A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions. (JAMA)

[Guest guest]

" A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary

occlusions. " (JAMA)

JoAnn Guest

Apr 24, 2005 19:52 PDT

====================================================================

" A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions. " (JAMA, Vol. 176,

No. 9, June 3, 1961, p 806.)

 

The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER (Vol. 4, No. 9 April 5, 2004)

" Free of charge, free of advertising, and free of the A.M.A. "

 

Written and copyright 2004 by Andrew Saul, PhD, of

http://www.doctoryourself.com , which welcomes a million visitors

annually. Commercial use of the website or the contents of this

Newsletter is strictly prohibited.

 

WHOLE LOTTA BACON GOIN' ON

 

It's porcine genocide to be sure. Pigs are monthly murdered by the

millions. And there are so many of them lined up to die. Why, the pig

population in North Carolina alone is so huge that that state's hog

farms

produce as much sewage as the entire human population of New York

City. (TBS Network Earth, February 4, 1996) Now think of all the other,

and even larger, livestock all throughout the other 49 states, and

breathe

deep.

 

There is simply nothing cuter than a baby pig. They are pink, clean,

snuggly little characters. They are smart, affectionate and covered with

 

tiny glistening silvery-toned hairs. Their miniature snouts make them

look

like they are smiling, and though they wriggle a bit, piglets are nice

and

warm to hold. I personally didn't raise pigs, but some farmer friends of

 

mine did. For a while, anyway. They quit years ago, and profit was never

 

the issue. It finally got to them that these adorable babies were doomed

to

be hacked up into bacon.

 

As it sits on your kitchen counter, bacon is loaded with fat and salt

and

additives. Gentlemen, you might be interested in this: one of the

principal

chemical ingredients used to " cure " meats is sodium nitrate (NaNO3), a

compound functionally identical to potassium nitrate (KNO3), commonly

known as saltpeter.

 

Saltpeter is a male sterilizing agent.

 

And sure enough: sodium nitrate is also known as " chile saltpeter. "

Sodium nitrite (NaNO2), which differs by a single oxygen atom, is also

used to preserve meat.

 

That's why I usually struggle to conceal a grin when a big, muscular,

hairy

guy intones in a deep voice, " I'm a meat-and-potatoes man! "

 

Right.

 

But, all that said, here's what really did it for me.

 

WHY I STOPPED EATING BACON

 

I remember the very day. There I was, opening a package of ordinary

supermarket bacon. As I separated the slices for frying, I noticed an

odd-

looking area, about the size of a nickel, at the same relative location

on

each slice. Upon closer examination (and I have taught tissue biology

(histology) at the college level), I saw that the funny-looking spots

were

actually neatly presliced sections of a tumor. The pig that had been

killed

for that particular one-pound bacon package, and probably a hundred

others like it, evidently had at least one tumor, and who knows how many

 

more. The government should know this, but they all too obviously never

looked: the opened bacon package I had in front of me had the " USDA

Inspected " seal prominently displayed on the front. The package failed

to

mention the nice 2 cm diameter tumor inside.

 

When I get an attack of the BLT munchies, I make it with beans, lettuce

and tomatoes. As with dead baby cows (veal), which I walked away from

in my youth, I will cheerfully go hungry before I ever eat bacon again.

Tumors are bad enough to look at. There is no way we should be eating

them.

 

THERE'S THE BEEF

 

If you liked vegetarian cattle rancher Howard Lyman's website

http://www.madcowboy.com , and my related Newsletter comments two

issues ago (http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v4n7.txt), well, you will

 

really get a kick out of the man's book, MAD COWBOY. My new review

follows below:

 

" Why should you call me to account for eating decently? " (George Bernard

 

Shaw, in The Vegetarian, 15 January 1898.)

 

When I first began writing pro-vegetarian material some 25 years ago,

two

of my finest and favorite teachers volunteered to proofread for me. As a

 

consequence, both stopped eating meat. What a nice compliment. But my

writing is small 'taters compared to that of Howard Lyman. Mr. Lyman, a

raised-to-graze, fourth-generation dairy farmer and cattle rancher, is

that

arch heretic of animal husbandry: he's a vegan. Lyman and his expert

collaborator, Glen Merzer, have written MAD COWBOY, a concise, in-

your-face book full of meat-busting facts.

