A Powerful Speech
Chicken
Food Inc.
Five Poison in Meat
Hot Dog = Cancer
Meat of the Future
Meat
Beyond Vegetarianism
Chicken
Food Inc.
Five Poison in Meat
Hot Dog = Cancer
Meat of the Future
Meat
Beyond Vegetarianism
Factory Farmed Chicken May Be Cheap,
But the Ultimate Price You Pay is High
By Dr. Mercola
But the Ultimate Price You Pay is High
By Dr. Mercola
Story at-a-glance
Demand for food at cheaper prices has dramatically altered the entire food chain. Today, food production revolves around efficiency—the ability to produce more for less.
This mindset has significant ramifications for both animal and human health, and the environment.
Today, nearly 65 billion animals worldwide, including cows, chickens, and pigs, are crammed into confined animal feeding operations known as CAFOs. These animals are imprisoned and tortured in crowded, unhealthy, unsanitary, and cruel conditions.
As noted by the Cornucopia Institute,1 the price of chicken has dropped dramatically over the past few decades, becoming the cheapest meat available in the US. As a result, consumption has doubled since 1970.
Seeing how chicken is supposed to be a healthy source of high-quality nutrition, the fact that it has become so affordable might seem to be a great benefit. But there's a major flaw in this equation. As it turns out, it's virtually impossible to mass-produce clean, safe, optimally nutritious foods at rock bottom prices.
CAFOs are Hotbeds for Disease
A typical poultry CAFO measuring 490 feet by 45 feet can hold at least 30,000 chickens or more. Animal Welfare Guidelines permit a stocking density that gives each full-grown chicken an amount of space equivalent to an 8.5-inch by 11-inch piece of paper.
An example of a poultry CAFO can be seen in the video above. It's a short clip from the film Food Inc. Sickness is the norm for animals raised in these CAFOs—the large-scale factory farms on which 99 percent of American chickens come from.
These animals are also typically fed genetically engineered (GE) corn and soybeans, which is a far cry from their natural diet of seeds, green plants, insects, and worms.
This unnatural diet further exacerbates disease promulgation. Processing byproducts such as chicken feathers and other animal parts can also be added to the feed.
To prevent the inevitable spread of disease from stress, overcrowding, lack of vitamin D (as CAFO chickens may never see the light of day), and an unnatural diet, the animals are routinely fed antibiotics (hormones, on the other hand, are not permitted in American-raised chickens).
Those antibiotics pose a direct threat to human health, and contaminate the environment when they run off into lakes, rivers, aquifers, and drinking water. According to a landmark "Antibiotic Resistance Threat Report" published by the CDC,2 two million Americans become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year, and at least 23,000 of them die as a direct result of those infections.
Research suggests you have a 50/50 chance of buying meat tainted with drug-resistant bacteria when you buy it from your local grocery store. In some cases, the risk may be even greater.
Last year, using data collected by the federal agency called NARMS (National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System), the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in:
Despite the well-documented health and environmental hazards, most consumers are still unaware that well over 90 percent of all chicken meat and eggs sold in the US come from CAFOs.
Most people are also unaware that these cheap CAFO foods are very different, from a nutritional standpoint, from animals raised on pasture, and that while they may be inexpensive at the checkout line, there are significant hidden costs associated with this kind of food production.
The Hidden Cost of Cheap Chicken
As discussed in the featured article,3 the hidden costs of cheap factory farmed chicken can be divided into three categories:
- Demand for food at cheaper prices has dramatically altered the entire food chain
- As a result, food production revolves around efficiency—the ability to produce more for less
- Tens of billions of animals worldwide are crammed into confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where they are tortured in crowded, unhealthy, unsanitary, and cruel conditions
- The failures of the factory farm model reveal that it’s virtually impossible to mass-produce clean, safe, optimally nutritious foods at rock bottom prices
- To prevent the inevitable spread of disease from stress, overcrowding, and an unnatural diet, the animals are routinely fed antibiotics
- Antibiotics used in livestock pose a direct threat to human health, and contaminate the environment
Demand for food at cheaper prices has dramatically altered the entire food chain. Today, food production revolves around efficiency—the ability to produce more for less.
This mindset has significant ramifications for both animal and human health, and the environment.
Today, nearly 65 billion animals worldwide, including cows, chickens, and pigs, are crammed into confined animal feeding operations known as CAFOs. These animals are imprisoned and tortured in crowded, unhealthy, unsanitary, and cruel conditions.
As noted by the Cornucopia Institute,1 the price of chicken has dropped dramatically over the past few decades, becoming the cheapest meat available in the US. As a result, consumption has doubled since 1970.
Seeing how chicken is supposed to be a healthy source of high-quality nutrition, the fact that it has become so affordable might seem to be a great benefit. But there's a major flaw in this equation. As it turns out, it's virtually impossible to mass-produce clean, safe, optimally nutritious foods at rock bottom prices.
CAFOs are Hotbeds for Disease
A typical poultry CAFO measuring 490 feet by 45 feet can hold at least 30,000 chickens or more. Animal Welfare Guidelines permit a stocking density that gives each full-grown chicken an amount of space equivalent to an 8.5-inch by 11-inch piece of paper.
An example of a poultry CAFO can be seen in the video above. It's a short clip from the film Food Inc. Sickness is the norm for animals raised in these CAFOs—the large-scale factory farms on which 99 percent of American chickens come from.
These animals are also typically fed genetically engineered (GE) corn and soybeans, which is a far cry from their natural diet of seeds, green plants, insects, and worms.
This unnatural diet further exacerbates disease promulgation. Processing byproducts such as chicken feathers and other animal parts can also be added to the feed.
To prevent the inevitable spread of disease from stress, overcrowding, lack of vitamin D (as CAFO chickens may never see the light of day), and an unnatural diet, the animals are routinely fed antibiotics (hormones, on the other hand, are not permitted in American-raised chickens).
Those antibiotics pose a direct threat to human health, and contaminate the environment when they run off into lakes, rivers, aquifers, and drinking water. According to a landmark "Antibiotic Resistance Threat Report" published by the CDC,2 two million Americans become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year, and at least 23,000 of them die as a direct result of those infections.
Research suggests you have a 50/50 chance of buying meat tainted with drug-resistant bacteria when you buy it from your local grocery store. In some cases, the risk may be even greater.
Last year, using data collected by the federal agency called NARMS (National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System), the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in:
- 81 percent of ground turkey
- 69 percent of pork chops
- 55 percent of ground beef
- 39 percent of raw chicken parts
Despite the well-documented health and environmental hazards, most consumers are still unaware that well over 90 percent of all chicken meat and eggs sold in the US come from CAFOs.
Most people are also unaware that these cheap CAFO foods are very different, from a nutritional standpoint, from animals raised on pasture, and that while they may be inexpensive at the checkout line, there are significant hidden costs associated with this kind of food production.
The Hidden Cost of Cheap Chicken
As discussed in the featured article,3 the hidden costs of cheap factory farmed chicken can be divided into three categories:
- Ethical costs: Research has shown that chickens are not only quite smart, they experience suffering just as animals higher up in the food chain—including you.
- "Chickens have nervous systems similar to ours, and when we do things to them that are likely to hurt a sensitive creature, they show behavioral and physiological responses that are like ours.
When stressed or bored, chickens show what scientists call 'stereotypical behavior,' or repeated futile movements, like caged animals who pace back and forth," Cornucopia writes. - Environmental costs: CAFOs are notorious for producing massive amounts of offensive waste that disturbs and pollutes the local ecosystem.
- The featured article references a number of areas in which residents are battling nauseating odors and infestations of flies, rats, mice, intestinal parasites, and other disturbing health effects. As stated by Cornucopia:
"Tyson produces chicken cheaply because it passes many costs on to others. Some of the cost is paid by people who can't enjoy being outside in their yard because of the flies and have to keep their windows shut because of the stench. Some is paid by kids who can't swim in the local streams. Some is paid by those who have to buy bottled water because their drinking water is polluted. Some is paid by people who want to be able to enjoy a natural environment with all its beauty and rich biological diversity.
These costs are, in the terms used by economists, 'externalities' because the people who pay them are external to the transaction between the producer and the purchaser... In theory, to eliminate this market failure, Tyson should fully compensate everyone adversely affected by its pollution. Then its chicken would no longer be so cheap." - Human health costs: Besides the health ramifications suffered by those who happen to live near a CAFO and are exposed to the environmental contamination caused by these factory farms, cheap CAFO chicken and eggs are also taking a hidden toll on your health when you eat them.
