps of the typically non-vegetarian populations.
Harvard research showed that a vegetarian diet also reduces colds and allergies. Also children greatly benefit from meat abstinence. Studies show that vegetarian children have better teeth and are afflicted with fewer children’s diseases than non-vegetarian children. They are also less prone to obesity, high cholesterol and heart disease.


Food For Thought

According to Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer, we would have enough food for the entire developing world if we ate half as much meat. Reducing meat production by merely 10 percent could release enough grain to feed 60 million people! Albert Einstein had this to say about vegetarianism: “Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chance for survival on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
He already knew back then that by producing and eating so much meat we would literally be killing us and our environment. And Leo Tolstoy stated, “Vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.”
The world’s output of meat increased fivefold in the second half of the 20th century. Given the current trend, by 2050, the increases in meat production will have reached a point where we could feed 4 billion extra people with the plant food used to raise cattle. Only 10 percent of the protein and calories we feed to our livestock are recovered in the meat we eat. In the case of the United States, for the 20 million tons of humanly edible and nutritious protein that is fed to livestock yearly, only about 2 million tons of meat protein is obtained; and out of that amount less than 27 percent can be utilized by the human body. Although protein is not really what is needed in the world today, the wasted protein could fill the protein deficit around the world three times over. If your are concerned about the world’s survival, consider the following numbers:

One acre of grain produces five times more protein than an acre of pasture set aside for meat production. An acre of beans or peas produces ten times more, and an acre of spinach twenty-eight times more protein.
One portion of meat contains only 20 grams of protein, whereas a 100-gram portion of beans yields 35 grams of protein. The meat, however, costs about 20 times more than the beans do. Being vegetarian saves not only lives but also money.
The food energy supplied by meat production uses 10 times more fossil fuel than the food energy supplied by plant production.
Collectively, the world's livestock produce 10 percent of all the greenhouse gases, including 25 percent of the methane, among the most potent of all.
Eighty-five percent of the topsoil lost in the USA alone each year is directly associated with the raising of livestock. In this way, 4 million acres of cropland get destroyed every year. In the same way, precious rain forests have to give way to satisfy the demand for more meat in the world.
To grow one pound of wheat requires only sixty pounds of water, whereas production of one pound of meat requires a staggering from 50,000 pounds of water. To produce a pound of chicken usurps 1,800 pounds of water. Large chicken slaughtering plants, in fact, use up to 100 million gallons of water daily, enough to supply a city of 25,000 people!
The meat production process is so wasteful and costly that the industry needs hundreds of millions in tax subsidies to survive. You never pay just for the meat you eat. In 1977, the governments of Western Europe spent almost half a billion dollars purchasing the farmer’s overproduction of meat and spent additional millions for the cost of storing it. This trend hasn’t gotten any better since then. All this is precious money lost, heavily burdening every national economy. In this sense, meat consumption is directly impoverishing the wealthy nations.


But Isn’t Fish Supposed To Be Healthy For Us?

Not quite so. Disregarding the above reasons for avoiding protein foods, tests on both wild and farm-raised fish have revealed that their levels of toxic chemicals and metals are endangering the lives of pregnant mothers, developing fetuses and young children. Does this mean it is acceptable for adults to eat fish? Scientists now say that salmon, for example – long considered to be one of the safest of all fish – should be eaten only once per month. We are exposed to numerous other sources of indoor and outdoor pollution almost all the time – not to mention the chemicals contained in most foods today. Our immune system simply cannot afford such high concentrations of toxins as found in fish, without developing a toxicity crisis.
Particularly, tests on farmed salmon uncovered high levels of toxins linked to cancer and birth defects. The findings recently triggered a "scare-mongering" row as other experts insisted salmon was safe to eat regularly - and important for a healthy diet.
Sales are growing at up to 15 percent a year as more people eat oily fish to prevent heart attacks. But when samples from around the world – some from stores in London and Edinburgh – were analyzed, it was discovered that levels of 14 "organochlorine" toxins, the most hazardous of which include PCBs, dioxins, dieldrin and toxaphene, were significantly higher in European and North American farm-raised salmon than in fish caught in the wild. According to U.S. and Canadian scientists and reported by the journal Science, fishmeal was traced as the pollutant source. Even if fish consumption were shown to prevent heart attacks, would it be justified and wise to propagate it as being a healthy food when it is known to cause other chronic or fatal diseases? As always, the final judge is the consumer. If in doubt, I suggest that you use Kinesiology muscle testing to determine whether fish is or is not conducive to your health and well-being.