 

This book really homes in on the range.

 

For example, Lyman writes that cattle are fed " ground-up dead horses,

dogs, cats, pigs, chickens, and turkeys, as well as blood and fecal

material

of their own species. " (p 12) Then he lets us in on a little

cattle-raising

trade secret: steers are regularly fattened on chicken feces. (p 13)

 

This is gross. And wonderful reading, too.

 

Face it: the government is certainly not protecting you. (Remember my

bacon episode, above?) Slaughterhouse quality control, such as it is, is

 

simply not working. " About 80 per cent of food poisonings come from

meat, " Lyman says. (p 13) And he is no friend of Col. Sanders, either:

" Approximately 30 percent of chicken consumed in America is

contaminated with salmonella, and 70 to 90 percent with another deadly

pathogen, campylobacter, " which he cites as a cause of Guillain-Barre

syndrome (1), a rapid-onset paralytic disease. (p 3

 

Oversight and inspection by the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the

Food and Drug Administration is so lax because they " can generally be

counted on to behave not like public servants but like hired hands of

the

meat and dairy industries. " (p 20) Lyman says, " The government is going

to inspect one out of every two hundred fifty thousand carcasses. " (p 5

 

Mr. Lyman is just warming up. " Nearly all meat in America is

contaminated

with such man-made carcinogens as dioxins, a family of chemicals related

 

to Agent Orange, and DDT. " (p 21) Cattle feed is higher in pesticides

than

crops grown directly for human consumption. A New England Journal of

Medicine study (2) " found that the breast milk of vegetarian women had

only 1 to 2 percent of the national average of pesticide contamination. "

(p

22)

 

" Meat kills, " Lyman bluntly declares, citing the all-too-familiar

coroner's

equation: fat plus cholesterol equals cardiovascular deaths. We have all

 

heard this before, but we often ignore two important facts: there is

very

little fat in plant foods, and plant foods contain zero cholesterol.

Meat has

plenty of both. " It kills us just as dead as tobacco kills us, but far

more

frequently. " (p 23) " (W)e have to do all we can to keep our young people

 

from getting hooked on those fat-and-cholesterol delivery systems know

as hot dogs, hamburgers, scrambled eggs, and ice cream. " It looks to Mr.

 

Lyman that, supersized or not, those McArtery meals have got to go. To

him, Ronald McDonald must seem to be little more than a badly-dressed

Marlboro man.

 

And he's probably right.

 

In the one hundred years since Sinclair Lewis published The Jungle (3),

practically nothing has changed. You had best put down those chicken

fingers before reading this: " Slaughterhouses are efficient factories

for

spreading pathogens from one chicken to the next. . . covered with

feces,

bile and feed . . . (I)ndividual chicken inspectors examine about 12,000

 

chickens a day, each for about two seconds. " (p 3 Lyman writes that, in

America, contaminated chicken kills over one thousand people annually,

and sickens perhaps 80 million more.

 

He does not allow eating fish, either. In addition to citing evidence of

 

bacterial contamination in seafood that would make Captain Nemo blush

(p 39), Lyman relentlessly adds that omega-3 fatty acids, considered to

be

one of the main benefits of eating seafood, " can just as easily be

obtained "

by eating seeds, vegetable oils, wheat germ and vegetables. Important

though those sources be, I think that for many people, fish remains the

surest way of consuming adequate amounts of omega-3's. But on the

other hand, Mr. Lyman's relentless listing of pollutants now found in

seafood (p 40) deserves renewed appreciation of vegetarian alternatives.