- In part because their nutrition is inherently inferior; in part because they're contaminated with antibiotics; and in part because they raise your risk of contracting a foodborne illness. Most recently, Foster Farms and Kirkland chicken brands issued recalls4 for Salmonella contamination that has affected hundreds of consumers across America since March 2013.
Recalled items have "use or freeze by" dates ranging from March 17, 2014 to March 31, 2014. The identifying plant marks on the recalled products are P-6137, P-6137A, or P-7632. You can find this plant mark inside the USDA mark of inspection. One of Foster Farms' processing plants was also shut down by government mandate5 after cockroaches were discovered during a Food Safety inspection. And last fall, yet another of its plants were threatened with closure due to the presence of Salmonella contamination.6 - Your risk of foodborne illness is magnified if you fail to follow safe handling instructions. For example, washing your chickenincreases your risk of food poisoning, as it allows dangerous campylobacter bacteria to spread.7, 8
- As reported by Fox News:
- "When washed, campylobacter from raw chicken can be transferred into water droplets, which may splash onto neighboring surfaces, hands, clothing, and cooking utensils. If the campylobacter bacteria are ingested directly or via unwashed cutting boards and utensils, they can cause campylobacteriosis, characterized by symptoms such as diarrhea, abdominal pain, cramping, and fever."
- Another important safety tip is to designate separate cutting boards for meat and vegetables. Do not cut vegetables on the same cutting board you just used to prepare your chicken (or other meats). Besides avoiding cross contamination in your kitchen, also make sure you cook the chicken thoroughly, to kill off any potentially harmful bacteria.
- The Case Against Factory Farmed Foods
CAFOs represent a corporate-controlled system characterized by large-scale, centralized, low profit-margin production, processing, and distribution systems. It's important to realize that the factory farm system is NOT a system that ensures food safety and protects human health. On the contrary, it makes the food system far more vulnerable to pathogenic contaminations that have the capacity to kill—both the livestock, and the people who eat them.
For example, over the past year, nearly 10 percent of the entire swine population in the US has been wiped out by a highly lethal virus called Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv), which has been—at least in part—traced back to pig's blood used in piglet feed. In this case, the virus does not affect humans. But it's a valuable demonstration of how fragile the system becomes when you veer too far from the natural order of things.
Besides everything mentioned already, the factory feeding model also involves the mixing of animal parts (in this case, blood) from a large number of animals, which is then fed to large numbers of animals—the meat from which in turn are again mixed together in large processing plants, before it's ultimately sold in grocery stores across the nation. All this mixing and cross-contamination allows for pathogens to contaminate huge amounts of food products, and is the reason why a single food contamination can spread so far and wide, affecting people across multiple states.
Processing plant (i.e. plants where meat is cut or milk is pasteurized, for example) are primary culprits when it comes to the spread of pathogens. Due to regulations, traditional farmer-to-consumer practices have been outlawed. Now processors run the show and cut out the farmer's share, which has decimated small farmers and created this industrialized, disease-promoting mess.
Small-Scale Farming Makes for Far Safer Food
The weaknesses of the factory farm model are usually overlooked during food safety discussions. Instead, small-scale raw food producers—and raw dairy producers in particular—are targeted and vilified as sources of dangerous pathogens that threaten human health. Such attacks are completely out of order and do nothing to improve food safety on the whole, as the PRIMARY sources of pathogenic contamination actually originate in CAFOs, large-scale butchering and processing plants, and processed food manufacturing plants, where multiple ingredients are mixed together.
For example, late last year, Chobani Greek yoghurt was recalled following reports of gastrointestinal illness.9 The yogurt, which is pasteurized and not raw, was found to be contaminated with a fungus called Murcor circinelloides. In 2011, Cargill recalled a whopping 36 million pounds of ground turkey10 after an antibiotic-resistant strain of Salmonella in the meat was linked to 107 illnesses and one death.
Remarkably, as explained in a previous Food Safety News article,11 a large-scale meat producer can have 50 percent of its samples test positive for Salmonella, and still get the green light of approval from the USDA! When it hits 51 percent contamination, the meat is tagged "unsafe." But even at that point, USDA testing simply continues until illness is reported. This is factory farmed food safety for you...
Meanwhile, a small organic farmer will notice a health problem with an animal in his herd long before it gets sent for slaughter, and he can then treat that individual animal as necessary. And, should a pathogenic outbreak occur on a farm, the risk of public exposure is limited by the fact that the animal products are sold locally; they're not shipped long distances and mixed in with others. This is why a food borne outbreak on an organic farm may affect one or two people, whereas an outbreak originating from a processing plant can affect hundreds, or even thousands. One pasteurized milk contamination sickened 200,000 people!12
Organic, Pastured Chicken Is Your Best and Safest Alternative
If food safety, optimal nutrition and disease prevention really matters, the way forward is to shift into a socially responsible, small-scale system where independent producers and processors focus on providing food for their local and regional markets. This alternative produces high-quality food, and supports farmers who produce healthy, meat, eggs, and dairy products using humane methods. And it's far easier on the environment.
True free-range chickens and eggs come from hens that roam freely outdoors on a pasture, where they can forage for their natural diet, which includes seeds, green plants, insects, and worms. Keep in mind that when it comes to labels such as "free-range" and "natural," there are loopholes that allow the commercial egg industry to call eggs from their industrial egg laying facilities "free-range," so don't be fooled.
By far, the vast majority of food at your local supermarket comes from these polluting, inhumane farm conglomerations. If you want to stop supporting them, you first need to find a new place to shop. Your best source for pastured chicken (and fresh eggs) is a local farmer that allows his hens to forage freely outdoors. If you live in an urban area, visiting a local farmer's market is typically the quickest route to finding high-quality chicken and eggs. Again, free-range pastured chickens should be allowed outside, and to eat insects. To see how this looks in the real world, please watch my video below with farmer Joel Salatin.
Take Control of Your Health by Joining the Real Food Movement
If you really want to be sure your food is healthy and safe, it would be best to avoid grocery stores as much as possible, as conventionally-raised livestock, including chickens, are far from ideal. The more we all make it a point to only buy food from a source we know and trust, the faster factory farming will become a shameful practice of the past. Farmers and lovers of real food show us that change is possible. Here are a few suggestions for how you can take affirmative action to protect your and your family's health:
- Buy local products whenever possible. Otherwise, buy organic and fair-trade products.
- Shop at your local farmers market, join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), or buy from local grocers and co-ops committed to selling local foods. The following organizations can help you locate farm-fresh foods in your local area that has been raised in a humane, sustainable manner:
- Local Harvest -- This Web site will help you find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.
- Farmers' Markets -- A national listing of farmers' markets.
- Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals -- The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, and hotels, and online outlets in the United States and Canada.
- Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) -- CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.
- FoodRoutes -- The FoodRoutes "Find Good Food" map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSAs, and markets near you.
- Support restaurants and food vendors that buy locally produced food.
- Avoid genetically engineered (GMO) foods. Buying certified organic ensures your food is non-GM.
- Cook, can, ferment, dry, and freeze. Return to the basics of cooking, and pass these skills on to your children.
- Grow your own garden, or volunteer at a community garden. Teach your children how to garden and where their food comes from.
🌸
IF YOU EAT MEAT GO ORGANIC!
- Organic, grass-fed standards do not permit non-medical use of antibiotics. With antibiotic-resistant disease being a major public health hazard, buying organic meats is an important consideration
- Antibiotics and hard-to-digest grains radically alter the bacterial balance and composition in the animal’s gut, thereby promoting disease. It also has a detrimental effect on the nutritional composition of the meat
- Grass-fed beef tends to be leaner, and have higher levels of vitamins, minerals, and cancer-fighting CLA. It also has a healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats
- Organic farms tend to provide far more sanitary conditions overall, since the animals are not kept in overcrowded barracks day in and day out. As a result, the animals are far less likely to harbor dangerous pathogens
- Raw milk from organic, grass-fed cows, and certified organic eggs from free-range hens are also healthier options due to superior nutrient content and reduced risk of contamination with drugs and pathogens
🌸
🌸
Forcing a Plant-based Diet
Onto the World
https://rootcausemd.substack.com/p/forcing-a-plant-based-diet-onto-the
🌸
Forcing a Plant-based Diet
Onto the World
https://rootcausemd.substack.com/p/forcing-a-plant-based-diet-onto-the
🌸
The RootCause Journal of Medicine
ROOTCAUSE DISPATCH
Forcing a plant-based diet onto the world
RootCause MD. 2
In a thread last week we drew attention to The World Economic Forum and highlighted the fact that this supra-national organization of un-elected bureaucrats are heavily pushing a plant-based diet as part of their ‘Great Reset’ agenda.