Here's a list, compiled by the Environmental Working Group
(EWG), of high-mercury fish:

swordfish
tuna
king mackerel
halibut
sea bass
tilefish
pike
walleye
largemouth bass
white croaker
marlin
shark
Gulf coast oysters


A Note on the Blood Type Diet

"Eat Right for Your Type" is authored by Peter J. Adamo. The book suggests to use your blood type to determine which foods you should be eating. According to the theory, when you eat foods that "agree" with your blood type, you reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, infections, and liver disease. Type A people supposedly had ancestors that were farmers. If you are of this type, you should be a vegetarian and avoid meat and dairy products. According to the author, Type B had ancestors that were nomads; therefore you should eat red meat and fish. Type O had ancestors that were hunters and gatherers; this means you should eat lots of animal protein and little carbohydrates. Type AB, had mixed ancestry, and is supposed to eat a combination of Types A and B.
Unfortunately, these theories are not supported by scientific literature and the research has not been confirmed anywhere else. There is little distinction between individuals who have lived in the Andes, the tropical rainforests, or planes of Africa for hundreds of thousands of years. And where does ancestry begin anyway? Two thousand years ago, 100 centuries ago, or 60 millions years ago?
When I went on the high protein diet, (very similar to Type O) at age five, I felt great for about 18 months, like so many others who go on the popular Atkins diet. But then I developed stones in my liver, a dangerous arrhythmia, and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, among other diseases, not realizing that this was due to protein poisoning. Ten years later I switched to a balanced vegan diet, and most of my illnesses went away. But I still had to live with the many stones produced in my liver and gallbladder as a result of what would be known as the O-type blood diet. Forty gallbladder attacks later, I cleaned out my liver and gallbladder and was finally free of any illness or discomfort.
You won't be able to notice the effects of a high protein diet until the blood vessel walls are thickened with the excessive protein. Eating lots of animal protein triggers a powerful immune response in order to get rid of the foreign DNA and dead, coagulated and, therefore, damaged protein. Such an immune response releases a lot of energy, cleans out other impurities, improves skin functions, makes you feel more grounded, etc. However, once the immune system is exhausted (which took 18 months in my case), the situation begins to backfire.
The blood type diet theory is flawed in the sense that it doesn't recognize the basic body type requirements generated by the three forces/humors of nature that control the physicality of matter and the body of humans and animals. These are Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Only a fraction of the body's energy requirements are met through food, and there are many more influences on the body than the blood type. The 6,000-year old medical system of Ayurveda accounts for most of these influences. It is not as easy as just determining one's blood type. The theory of blood type foods is really based on guess work, not on science or traditional knowledge like Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, Greek medicine, or ancient Egyptian medicine.
If concentrated protein foods were a necessary part of the human diet, as the blood type diet advocates for the O-type, for example, why does nature not reflect that need when it formulates human milk in a mother’s breast? Its protein content is a mere trace amount of 1.1 -1.6%, at a time of the baby’s biggest growth spurt. Wouldn't O-type babies die if they lived on near-protein-free breast milk for 18 months (most babies in the natural world only get mother's milk? To the contrary, they actually develop perfect organs and systems.
So if you are on the blood type diet and decide to continue following it, I suggest you to be vigilant. If you start feeling your gallbladder, or pain in the joints muscles, head, develop mucus and sinus problems, coated tongue, etc., you may wish to reconsider your dietary regimen.

"The time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men" ~Leonardo Da Vinci.

Copyright (C) 2004 by Andreas Moritz
Excerpt from The Key to Health and Rejuvenation
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