 

 

Many more of the most powerful vegetarian arguments ever made are

compiled in Mad Cowboy, with supporting research ably summarized. For

instance, studies of tens of thousands of Seventh Day Adventists " found

the rate of heart disease mortality to be one-third as high for the

lacto-ovo

(egg and dairy) vegetarians as for the meat eaters. For the vegans, the

rate was one-tenth as high. " The massive Cornell University China Health

 

Project (4) " determined that those who eat the least animal products

have

the lowest rates of cancer, heart disease and several other degenerative

 

diseases. " (p 26) Specifically, Lyman indicts osteoporosis, diabetes,

obesity and hypertension as maladies due largely to our habitual

feasting

on dead animal muscle. And " feasting " is the correct word: Americans eat

 

ten times the animal protein as do the Chinese. And the few Chinese that

 

can afford to eat as much meat as we do get the same diseases as

Americans already have. (p 45)

 

Wisely, Lyman backs up his statements, citing additional studies from

around the world, and providing unobtrusive but exact footnotes for easy

 

reference. An index, recommended reading list, and several pages of

sources and bibliography complete the work.

 

Mad Cowboy is by no means the only well-written, concise book on the

rationale for a meatless lifestyle. Twenty years back, I'd read a

charmingly

illustrated yet profound little paperback called, What's Wrong with

Eating

Meat? (5). Many readers have become familiar with the best selling Diet

for a Small Planet from 1971 (6), and others know of the century-old

vegetarian essays by Bernard Shaw or Gandhi. The writings of physicians

such as Tilden, Jackson and Trall of the Natural Hygenic movement in the

 

19th century predate the lot. (7)

 

A young Mr. Lyman knew nothing of these. Doing farm chores at age five,

castrating calves at age ten, and paying his way through agricultural

college on his poker winnings, he was bound and determined to make a

success of feedlot farming. And so he did, lacing his 7,000 steers' feed

 

with antibiotics, diethylstilbesterol (DES) and an array of other

" suspect "

drugs purchased in quantity just before they were banned.

 

It was a rough life, especially for the cattle. " The flies can get so

thick they

actually threaten a cow's ability to breathe. . . Every morning I would

fill up

a fly fogger with insecticide and spray great clouds of it over the

whole

operation. . . (and) covering their backs with insecticide that was

absorbed

through the skin. " (p 56-57) In following such practices, dangerous as

they

are to animals, farmer and the public, Lyman's cattle operation was not

unusual.

 

His own particular claim to fame stems from 1996 when he, along with

Oprah Winfrey, was sued for " food disparagement " by a group of Texas

cattlemen. In 1998, he won. The result was Mad Cowboy (and

www.madcowboy.com). What at first glance might pass for just another

brief celebrity turn actually delivers far more. There is not a dull

paragraph

to be found in Mad Cowboy. I absolutely loved reading it, even though

compared to the vegan Mr. Lyman, I am merely a moderate, or what I call

a " near vegetarian. " Unlike Mr. Lyman, I think fish and dairy products

remain nutritionally important. Even Lyman acknowledges that Dr. Dean

Ornish allows nonfat milk, nonfat yogurt, and egg whites in the diet he

prescribes to reverse coronary diease. (p 30) But surely we overconsume

protein foods in general and flesh foods in particular. And like Mr.

Lyman, I

once was a dairy farmer. I now advocate sharp reductions in meat intake,

 

ones that will save human lives, along with saving literally ten billion

 

animals each year, in America alone, from a walk onto the killing floor.

And

yes, ten " billion " is not a misprint. (

 

Of course, Mad Cowboy addresses Mad Cow disease (bovine spongiform

encephalopathy), and does so in considerable detail in Chapter Five.

Chapter Six discusses recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), given

to cows to force higher milk production. The chapter is an attack on cow

 

abuse (and on the Monsanto Chemical Corporation) that you have to read

to believe. When I was a dairyman, I personally milking a hundred head

twice daily. Since then, I have presented many a college lecture on

rBGH.

Lyman knows exactly what he is talking about. The hidden (and taxpayer-

supported) costs of the meat industry, and livestock-caused

environmental

destruction are covered in Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight presents

vegetarian diet as the ideal weight loss technique, which it is. Lyman

and

co-author Merzer literally rip into high-protein diets (such as Atkins

or " The

Zone " ) with such well-developed criticism as to show for all time why

veggie dieting is the way to go.