You may be wondering how this relates to RootCause Medicine and what we are trying to achieve on the ground – namely the liberation of the individual through a return to an ancestrally appropriate diet. Let me explain.
WHAT DO THE WORL ECONOMIC FORUM WANT?
The World Economic Forum @wef, a collection of unelected bureaucrats, has the stated goal of replacing the animal foods in your diet entirely with plant 'for the climate'
Since the early 1970s, there has been a global trend away from small scale animal agriculture and family farms towards large, corporate industrial mono-cropping operations.
This change has been accompanied by the rise of ultra-processed plant foods and their imposition through regulatory capture of dietary guidelines. This shift has been highly profitable for a select group of people, namely the corporations and shareholders.
The losers have been rural areas, rural communities, food chain resilience, the soil and the health of the population. Farmers are increasingly pushed towards mono-cropping and high input farming methods by financial incentives and the need to survive.
This has further accelerated topsoil loss and required ever larger quantities of industrial fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. In the US, meat processing has become oligopolized into 4 major corporations, which has concerning implications for food security in the event of supply chain failure.
For those who are unaware, a plant-based / vegetarian or vegan diet is not the optimal diet human diet, despite what the The World Economic Forum, EAT-Lancet and the Harvard School of Public Health will tell you.
The simple reason is it lacks key nutrients that enabled our evolution as Homo sapiens. Nor is a plant-based diet sourced from monocropped plants and grains optimal for the planet - check out the work of Paul Saladino and Frank Mitloehner to understand why.
So I bring attention to the World Economic Forum and their Great Reset Agenda to help people understand the forces at play. There is deliberate top-down effort to reduce your freedom of choice and steer you away from ancestrally appropriate animal foods.
Do you think Klaus Schwab, the founder and 'Executive Chairman' is eating the nutrient-poor, hyper-processed food that he is advocating you eat? I doubt it.
You can decide for yourself why this is occurring –
I think the simplest explanation (Occam’s Razor) is that a global plant-based diet best serves the corporate profit interests that control most aspects of society.
However, its interesting to note history is replete with examples of concerted efforts to force grain and plant-based diets onto the peasants while the ruling classes eat meat. Make of that what you will.
As always, we like to keep it real like a regeneratively grazed rib eye steak (done rare) and a glass of homemade organic goats milk kefir. Here are some actionable steps:
The Rest Is Up To You...
A newsletter about the harms of seed oils, the dangers of xeno-estrogens.
Ancestral eating, regenerative agriculture and health optimization.
Xenoestrogens
Any natural or synthetic compound introduced into the body that mimics the effects of estrogen or promotes its production.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/xenoestrogen
ROOTCAUSE DISPATCH
Forcing a plant-based diet onto the world
RootCause MD. 2
In a thread last week we drew attention to The World Economic Forum and highlighted the fact that this supra-national organization of un-elected bureaucrats are heavily pushing a plant-based diet as part of their ‘Great Reset’ agenda.
You may be wondering how this relates to RootCause Medicine and what we are trying to achieve on the ground – namely the liberation of the individual through a return to an ancestrally appropriate diet. Let me explain.
WHAT DO THE WORL ECONOMIC FORUM WANT?
The World Economic Forum @wef, a collection of unelected bureaucrats, has the stated goal of replacing the animal foods in your diet entirely with plant 'for the climate'
Since the early 1970s, there has been a global trend away from small scale animal agriculture and family farms towards large, corporate industrial mono-cropping operations.
This change has been accompanied by the rise of ultra-processed plant foods and their imposition through regulatory capture of dietary guidelines. This shift has been highly profitable for a select group of people, namely the corporations and shareholders.
The losers have been rural areas, rural communities, food chain resilience, the soil and the health of the population. Farmers are increasingly pushed towards mono-cropping and high input farming methods by financial incentives and the need to survive.
This has further accelerated topsoil loss and required ever larger quantities of industrial fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. In the US, meat processing has become oligopolized into 4 major corporations, which has concerning implications for food security in the event of supply chain failure.
For those who are unaware, a plant-based / vegetarian or vegan diet is not the optimal diet human diet, despite what the The World Economic Forum, EAT-Lancet and the Harvard School of Public Health will tell you.
The simple reason is it lacks key nutrients that enabled our evolution as Homo sapiens. Nor is a plant-based diet sourced from monocropped plants and grains optimal for the planet - check out the work of Paul Saladino and Frank Mitloehner to understand why.
So I bring attention to the World Economic Forum and their Great Reset Agenda to help people understand the forces at play. There is deliberate top-down effort to reduce your freedom of choice and steer you away from ancestrally appropriate animal foods.
Do you think Klaus Schwab, the founder and 'Executive Chairman' is eating the nutrient-poor, hyper-processed food that he is advocating you eat? I doubt it.
You can decide for yourself why this is occurring –
I think the simplest explanation (Occam’s Razor) is that a global plant-based diet best serves the corporate profit interests that control most aspects of society.
However, its interesting to note history is replete with examples of concerted efforts to force grain and plant-based diets onto the peasants while the ruling classes eat meat. Make of that what you will.
As always, we like to keep it real like a regeneratively grazed rib eye steak (done rare) and a glass of homemade organic goats milk kefir. Here are some actionable steps:
- Wherever possible, buy your food directly from small scale family farms who use regenerative practices. They care about their animals and their land. Your health wins, the farmer wins, the animal wins, the planet wins.
- Avoid purchasing processed food. It supports and enables destructive agricultural methods, financially empowers big corporations and wrecks your health. No bueno.
- Start asking the important questions. Who benefits from a ‘Great Reset’? Who is Klaus Schwab? Why should he or the World Economic Forum have any influence on what you or your family eat?
The Rest Is Up To You...
A newsletter about the harms of seed oils, the dangers of xeno-estrogens.
Ancestral eating, regenerative agriculture and health optimization.
Xenoestrogens
Any natural or synthetic compound introduced into the body that mimics the effects of estrogen or promotes its production.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/xenoestrogen
🌸
Comments
🌸
I advice at least to stop eating seed oils also known as vegetable oils.
🌸
Here some historical facts I gathered,
supporting your claims:
🌸
Comments
🌸
I advice at least to stop eating seed oils also known as vegetable oils.
🌸
Here some historical facts I gathered,
supporting your claims:
🌸
1) For centuries in France, England etc the paysans were not allowed to hunt, only the aristocracy. The taking of wild animals was punishable by death or mutilation.
By the way, the difference in words such as cow/beef, pig/pork etc comes from the French words being used to label the meat while the English word for the animal itself remained. The aristocracy spoke French and the peasantry had no need for words for the meat as they didn't get a chance to see/eat it. Again, a weak, sick, subservient class is easier to control. The wheat diet makes people know their place and more docile...
2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19227662/
"The prohibition of a meat diet, however, was not a result of the dissemination of Buddhism, but was because of orders from the rulers at the time. Animal meat and milk are ideal protein sources for humans, which most likely contributed to the physical buildup and stamina of caucasians.
Since around the Fifth Century AD, Japanese rulers began building government-run pastures in many places to raise horses and cattle, from which meat and dairy products were regularly supplied. [...] The Imperial Court also tried to discourage a meat diet as it did not want rice-growing peasants to consume meat. Samurai, the warrior-class people, however, regularly hunted for wild animals for their own consumption. [...]
A meat diet was essential for the success of warlords of the era. [...] Milk and dairy products became popular in the 15th Century along with the introduction of Christianity to Japan"
3) The Comanche were as CARNIVORE as it gets —p. 48, Empire of the Summer Moon, S.C. Gwynn. Then they started to exchange their animal products for plants: their numbers quadrupled but their health degraded...
