Thursday, November 11, 2010

Strong as an Ox

The world today has been described as many things – a wreck, a wonder, a greed-riddled swamp, a heavenly planet, etc, et-head-scratching-cetera. In relation to diet, a cursory look on the internet will load your mind down with contradictory facts, sensationalist proselytisers and the average fat cat business mavericks whose interests revolve around the bit of the ching ching. You’ll also stumble upon dreamy, artistic sites that offer health at a price. So, what’s the truth?

Can the church offer it? The Government? The Corporatocracy? Possibly, one could argue, the truth emerges quite naturally from one place - and that’s inside. Inside you. Our intuition, which has long played second fiddle to our analytical faculties, has suffered. It is our intuition that directs us to the highest good; it’s that visceral, gut-instinct feeling we tend to only listen to when we’re in deep trouble. It’s a shame that intuition, the guardian of guardians, has been criminally neglected as we play victim to screaming advertisements telling us what to eat.

How can we heal our intuition? Maybe, we could start by taking a step back and looking at facts. Here’s what we, The Clare Vegetarian Group, have put together.

Diet

Diet is inarguably the primarily cornerstone of our physical health. So what’s best to eat? This particular question has burned itself indelibly into the collective brain of The Clare Veg Group. We have concerned ourselves with health and wellbeing and have done the research to boot. Our opinion, and it’s important to say opinion, is that a meat-free diet is where perfect health is at. It’salso important to stress that we’re not attempting to galvanize a movement, or pressurise people into eating a diet we think is healthy - we just want to propagate our honest findings and maybe enrich the lives of those who feel it resonates as truth.

Meat or Veg?


Jena Carper’s book, Food – Your Miracle Medicine, is based on more than 10,000 research studies concerning the connection between diet and health. In the back of her book, Carper lists 60 disease fighting foods. There is only one type of animal food listed that promoted health: fish and fish oil. Fifty-nine of the foods are fruits, vegetables, dairy products and other non-meat sources.

Her book also incorporates the following interesting facts:

1. A German study found that the white blood cells of vegetarians were twice as deadly against tumour cells as those of meat-eaters, thereby boosting immune defences.


2. Carper says that “devouring fruits and vegetables slash your chances of heart attacks and strokes - even if you’ve already had one.

3. Rats fed animal fat can’t find their way through mazes as easily as rats fed soybean oil. The precise reason isn’t know, but Carper cautions that “too much animal fat may dim your mental faculties.

It’s true that this is one study, but it is one study that incorporates 10,000 others, so we can call it a seminal reference text.

Consider, also, some other research we’ve looked into:

Pesticides, industrial pollutants, and sex hormones known to cause breast cancer and to have oestrogen-like effects, are stored in animal fat. These contaminants tend to accumulate in human (both male & female) breast fat, reaching levels thousands of times greater than in food. Obesity from fatty diets has also been known to cause breast cancer.

(Dr.Samuel Epstein -The Breast Cancer Prevention Program).

We also came across research seeming to link meat with early onset puberty:

The FDA allows the use of implanted hormonal agents for raising beef cattle, including oestradiol, progesterone, the synthetic progesterone norgestomet, testosterone, and the synthetic anabolic steroids trenbolene and Zeranol. Hormones are used by cattle farmers to increase the weight of cattle prior to slaughter. Some milk producers also use hormones, all of which is present in the products that stock your supermarket.
“It is very likely that hormone residues in…beef is a factor in the early onset of puberty among girls in recent decades,” said Carlos Sonnenschein of the Tufts University School of Medicine at Boston.
*
http://www.healthnews.com/nutrition-diet/meat-and-high-protein-diets-linked-to-early-onset-of-puberty-4298.html

These are startling speculations from highly-qualified experts. Although farmers and industry affiliates would argue the case that meat is health-promoting, one has to at least wonder if their interests conflict with their business goals. Who funds research? Can a government relying heavily upon the revenue gained from the meat industry really be considered neutral? Just a question.

What we know is that a vegetarian diet has never been linked with cancer or hormone deficiencies. And the truth is that meat contains nothing that can’t be perfectly derived from a vegetarian diet. Nothing. And yes – this is despite what’s been said in the press about ghostly, anaemia-riddled vegetarians with wispy hair and brittle bones. It’s a myth, people. Consider for a second that the OX, the strongest and most powerful natural ploughing machine known to man, eats a vegetarian diet. Vegetarians are not deficient. It’s unfair and untrue to argue otherwise. Any person who neglects to balance their diet runs the risk of ill heath.

These are our thoughts. More to follow.

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