 

For such a relatively short book (189 pages), Mad Cowboy contains meat-

munching, myth-mangling facts by the trainload. But what draws you in

most is Mr. Lyman's personal writing style. Lyman is talking directly to

you,

and he's one fine raconteur. ( " I came in with so much herbicide on my

clothing that my mere presence killed off the houseplants. " [p 60]) I

wonder

if this could serve as the chemical farmer's new twist to, " Hi, honey,

I'm

home. " Hide the phycus, dear!

 

But there is no humor to be found in Mr. Lyman's account of his ever-

increasing health problems that finally forced his reconsideration of

the

ethics and the consequences of his livelihood (Chapter Four). Even after

 

serious spine surgery, a meat-fed Mr. Lyman says " I weighed 350 pounds,

my cholesterol was over 300, my blood pressure was off the charts, and I

 

was getting nosebleeds " in addition to eyesight problems. His response

was to change his entire life: he became an organic farmer, ran for

Congress in 1982 and very nearly made it, and became a vegetarian.

" Within a year of eating no meat, my health problems all started to go

away. . . Everything revolved around the fork. " (p 80-1) Lyman asserts,

" Since I became a vegetarian eight years ago, I have lost 130 pounds

steadily, gradually, and without trying. I never gained any of the

weight

back, and never felt hungry. I never went on a diet, never counted my

calories. . .I simply stopped eating animal products. . . My cholesterol

 

count declined from 300 to 140, my blood pressure went from dangerously

high levels to normal ones, and my energy levels increased. " (p 167)

 

Having raised my children in an ovo-laco vegetarian household, I have

observed and experienced many of the health benefits of which Mr. Lyman

speaks. Though I may personally prefer near-vegetarian nutritional

reform

to vegan nutritional revolution, compromise is possible. Lyman presents

transitional eating hints and insights in pages 174-8. They are

practical

and do-able in every way. This is a book does not require your

agreement,

just your action. From cover to cover, Mad Cowboy speaks with power,

and that is the main reason you should read it. Lyman effectively says,

to

Hades with half measures: just stop eating meat. The benefits are many

and significant, as any sane cow would likely agree.

 

Lyman HF and Merzer G. Mad Cowboy: Plain truth from the cattle rancher

who won't eat meat. NY: Scribner, 1998. ISBN 0-684-84516-4.

 

(By the way, I do not sell this book, but any bookseller will. Naturally

the

Mad Cowboy website carries it (http://madcowboy.com) . If you are short

on

cash, check your public library. If your library does not have it, ask

the

librarian to get it for you via interlibrary loan. But in my opinion,

this book is

a keeper and you'll want your own copy.)

 

Notes:

 

1. " (T)here is no effective treatment " for Guillain-Barre syndrome.

" Perhaps 50% of cases occur shortly after a microbial (viral or

bacterial)

infection. " Vaccination may also be a cause. http://www.guillain-

barre.com/overview.html

 

2. Hergenrather J, Hlady G, Wallace B, Savage E. Pollutants in breast

milk

of vegetarians. 1981 Mar 26;304(13):792). " Nursing infants of vegetarian

 

women whose diets are low on the food chain are exposed to less

chemical pollution. "

 

3. Sinclair U. The jungle. NY: New American Library, 1960. Originally

published 1906. Reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v3n4.txt

 

4. (http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v3n16.txt and

http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v3n18.txt , with a comment by study

lead author Dr. Colin Campbell of Cornell University)

 

5. Parham B. What's Wrong with Eating Meat? Denver, CO: Ananda

Marga, 1979.

 

6. http://www.dietforasmallplanet.com/about

 

7. Natural Hygiene Society (of America), The Greatest Health Discovery,

Natural Hygiene Press, Inc., 1972. (Reviewed at

http://www.doctoryourself.com/morebooks.html)

 

8. http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/ar-anag2003.html That ten

billion

figure does not include fish, just birds and mammals.

 

ANOTHER REVIEW OF DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that

Works

 

" Expertly written by biologist and naturopathic teacher Andrew Saul (who

 

has served as a consulting specialist in natural healing for more than

twenty-five years), Doctor Yourself: Natural Healing That Works is a

straightforward and " non-specialist reader friendly " guide to organizing

 

one's diet to promote health and nutrition. Promoting nutritional

therapy as

a preventative and treatment for many diverse ailments, and offering

solid

advice for adjusting one's diet plan to better live with everything from

 

Diabetes, to PMS, to Parkinson's Disease, Doctor Yourself is a very

helpful guidebook which is filled from cover to cover with gems of

information that aren't usually discussed in most other nutrition books.