4) Gladiators were given a vegetarian diet: why would the Ancient Roman elite wastes valuable protein on slaves who were about to die? Beside, plants made them fat and that made the fights last longer:
https://archive.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.html
5) Agriculture made the Chinese weaker physically as per p. 87 from "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford.
"Compared to the Jurched soldiers, the Mongols were much healthier and stronger. The Mongols consumed a steady diet of meat, milk, yogurt, and other dairy products, and they fought men who lived on gruel made from various grains.
The grain diet of the peasant warriors stinted their bones, rotted their teeth, and left them weak and prone to disease. In contrast, the poorest Mongol soldier ate mostly protein, thereby giving him strong teeth and bones. Unlike the Jurched soldiers, who were dependent on a heavy carb diet, the Mongols could more easily go a day or two without food."
Search for "Jurched soldiers":
https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/amit/books/weatherford-2004-genghis-khan-making.html
6) "Largely vegetarian Bantu tribes such as the Kikuyu and Wakamba were agriculturists. Their diet consisted of sweet potatoes, corn, beans, bananas, millet and Kafir corn or sorghum. They were less robust than their meat-eating neighbors, and tended to be dominated by them." Dr Weston A. Price
From a Sally Fallon and Marry Enig's 1999 article:
https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-diets/out-of-africa-what-dr-price-dr-burkitt-discovered-in-their-studies-of-sub-saharan-tribes/
7) "Many Hindus are indeed vegetarian but many, including Brahmins, eat meat. In fact, for the warrior castes, meat was an important part of their diet, vital in building the physical strength needed for battle. It is the belief of one high-ranking caste, the Kayastha, that vegetarianism is for rabbits."
Sikhs (a religion born for its followers to become warriors against the Muslim invaders of the time) can eat meat.
"Dietary habits and dietary customs were factors that have played roles in the formation, evolution and development of Indian caste system.[9]"
"most Buddhists from the times of the Buddha until today are meat eaters. Theravada Buddhist tradition interprets the last meal of Buddha offered by Cunda to be pork"
It seems vegetarianism was used to fight Buddhism. It seems the Untouchables continued to eat beef. So, to "protect" Indians cohesion/identity/herd mentality/power/nation, did the Brahmins forbid to eat beef and those who did were treated badly becoming Untouchables.
From https://scroll.in/article/812645/read-what-ambedkar-wrote-on-why-brahmins-started-worshipping-the-cow-and-gave-up-eating-beef
8 ) Plato wrote in “The Republic” that the ruling class should limit the worker/slave class from eating meat, that meat should be reserved for them because it made one stronger both mentally and physically.
https://philosophersmag.com/essays/204-ancient-arguments-for-vegetarianism
9) "Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day.
Therefore, there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, non-producing elite set itself above the disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs at Mycenae c. 1500 B. C. suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than commoners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller and had better teeth (on the average, one instead of six cavities or missing teeth).
Among Chilean mummies from c. A. D. 1000, the elite were distinguished not only by ornaments and gold hair clips but also by a fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by disease.
[...] Thus with the advent of agriculture the elite became better off, but most people became worse off. Instead of swallowing the progressivist party line that we chose agriculture because it was good for us, we must ask how we got trapped by it despite its pitfalls."
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race
Nowadays plants have been engineered for greater amount of sugars, carbs and unknowingly or not, toxins, making veggies and fruits less healthy ...
We are advised to increase their intake and lower our animal products intake, which some doctors incorrectly think, results in early deaths from metabolic diseases like heart attacks, cancers, diabetes, obesity, depression, dementia etc BUT actually, those diseases rates have gone exponential since the introduction of vegetable oils and the inverted pyramid food! Here again, we are told the opposite of the truth...
The next battle I fear is to outlaw meat.
Throughout history the overlords have thrived on meat while making the peasants survive on wheat. A weak, sick, subservient class is easier to control.
Don't think it is not part of the agenda today. Whether for power or profit.
Many people are willingly adopting the poorer diet that our ancestors were forced to, but it is not a stretch to think we could be soon forced to it, for population control and/or over population curbing (Heck maybe through their vaccine passport and credit points).
To also get rich on our backs: corporations don't want the money to go to regenerative farmers, there is more money to make by creating sugary crap and the tons of drugs needed to alleviate the many health consequences (and at the same time looking as if they are saving us! Just more virtue signaling grrr)
All this bad for me as I eat only animal products, like humans have been for 2.5 million years, before the advent of agriculture some 15,000 years ago. Don't fall for the lies that meat, the food that made us humans, notably by quadrupling our brains, is the cause of modern diseases like heart attacks, diabetes, cancers etc
I advice at least to stop eating seed oils also known as vegetable oils.
1ReplyCollapse. /. 1 reply by RootCause MD
THE CORRUPTION OF THE HUMAN DIETWhat is RootCause Medicine? - Part II
ROOTCAUSE MD - 22 - 4
Why?...I am Thinking
Freshly shucked oysters and raw liver with sparkling mineral water, I am thinking. Networks of decentralized regenerative ranches, I am thinking. Herds…
ROOTCAUSE MD - 35 - 6
Going Down the Blue Light Rabbit HoleRootCause Dispatch #10
ROOTCAUSE MD - 15n - See all
By the way, the difference in words such as cow/beef, pig/pork etc comes from the French words being used to label the meat while the English word for the animal itself remained. The aristocracy spoke French and the peasantry had no need for words for the meat as they didn't get a chance to see/eat it. Again, a weak, sick, subservient class is easier to control. The wheat diet makes people know their place and more docile...
2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19227662/
"The prohibition of a meat diet, however, was not a result of the dissemination of Buddhism, but was because of orders from the rulers at the time. Animal meat and milk are ideal protein sources for humans, which most likely contributed to the physical buildup and stamina of caucasians.
Since around the Fifth Century AD, Japanese rulers began building government-run pastures in many places to raise horses and cattle, from which meat and dairy products were regularly supplied. [...] The Imperial Court also tried to discourage a meat diet as it did not want rice-growing peasants to consume meat. Samurai, the warrior-class people, however, regularly hunted for wild animals for their own consumption. [...]
A meat diet was essential for the success of warlords of the era. [...] Milk and dairy products became popular in the 15th Century along with the introduction of Christianity to Japan"
3) The Comanche were as CARNIVORE as it gets —p. 48, Empire of the Summer Moon, S.C. Gwynn. Then they started to exchange their animal products for plants: their numbers quadrupled but their health degraded...
4) Gladiators were given a vegetarian diet: why would the Ancient Roman elite wastes valuable protein on slaves who were about to die? Beside, plants made them fat and that made the fights last longer:
https://archive.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.html
5) Agriculture made the Chinese weaker physically as per p. 87 from "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford.
"Compared to the Jurched soldiers, the Mongols were much healthier and stronger. The Mongols consumed a steady diet of meat, milk, yogurt, and other dairy products, and they fought men who lived on gruel made from various grains.
The grain diet of the peasant warriors stinted their bones, rotted their teeth, and left them weak and prone to disease. In contrast, the poorest Mongol soldier ate mostly protein, thereby giving him strong teeth and bones. Unlike the Jurched soldiers, who were dependent on a heavy carb diet, the Mongols could more easily go a day or two without food."
Search for "Jurched soldiers":
https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/amit/books/weatherford-2004-genghis-khan-making.html
6) "Largely vegetarian Bantu tribes such as the Kikuyu and Wakamba were agriculturists. Their diet consisted of sweet potatoes, corn, beans, bananas, millet and Kafir corn or sorghum. They were less robust than their meat-eating neighbors, and tended to be dominated by them." Dr Weston A. Price
From a Sally Fallon and Marry Enig's 1999 article:
https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-diets/out-of-africa-what-dr-price-dr-burkitt-discovered-in-their-studies-of-sub-saharan-tribes/
7) "Many Hindus are indeed vegetarian but many, including Brahmins, eat meat. In fact, for the warrior castes, meat was an important part of their diet, vital in building the physical strength needed for battle. It is the belief of one high-ranking caste, the Kayastha, that vegetarianism is for rabbits."
Sikhs (a religion born for its followers to become warriors against the Muslim invaders of the time) can eat meat.
"Dietary habits and dietary customs were factors that have played roles in the formation, evolution and development of Indian caste system.[9]"
"most Buddhists from the times of the Buddha until today are meat eaters. Theravada Buddhist tradition interprets the last meal of Buddha offered by Cunda to be pork"
It seems vegetarianism was used to fight Buddhism. It seems the Untouchables continued to eat beef. So, to "protect" Indians cohesion/identity/herd mentality/power/nation, did the Brahmins forbid to eat beef and those who did were treated badly becoming Untouchables.
From https://scroll.in/article/812645/read-what-ambedkar-wrote-on-why-brahmins-started-worshipping-the-cow-and-gave-up-eating-beef
8 ) Plato wrote in “The Republic” that the ruling class should limit the worker/slave class from eating meat, that meat should be reserved for them because it made one stronger both mentally and physically.
https://philosophersmag.com/essays/204-ancient-arguments-for-vegetarianism
9) "Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day.
Therefore, there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, non-producing elite set itself above the disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs at Mycenae c. 1500 B. C. suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than commoners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller and had better teeth (on the average, one instead of six cavities or missing teeth).
Among Chilean mummies from c. A. D. 1000, the elite were distinguished not only by ornaments and gold hair clips but also by a fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by disease.
[...] Thus with the advent of agriculture the elite became better off, but most people became worse off. Instead of swallowing the progressivist party line that we chose agriculture because it was good for us, we must ask how we got trapped by it despite its pitfalls."
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race
Nowadays plants have been engineered for greater amount of sugars, carbs and unknowingly or not, toxins, making veggies and fruits less healthy ...
We are advised to increase their intake and lower our animal products intake, which some doctors incorrectly think, results in early deaths from metabolic diseases like heart attacks, cancers, diabetes, obesity, depression, dementia etc BUT actually, those diseases rates have gone exponential since the introduction of vegetable oils and the inverted pyramid food! Here again, we are told the opposite of the truth...
The next battle I fear is to outlaw meat.
Throughout history the overlords have thrived on meat while making the peasants survive on wheat. A weak, sick, subservient class is easier to control.
Don't think it is not part of the agenda today. Whether for power or profit.
Many people are willingly adopting the poorer diet that our ancestors were forced to, but it is not a stretch to think we could be soon forced to it, for population control and/or over population curbing (Heck maybe through their vaccine passport and credit points).
To also get rich on our backs: corporations don't want the money to go to regenerative farmers, there is more money to make by creating sugary crap and the tons of drugs needed to alleviate the many health consequences (and at the same time looking as if they are saving us! Just more virtue signaling grrr)
All this bad for me as I eat only animal products, like humans have been for 2.5 million years, before the advent of agriculture some 15,000 years ago. Don't fall for the lies that meat, the food that made us humans, notably by quadrupling our brains, is the cause of modern diseases like heart attacks, diabetes, cancers etc
I advice at least to stop eating seed oils also known as vegetable oils.
1ReplyCollapse. /. 1 reply by RootCause MD
THE CORRUPTION OF THE HUMAN DIETWhat is RootCause Medicine? - Part II
ROOTCAUSE MD - 22 - 4
Why?...I am Thinking
Freshly shucked oysters and raw liver with sparkling mineral water, I am thinking. Networks of decentralized regenerative ranches, I am thinking. Herds…
ROOTCAUSE MD - 35 - 6
Going Down the Blue Light Rabbit HoleRootCause Dispatch #10
ROOTCAUSE MD - 15n - See all
🌸
🌸
World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ Plan
for Big Food Benefits Industry, Not People
🌸
childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/world-economic-forums
🌸
for Big Food Benefits Industry, Not People
🌸
childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/world-economic-forums
🌸
🌸
From a Sally Fallon and Marry Enig's
1999 article:
🌸
https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-diets/out-of-africa-what-dr-price-dr-burkitt-discovered-in-their-studies-of-sub-saharan-tribes
🌸
From a Sally Fallon and Marry Enig's
1999 article:
🌸
https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-diets/out-of-africa-what-dr-price-dr-burkitt-discovered-in-their-studies-of-sub-saharan-tribes
🌸
Out of Africa:
What Dr. Price and Dr. Burkitt Discovered
in Their Studies of Sub-Saharan
🌸
What Dr. Price and Dr. Burkitt Discovered
in Their Studies of Sub-Saharan
🌸
DECEMBER 1, 1999 BY SALLY FALLON AND MARY G. ENIG, PHD6 COMMENTS
Read this in: Español
Print post
Dr. Weston Price visited Africa in 1935. His journey into the interior began in Mombasa on the east coast of Africa, inland through Kenya to the Belgian Congo, then northward through Uganda and the Sudan.
Throughout his studies of isolated populations on native diets, Price was continually struck by the contrast of native sturdiness and good health with the degeneration found in the local white populace, living off the “displacing foods of modern commerce” such as sugar, white flour, canned foods and condensed milk.
Nowhere was the contrast more evident than in Africa. In addition to their susceptibility to chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, intestinal problems, appendicitis, gall and kidney stones and endocrinological dysfunction, the Whites also showed little resistance to infectious diseases carried by mosquitoes, lice and flies. “In all the districts, it was recognized and expected that the foreigners must plan to spend a portion of every few years or every year outside that environment if they would keep well.
Children born in that country to Europeans were generally expected to spend several of their growing years in Europe or America if they would build even relatively normal bodies.”1 By contrast, the native Africans exhibited a very high tolerance to infectious disease including malaria carried by mosquitos, typhus and fevers transmitted by lice and sleeping sickness borne by the tsetse fly.
Africa also afforded Dr. Price the opportunity to compare primitive groups composed largely of meat eaters, with those that were mostly vegetarian. The Masai of Tankanika, Chewya of Kenya, Muhima of Uganda, Watusi of Ruanda and the Neurs tribes on the western side of the Nile in the Sudan were all cattle-keeping people.
Their diets consisted largely of milk, blood and meat, supplemented in some cases with fish and with small amounts of grains, fruits and vegetables. Rich in animal fats, these diets provided large amounts of the fat-soluble vitamins Price discovered to be so necessary for proper development of the physical body and freedom from disease. The Neurs especially valued the livers of animals, considered so sacred “that it may not be touched by human hands. . . It is eaten both raw and cooked.”2
These tribes were noted for their fine physiques and great height-in some groups the women averaged over 6 feet tall, and many men reached almost seven feet. Examinations of their teeth revealed very few caries, usually less than 0.5%. Nowhere in his travels had Price yet found groups that had no cavities at all, yet among the cattle-herding tribes of Africa, Dr. Price found six tribes that were completely free of dental decay. Furthermore, all members of these tribes exhibited straight, uncrowded teeth.
Largely vegetarian Bantu tribes such as the Kikuyu and Wakamba were agriculturists. Their diet consisted of sweet potatoes, corn, beans, bananas, millet and Kafir corn or sorghum. They were less robust than their meat-eating neighbors, and tended to be dominated by them.
Price found that vegetarian groups had some tooth decay-usually around 5% or 6% of all teeth, still small numbers compared to Whites living off store-bought foods. Even among these largely vegetarian tribes, however, dental occlusions were rare, as were degenerative diseases.
Many investigators have mistakenly claimed that Bantu groups consumed no animal products at all. Some tribes kept a few cattle and goats which supplied both milk and meat; they ate small animals such as frogs; and they put a high value on insect food. “The natives of Africa know that certain insects are very rich in special food values at certain seasons, also that their eggs are valuable foods.
A fly that hatches in enormous quantities in Lake Victoria is gathered and used fresh and dried for storage. They also use ant eggs and ants.”3 Other insects, such as bees, wasps, beetles, butterflies, moths, cricket, dragon flies and termites are sought out and consumed with relish by tribes throughout Africa.4
These insects are rich in the fat soluble factors found in blood, organ meats, fish and butterfat. It is significant that the vegetarian groups practiced the feeding of special foods during gestation and lactation. Apparently carnivorous groups found no need to supplement the diet, as it was already rich in the factors needed for reproduction and optimum growth.
The healthiest tribe that Price studied was the Dinkas, a Sudanese tribe on the western bank of the Nile. They were not as tall as the cattle-herding Neurs groups but they were physically better proportioned and had greater strength. Their diet consisted mainly of fish and cereal grains.
This is perhaps the greatest lesson of Price’s African research-that a diet of whole foods, one that avoids the extremes of the carnivorous Masai and the largely vegetarian Bantu, but incorporates both nutrient dense grains and seafood, ensures optimum physical development.