It

should also be mentioned that Andrew Saul has also developed an

impressive website at DoctorYourself.com with additional information on

the scientific studies behind the protocols referenced in his book and

offers

any interested party more than additional 4,000 references. (Midwest

Book

Review, Vol 3, No 3, March 2004.)

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/sbw/mar_04.htm#health)

 

My book " DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works " is available

through all booksellers. Of course, getting your copy directly from me

means you also get it autographed. Please go to

http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html for more information and

http://www.doctoryourself.com/order.html to order.)

 

WHY WATER

M. L. writes:

" I make a point to drink plenty of water every day. Recently, I have

been

told that people do NOT need to drink six to eight glasses of water a

day.

Are other readers as confused about this as I am? "

 

Likely so. Our bodies need a lot of water for several reasons. In

addition to

the fact that we lose water by sweating, speaking and even breathing, we

 

also lose water every time we urinate. If that urine has any deep color

to it,

it typically means that it is overly concentrated. Although they are

quite

capable of it, it is harder for your kidneys to concentrate urine, and

easier

for them to excrete wastes when they can be diluted. An illustration of

this

would be kidney stones, which are strikingly difficult to form in

dilute, fast-

moving urine. (http://www.doctoryourself.com/kidney.html)

 

Because most Westerners eat far too much protein, they have to excrete a

 

whole lot of excess nitrogen. Proteins are huge molecules. Proteins are

made out of zillions of linked-up amino acids, and every " amino " group

is

formed out of nitrogen. High protein diets mean more nitrogenous wastes

to get rid of, and the kidneys punch the overtime clock. More water,

once

again, makes their job easier.

 

So if you keep your mouth shut, keep your legs crossed, and don't eat

meat, can you lower your water intake? I guess you could; a non-talking

knock-kneed vegetarian giraffe can go over a month without drinking. But

 

who'd want to?

 

As for me, I lowered my protein intake, and upped my water, and noticed

the improvement immediately.

 

WATER HUMOR, SORT OF

A doctor on a house call was walking up the lawn to an old farmhouse

when he fell headlong into a well. When the local judge heard about

this,

he said, " Tell that doctor to tend to the sick, and leave the well

alone. "

 

Privacy Statement:

We do not sell, and we do not share, our mailing list or your email

address

with anyone. We never send out advertisements of any kind. You may

notice that there is no advertising at http://doctoryourself.com and no

advertising in this newsletter. We have no financial connection with the

 

supplement industry. We do not sell vitamins or other health products,

except for Dr. Saul's books, which help fund these free public services.

 

 

FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR ALL to this newsletter are available with a

blank email to

dynews-s-

 

AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This newsletter is not in any way offered as

prescription, diagnosis nor treatment for any disease, illness,

infirmity or

physical condition. Any form of self-treatment or alternative health

program

necessarily must involve an individual's acceptance of some risk, and no

 

one should assume otherwise. Persons needing medical care should

obtain it from a physician. Consult your doctor before making any health

 

decision.

 

" DOCTOR YOURSELF " " DoctorYourself.com " and " Doctor Yourself

Newsletter " are service marks of Andrew W. Saul. All rights reserved.

 

Copyright c 2004 and prior years Andrew W. Saul

drs- . Permission to reproduce single copies of

this

newsletter FOR NON-COMMERCIAL, PERSONAL USE ONLY is hereby

granted providing no alteration of content is made and authorship credit

is

given. Additional single copies will be sent by postal mail to a

practitioner

or patient, free of charge, upon receipt of a self addressed envelope

with

THREE first-class stamps on it (offer good in the USA only), to Number 8

 

Van Buren Street, Holley, NY 14470 USA. (585) 638-5357.

_________________

JoAnn Guest

mrsjo-

DietaryTi-

www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Genes

 

 

 

 

AIM Barleygreen

" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

http://www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Diets.html