More than 40 years after Price’s epic voyage, Doctors Edward Williams and Peter Williams wrote of their experience treating Ugandans at the Kuluva Hospital in the West Nile district of Uganda.5 By the late 1970’s, the nomadic cattle-herding tribes had largely disappeared.
The inhabitants of the region were peasant agriculturists, a mixture of nilotic tribes, whose diet consisted of grain, usually millets, cassava flour, lentils, peanuts, green vegetables such as spinach and cabbage, and bananas, supplemented with small amounts of milk, meat and fish. They make no mention of the widespread practice of insect consumption-a common mistake among modern investigators. Millet was “processed at the homestead.”
Tea had become a favorite drink and sugar was very popular, with the average daily adult intake reported to be at least 100 grams. Peanut oil and cottonseed oil had been added to the diet. Both cigarettes and alcohol were available, but used only in small quantities.
The doctors associated the emergence of diabetes with sugar consumption. High blood pressure had become more common, and could usually be reduced by cutting back on sugar. Dental caries had become more frequent. But other diseases-ischemic heart disease, constipation, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, appendicitis, thyroid problems, ulcers, arthritis, anemia and kidney stones-remained rare. Their native foodstuffs still protected them against the incursion of refined foods.
In an article on the Africans of Zimbabwe, author Dr. Michael Gelfand reports that by 1980 western foods such as white bread, refined sugar, jam and tea had become popular.6 These were usually eaten between the main meals, which still consisted of native foods including stiff maize porridge, vegetable relish and some meat or fowl.
Diabetes had increased but other diseases remained relatively rare. The exception was high blood pressure, which Gelfand discovered to be quite common when he began his medical practice in the 1940’s. He observes that hypertension in the Zimbabwe African does not seem to predispose him to coronary heart disease. Obesity is rare in Zimbabwe-whereas it is endemic among more westernized Africans living in South Africa.
Drs. Williams and Gelfand stress that the likely culprit in the slow emergence of dental caries and diabetes is not animal fat, but refined sugar. Nevertheless, their articles form part of a collection whose editors are firmly committed to the lipid hypotheses, namely that animal products and saturated fat contribute to the Western plague of atherosclerosis, diabetes, hypertension and obesity. While Weston Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration moldered in obscurity, Western Diseases: Their Emergence and Prevention, edited by H.C. Trowell and D.P Burkitt received widespread recognition.
Price noted that all healthy African groups had good sources of animal fat, and that the healthiest groups consumed less, not more, of plant foods; Burkitt and Trowel, however, postulate that the increase in Western diseases among Africans is due to a reduced consumption of plant foods containing dietary fiber. Heart researcher George Mann’s work is conspicuously absent from Burkitt’s Western Diseases. Mann studied the Masai tribes and came to the politically incorrect conclusion that their high fat diet did not predispose them to heart disease.
But Burkitt and Trowell are firmly committed to the McGovern Committee’s dietary goals, namely the replacement of animal products with grains, as a way to “prevent cancer and heart disease” and to “forestall world hunger.” Burkitt’s writings on dietary fiber led to calls for increased amounts of whole grains in the American diet in order to prevent colon cancer and other diseases of the intestinal tract. Dietary fiber soon became a household word, and America embraced the oat bran fad.
What Burkitt and Trowell failed to recognize is that Africans do not eat their grain foods as we do in the west, in the form of quick rise breads, cold cereals, energy bars and pasta, but as a sour or acid porridge.
Throughout Africa, these porridges are prepared by the fermentation of maize, sorghum, millet or cassava. Preparation “at the homestead” begins with washing the grains, then steeping them in water for 24 to 72 hours. The grain is drained and the water discarded. Soaked grains are wet milled and passed through a sieve. The hulls or leavings in the sieve are discarded. In other words, the Africans throw away the bran.
The smooth paste that passes through the sieve may undergo further fermentation. Soaking water that rises to the top is discarded and the slurry is boiled to make a sour porridge. Sometimes the slurry is allowed to drain and ferment further to form a gel-like substance that is wrapped in banana leaves, making a convenient and nutritious energy bar that can easily be carried into the fields and consumed without further preparation.7
Often sour porridges are consumed raw as “sorghum beer” a thin, slightly alcoholic slurry that provides lactic acid and many beneficial enzymes.8
Acid porridges made from grains are far superior to western grain preparations. Fermentation increases mineral availability by neutralizing phytic acid, increases vitamin content, predigests starches and neutralizes enzyme inhibitors. Insoluble fiber can cause pathogenic changes in the intestinal tract unless properly soaked in an acid medium.9
Oat bran, which is high in phytic acid, as well as related bran products can cause numerous problems with digestion and assimilation, leading to mineral deficiencies, irritable bowel syndrome and autoimmune difficulties such as Crohn’s disease. Case control studies indicate that consumption of cereal fiber can be linked with detrimental effects on colon cancer formation.10
In his lectures, Burkitt was fond of pointing out that the typical African stool specimen was large and soft, and that stool transit times were rapid, compared to the puny hard fecal deposits and slow transit times of hapless Europeans.
The large amount of fermented food, easy to digest and contributing to the health of intestinal flora, is the most likely explanation for this phenomena-fermented dairy products in European groups and fermented fish among the Eskimos accomplish the same results.
Another fermented food consumed throughout Africa, and universally ignored by most investigators, is a paste made from dried shrimp and hot peppers. This strong spicy condiment is a rich source of fat soluble vitamins-shrimp has ten times more vitamin D than organ meats! Vitamin D protects against cancer of the colon and rectum, nervous disorders such as MS and osteoporosis11-all of which are extremely rare among Africans.
Several researchers have noted that along with sugar, tea and white flour, vegetable oils made from peanuts, cottonseed or soy have made inroads into the African diet. What these oils replace is highly saturated palm oil, which has been a staple in Africa for millennia.
This means that overall consumption of saturated fat in Africa has declined, not increased. Like vitamin D, saturated fats play a role in protecting the intestinal tract from cancer and other diseases, and in preventing osteoporosis.
Doctors who write about diet are severely limited by their lack of familiarity with basic cooking methods. One gets the distinct impression, in reading Dr. Burkitt’s book, that none of the authors has tasted traditional African food, let along observed its preparation. Otherwise they would have known that Africans customarily cook calves feet to make broth for soups and stews.
Often dried fish and shrimp are added to these stews, along with meat, peanuts and vegetables. Pieces of gristly calves foot go into the pot along with everything else and are eaten with relish. American are just beginning to discover the health benefits of beef cartilage; African have enjoyed such benefits for centuries.
Burkitt claims that salt is new to the African diet; in the same volume, however, Gefland asserts that salt has been in common use by Africans for a long period of time. Price and other have noted that in parts of Africa where salt is scarce, the natives burn sodium-rich marsh grasses and add them to their food. Milk and blood are naturally salty, as are dried shrimp and fish products that find their way inland from coastal areas. The ubiquitous fermented shrimp pastes are extremely salty.
Many traditional African foods are for sale at the Oyingbo Market in Hyattsville, Maryland-shrimp pastes, ogi flour (made from fermented millet), palm oil, dried shrimp and fish, peanuts, vegetables, liver and calves feet. But most of the shelf space is filled up with newfangled foods-BisQuick, Wesson oil, Cheerios, margarine, sugar, white bread, cookies, pasta and soft drinks. Only recent African immigrants buy the traditional items, the ones with the fine physiques and beautiful straight teeth.
Younger Africans, and those who were born here, have opted for the displacing foods of modern commerce. . . and it shows. Their children are either thin or overweight and have narrow faces and crooked teeth.
Modern medicine may palliate the numerous health problems that accompany such physical degeneration, but only a return to traditional foods and preparation techniques can ensure optimal health for future generations of Africans, both in America and in their home continent.
References
Read this in: Español
Print post
Dr. Weston Price visited Africa in 1935. His journey into the interior began in Mombasa on the east coast of Africa, inland through Kenya to the Belgian Congo, then northward through Uganda and the Sudan.
Throughout his studies of isolated populations on native diets, Price was continually struck by the contrast of native sturdiness and good health with the degeneration found in the local white populace, living off the “displacing foods of modern commerce” such as sugar, white flour, canned foods and condensed milk.
Nowhere was the contrast more evident than in Africa. In addition to their susceptibility to chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, intestinal problems, appendicitis, gall and kidney stones and endocrinological dysfunction, the Whites also showed little resistance to infectious diseases carried by mosquitoes, lice and flies. “In all the districts, it was recognized and expected that the foreigners must plan to spend a portion of every few years or every year outside that environment if they would keep well.
Children born in that country to Europeans were generally expected to spend several of their growing years in Europe or America if they would build even relatively normal bodies.”1 By contrast, the native Africans exhibited a very high tolerance to infectious disease including malaria carried by mosquitos, typhus and fevers transmitted by lice and sleeping sickness borne by the tsetse fly.
Africa also afforded Dr. Price the opportunity to compare primitive groups composed largely of meat eaters, with those that were mostly vegetarian. The Masai of Tankanika, Chewya of Kenya, Muhima of Uganda, Watusi of Ruanda and the Neurs tribes on the western side of the Nile in the Sudan were all cattle-keeping people.
Their diets consisted largely of milk, blood and meat, supplemented in some cases with fish and with small amounts of grains, fruits and vegetables. Rich in animal fats, these diets provided large amounts of the fat-soluble vitamins Price discovered to be so necessary for proper development of the physical body and freedom from disease. The Neurs especially valued the livers of animals, considered so sacred “that it may not be touched by human hands. . . It is eaten both raw and cooked.”2
These tribes were noted for their fine physiques and great height-in some groups the women averaged over 6 feet tall, and many men reached almost seven feet. Examinations of their teeth revealed very few caries, usually less than 0.5%. Nowhere in his travels had Price yet found groups that had no cavities at all, yet among the cattle-herding tribes of Africa, Dr. Price found six tribes that were completely free of dental decay. Furthermore, all members of these tribes exhibited straight, uncrowded teeth.
Largely vegetarian Bantu tribes such as the Kikuyu and Wakamba were agriculturists. Their diet consisted of sweet potatoes, corn, beans, bananas, millet and Kafir corn or sorghum. They were less robust than their meat-eating neighbors, and tended to be dominated by them.
Price found that vegetarian groups had some tooth decay-usually around 5% or 6% of all teeth, still small numbers compared to Whites living off store-bought foods. Even among these largely vegetarian tribes, however, dental occlusions were rare, as were degenerative diseases.
Many investigators have mistakenly claimed that Bantu groups consumed no animal products at all. Some tribes kept a few cattle and goats which supplied both milk and meat; they ate small animals such as frogs; and they put a high value on insect food. “The natives of Africa know that certain insects are very rich in special food values at certain seasons, also that their eggs are valuable foods.
A fly that hatches in enormous quantities in Lake Victoria is gathered and used fresh and dried for storage. They also use ant eggs and ants.”3 Other insects, such as bees, wasps, beetles, butterflies, moths, cricket, dragon flies and termites are sought out and consumed with relish by tribes throughout Africa.4
These insects are rich in the fat soluble factors found in blood, organ meats, fish and butterfat. It is significant that the vegetarian groups practiced the feeding of special foods during gestation and lactation. Apparently carnivorous groups found no need to supplement the diet, as it was already rich in the factors needed for reproduction and optimum growth.
The healthiest tribe that Price studied was the Dinkas, a Sudanese tribe on the western bank of the Nile. They were not as tall as the cattle-herding Neurs groups but they were physically better proportioned and had greater strength. Their diet consisted mainly of fish and cereal grains.
This is perhaps the greatest lesson of Price’s African research-that a diet of whole foods, one that avoids the extremes of the carnivorous Masai and the largely vegetarian Bantu, but incorporates both nutrient dense grains and seafood, ensures optimum physical development.
More than 40 years after Price’s epic voyage, Doctors Edward Williams and Peter Williams wrote of their experience treating Ugandans at the Kuluva Hospital in the West Nile district of Uganda.5 By the late 1970’s, the nomadic cattle-herding tribes had largely disappeared.
The inhabitants of the region were peasant agriculturists, a mixture of nilotic tribes, whose diet consisted of grain, usually millets, cassava flour, lentils, peanuts, green vegetables such as spinach and cabbage, and bananas, supplemented with small amounts of milk, meat and fish. They make no mention of the widespread practice of insect consumption-a common mistake among modern investigators. Millet was “processed at the homestead.”
Tea had become a favorite drink and sugar was very popular, with the average daily adult intake reported to be at least 100 grams. Peanut oil and cottonseed oil had been added to the diet. Both cigarettes and alcohol were available, but used only in small quantities.
The doctors associated the emergence of diabetes with sugar consumption. High blood pressure had become more common, and could usually be reduced by cutting back on sugar. Dental caries had become more frequent. But other diseases-ischemic heart disease, constipation, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, appendicitis, thyroid problems, ulcers, arthritis, anemia and kidney stones-remained rare. Their native foodstuffs still protected them against the incursion of refined foods.
In an article on the Africans of Zimbabwe, author Dr. Michael Gelfand reports that by 1980 western foods such as white bread, refined sugar, jam and tea had become popular.6 These were usually eaten between the main meals, which still consisted of native foods including stiff maize porridge, vegetable relish and some meat or fowl.
Diabetes had increased but other diseases remained relatively rare. The exception was high blood pressure, which Gelfand discovered to be quite common when he began his medical practice in the 1940’s. He observes that hypertension in the Zimbabwe African does not seem to predispose him to coronary heart disease. Obesity is rare in Zimbabwe-whereas it is endemic among more westernized Africans living in South Africa.
Drs. Williams and Gelfand stress that the likely culprit in the slow emergence of dental caries and diabetes is not animal fat, but refined sugar. Nevertheless, their articles form part of a collection whose editors are firmly committed to the lipid hypotheses, namely that animal products and saturated fat contribute to the Western plague of atherosclerosis, diabetes, hypertension and obesity. While Weston Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration moldered in obscurity, Western Diseases: Their Emergence and Prevention, edited by H.C. Trowell and D.P Burkitt received widespread recognition.
Price noted that all healthy African groups had good sources of animal fat, and that the healthiest groups consumed less, not more, of plant foods; Burkitt and Trowel, however, postulate that the increase in Western diseases among Africans is due to a reduced consumption of plant foods containing dietary fiber. Heart researcher George Mann’s work is conspicuously absent from Burkitt’s Western Diseases. Mann studied the Masai tribes and came to the politically incorrect conclusion that their high fat diet did not predispose them to heart disease.
But Burkitt and Trowell are firmly committed to the McGovern Committee’s dietary goals, namely the replacement of animal products with grains, as a way to “prevent cancer and heart disease” and to “forestall world hunger.” Burkitt’s writings on dietary fiber led to calls for increased amounts of whole grains in the American diet in order to prevent colon cancer and other diseases of the intestinal tract. Dietary fiber soon became a household word, and America embraced the oat bran fad.
What Burkitt and Trowell failed to recognize is that Africans do not eat their grain foods as we do in the west, in the form of quick rise breads, cold cereals, energy bars and pasta, but as a sour or acid porridge.
Throughout Africa, these porridges are prepared by the fermentation of maize, sorghum, millet or cassava. Preparation “at the homestead” begins with washing the grains, then steeping them in water for 24 to 72 hours. The grain is drained and the water discarded. Soaked grains are wet milled and passed through a sieve. The hulls or leavings in the sieve are discarded. In other words, the Africans throw away the bran.
The smooth paste that passes through the sieve may undergo further fermentation. Soaking water that rises to the top is discarded and the slurry is boiled to make a sour porridge. Sometimes the slurry is allowed to drain and ferment further to form a gel-like substance that is wrapped in banana leaves, making a convenient and nutritious energy bar that can easily be carried into the fields and consumed without further preparation.7
Often sour porridges are consumed raw as “sorghum beer” a thin, slightly alcoholic slurry that provides lactic acid and many beneficial enzymes.8
Acid porridges made from grains are far superior to western grain preparations. Fermentation increases mineral availability by neutralizing phytic acid, increases vitamin content, predigests starches and neutralizes enzyme inhibitors. Insoluble fiber can cause pathogenic changes in the intestinal tract unless properly soaked in an acid medium.9
Oat bran, which is high in phytic acid, as well as related bran products can cause numerous problems with digestion and assimilation, leading to mineral deficiencies, irritable bowel syndrome and autoimmune difficulties such as Crohn’s disease. Case control studies indicate that consumption of cereal fiber can be linked with detrimental effects on colon cancer formation.10
In his lectures, Burkitt was fond of pointing out that the typical African stool specimen was large and soft, and that stool transit times were rapid, compared to the puny hard fecal deposits and slow transit times of hapless Europeans.
The large amount of fermented food, easy to digest and contributing to the health of intestinal flora, is the most likely explanation for this phenomena-fermented dairy products in European groups and fermented fish among the Eskimos accomplish the same results.
Another fermented food consumed throughout Africa, and universally ignored by most investigators, is a paste made from dried shrimp and hot peppers. This strong spicy condiment is a rich source of fat soluble vitamins-shrimp has ten times more vitamin D than organ meats! Vitamin D protects against cancer of the colon and rectum, nervous disorders such as MS and osteoporosis11-all of which are extremely rare among Africans.
Several researchers have noted that along with sugar, tea and white flour, vegetable oils made from peanuts, cottonseed or soy have made inroads into the African diet. What these oils replace is highly saturated palm oil, which has been a staple in Africa for millennia.
This means that overall consumption of saturated fat in Africa has declined, not increased. Like vitamin D, saturated fats play a role in protecting the intestinal tract from cancer and other diseases, and in preventing osteoporosis.
Doctors who write about diet are severely limited by their lack of familiarity with basic cooking methods. One gets the distinct impression, in reading Dr. Burkitt’s book, that none of the authors has tasted traditional African food, let along observed its preparation. Otherwise they would have known that Africans customarily cook calves feet to make broth for soups and stews.
Often dried fish and shrimp are added to these stews, along with meat, peanuts and vegetables. Pieces of gristly calves foot go into the pot along with everything else and are eaten with relish. American are just beginning to discover the health benefits of beef cartilage; African have enjoyed such benefits for centuries.
Burkitt claims that salt is new to the African diet; in the same volume, however, Gefland asserts that salt has been in common use by Africans for a long period of time. Price and other have noted that in parts of Africa where salt is scarce, the natives burn sodium-rich marsh grasses and add them to their food. Milk and blood are naturally salty, as are dried shrimp and fish products that find their way inland from coastal areas. The ubiquitous fermented shrimp pastes are extremely salty.
Many traditional African foods are for sale at the Oyingbo Market in Hyattsville, Maryland-shrimp pastes, ogi flour (made from fermented millet), palm oil, dried shrimp and fish, peanuts, vegetables, liver and calves feet. But most of the shelf space is filled up with newfangled foods-BisQuick, Wesson oil, Cheerios, margarine, sugar, white bread, cookies, pasta and soft drinks. Only recent African immigrants buy the traditional items, the ones with the fine physiques and beautiful straight teeth.
Younger Africans, and those who were born here, have opted for the displacing foods of modern commerce. . . and it shows. Their children are either thin or overweight and have narrow faces and crooked teeth.
Modern medicine may palliate the numerous health problems that accompany such physical degeneration, but only a return to traditional foods and preparation techniques can ensure optimal health for future generations of Africans, both in America and in their home continent.
References
- Price, Weston A, DDS, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, The Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, San Diego, CA, p 130
- Ibid, p 150
- Ibid, p 147
- Abrans, H Leon, Jr, “The Preference for Animal Protein and Fat: A Cross Cultural Survey,” Food and Evolution, Marvin Harris and Eric B Ross, eds, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1987
- Williams, Edward and Peter Williams, “Uganda West Nile District,” Western Diseases: Their Emergence and Prevention, HC Trowell and DP Burkitt, eds, Edward Arnold Publishers, Ltd, London, 1981, pp 188-193
- Gelfand, Michael, “Zimbabwe,” Ibid, pp 194-203
- Steinkraus, Keith H, ed, Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods, Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York, 189-198
- Ibid, pp 344-352
- Cassidy, Marie M, et al, “Effect of chronic intake of dietary fibers on the ultrastructual topography of rat jejunum and colon: a scanning electron microscopy study,” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 34: February 1981, pp 218-228
- Ausman, Lunne M, DSc, “Fiber and Colon Cancer: Does the Current Evidence Justify a Preventive Policy?” Nutrition Reviews, 51(2), pp 57-63
- Shelly, Emer and Geoffrey Dean, “Multiple Sclerosis,” Western Diseases: Their Emergence and Prevention, Ibid, pp 7-12
🌸
🌸
Why are we sick today?
🌸
Why are we sick today?
🌸
You, or someone you love, is tired all the time. They have brain fog. Unexplained infertility. Gut issues. Menstrual issues. Weight that won’t move. There’s a nagging feeling that something isn’t right, that being ‘healthy’ was supposed to feel better than this.
You may not realize it yet, but:
The people we care about – sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and grandparents are suffering.
They are being misinformed, misdirected and mistreated.
So many of their health problems could be anticipated and should be prevented years in advance.
How did we get here?
In short, the human diet was corrupted.
We were sold out by corporate interests who successfully lobbied, petitioned and manipulated the guidelines of medical practice and nutrition away from health and towards profit.
These corporations are the Medical-Pharmaceutical-Industrial-Complex (MPAC)
What can be done?
The existing medical and nutrition system is broken, and little meaningful change can occur from within, because the financial incentives fundamentally misaligned.
But there is hope. The human body has evolved a remarkable ability of self-repair once toxic insults are removed. You can heal yourself by correcting for an ancestrally inconsistent environment.
Regenerative animal agriculture can help provide the food with which we can heal ourselves and heal the planet.
What can I do?
Begin healing today by cutting out the most noxious of the processed foods – polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) found in industrially refined plant oils. These oils highly prone to a chemical transformation called oxidation, which causes inflammation in the body when consumed. This video explains explains more. VIDEO BELOIW ...
Refined plant oils make a large contribution to obesity, metabolic disease, diabetes, premature aging, cancers and dementia, and a range of other diseases of modernity.
Eat the NUTS, Avocado without separating the oil.
Whatever the root cause of your issue, refined plant oils are definitely making it worse. Be sure to check food labels for hidden plant oils and be very wary of restaurant cooking which almost invariably use cheap plant oils to cut costs.
What next?
This is the beginning of your journey to reclaim your birthright to boundless health and vitality.
You may not realize it yet, but:
- Society as whole is sick, poisoned by processed food and endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
- Government-endorsed dietary guidelines are actively misleading people.
- Much of mainstream “prescription pad medicine” is well-intentioned iatrogenic harm.
The people we care about – sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and grandparents are suffering.
They are being misinformed, misdirected and mistreated.
So many of their health problems could be anticipated and should be prevented years in advance.
How did we get here?
In short, the human diet was corrupted.
We were sold out by corporate interests who successfully lobbied, petitioned and manipulated the guidelines of medical practice and nutrition away from health and towards profit.
These corporations are the Medical-Pharmaceutical-Industrial-Complex (MPAC)
What can be done?
The existing medical and nutrition system is broken, and little meaningful change can occur from within, because the financial incentives fundamentally misaligned.
But there is hope. The human body has evolved a remarkable ability of self-repair once toxic insults are removed. You can heal yourself by correcting for an ancestrally inconsistent environment.
Regenerative animal agriculture can help provide the food with which we can heal ourselves and heal the planet.
What can I do?
Begin healing today by cutting out the most noxious of the processed foods – polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) found in industrially refined plant oils. These oils highly prone to a chemical transformation called oxidation, which causes inflammation in the body when consumed. This video explains explains more. VIDEO BELOIW ...
Refined plant oils make a large contribution to obesity, metabolic disease, diabetes, premature aging, cancers and dementia, and a range of other diseases of modernity.
- Vegetable oil.
- Soy(bean) oil.
- Corn oil.
- Canola oil.
- Sunflower oil.
- Safflower oil.
- Grapeseed oil.
- Ricebran oil.
- Walnut oil.
- Cottonseed oil.
- And every incarnation of refined or hydrogenated plant oils including margarine,
- ‘blended dairy spread’, blended olive oil, etc.
Eat the NUTS, Avocado without separating the oil.
- Coconut oil is a saturated plant fat. Olive oil is mono-unsaturated making it ok for drizzling but not heating.
Whatever the root cause of your issue, refined plant oils are definitely making it worse. Be sure to check food labels for hidden plant oils and be very wary of restaurant cooking which almost invariably use cheap plant oils to cut costs.
What next?
This is the beginning of your journey to reclaim your birthright to boundless health and vitality.
🌸
🌸