Meat Sparingly

The quick answer:  In the end, our care of animals will say everything about what kind of humans we have become.

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The Devil’s Herd

I love the old West . . . the ranches and barns . . . cattle in the fields . . . the smell of the tackroom . . . even the aroma of corrals . . . all those cowboy values and traditions.  My late Uncle Fred was as good a cowboy as you might meet.  He cussed a little and got to church late but was good to the core.  The picture above is his daughter Peggy—who I got in plenty of mischief with as a child—sitting pretty on a handsome cutting horse.  At Fred’s passing, I was moved to remember his colorful character in this bit of doggerel.

I love western music too.  My favorite song is Johnny Cash singing Ghost Riders in the Sky.  The song, I think, could be a warning for the exploitation of animals by the food corporations, for it tells of a group of ghost cowboys who had fallen short in their lives and were doomed to endlessly ride the skies, chasing the devil’s stampeding herd.  It closes with this cowboy call to repentance (try singing it):

As the riders loped on by him he heard one call his name
If you want to save your soul from Hell a-riding on our range
Then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride
Trying to catch the Devil's herd, across these endless skies

The good Lord gave man dominion over the animals but with that power came the duty of care.  This post is a call to reconsider our relationship with the animals of the world, lest we too wind up chasing the devil’s herd.  Yippie yi yaaaaay.

The Blue Zones

Want to enjoy a long life?  Dan Buettner traveled around the world, studying the longest-lived societies.  He summarized his findings in a book, The Blue Zones.  Bottom line: Though these long-lived peoples eat a variety of foods based on where they lived, they universally eat very little meat.  With the exception of special feasts, meat is used to flavor food rather than as the main course.

Chronic Disease

Meat is good for us—it’s the only natural source of vitamin B-12 which is essential to our health—but too much meat is problematic.  In the modern American diet (MAD) we eat three or four times more meat than we should.  An Oxford University study of the English diet found that reducing meat intake to three servings weekly—the amount a person might consider “sparing”—would reduce mortality from chronic diseases.  Specifically, they projected these benefits for England:

• 31,000 fewer heart disease deaths each year.
• 9000 fewer deaths from cancer.
• 5000 fewer deaths from stroke.

World Wars

Health improves when we eat less meat.  Due to World War I shortages, Denmark was forced, as a nation, to eat a Word of Wisdom Living diet—mostly plant foods with very little meat, less milk and butter than before, and practically no alcohol, coffee, or tea.  They even ate a “war bread” of whole grain rye flour. 

Later, Dr. Martin Hindhede, a researcher in low-protein diets, studied the result.  Despite the stress of war, there was an immediate drop in mortality rates that continued through the war but disappeared post-war as people returned to their normal habits. 

Hindhede saw an important lesson about the body’s recuperative powers—improving diet quickly improves health.  During World War II this mortality benefit was again observed in other affected countries. 

The Scriptures

It would be a failure of reverence to overlook scriptural guidance.  The scriptures have cautioned about meat eating.  In Genesis we are counseled to make herbs and fruits our meat; in Moses’ time Israel was restricted in what meats they could eat, and how animals should be killed; Daniel with his three friends benefited from eating plant foods (pulses) instead of the king’s meat; and the Apostle Paul warns darkly of carnal living. 

The canonized LDS scripture known as the Word of Wisdom counsels that flesh of animals was ordained for the use of mankind, but with thanksgiving, and the admonition to eat sparingly—perhaps the best and most succinct guidance found anywhere.  These words reflect a duty of care.

The definition of sparing is left to each person's inspiration.  For our use, we aim to get two-thirds of our protein from plants and just one-third from animal sources. (In a future post on protein, we’ll return to this 1:2 ratio.) This is equivalent to three servings of meat (excluding two servings of fish) weekly, though we spread it around.  Research reported in The China Study suggests this is a healthy level—Americans are reported to eat four times this amount. 

Pollution

Do you worry about environmental pollutants but find organic foods too expensive?  One study estimates that 85% of our pollutant exposure comes in the meat we eat.  The surest way to reduce your exposure to pollutants, then, is to reduce meat consumption, as in sparing.  It’s also cheaper.

Best Methods

After a person resolves the amount of meat to eat, two questions remain:

1. What are the healthiest meats?  The simplest guidance is to eat a variety of meats including fish and fowl, choosing pastured or grass fed meats over industrially fed (CAFO) when possible, and minimizing processed meats like bacon, ham, etc.  Here’s a rule:  Eat less, but better.
2. How should meat be prepared?  Lower cooking temperatures produce less carcinogenic or harmful byproducts.  Stewed meat, especially if cooked with herbs, is better than baked meat; baked meat is better than fried; and fried is better than BBQ’d meat.  That’s pretty simple. 

Ready for Skip's beef stew recipe? 

Healthy Change

Please comment:  Share the ways you feature meat in your diet.  Where do you find healthy meat?  How do you use it as a condiment, rather than the main course?  What do you do to show reverence for the Creation of animals?

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

A New Year, A New Light

A Call for Help

It was a good year, 2011.  Before New Years, the beautiful wife and I traveled to San Francisco for the 34^th annual holiday dinner sponsored by my fancy sister.  She might object to the term "fancy," but I make my case with this picture of her Christmas tree.  Do you think 4200 lights a bit much?  My sister doesn't.

After 34 dinners, it has become more than a tradition.  Though the main topic is resolutions—reporting on last year's resolutions, and sharing next years—it's more a validation of our family.  We're far from perfect, but we're immeasureably better for having shared our walk through life with each other.  So most years the beautiful wife and I drive 14 hours, round trip, simply to share a family dinner. 

When it came time to make new resolutions, my goal to double the Word of Wisdom Living audience in 2012 was challenged.  “You should grow ten-fold,” they countered.  So that’s our goal.  If we make it, we promise to continue for a 3^rd year.  We need your help—we've invited all our friends, and a few strangers.  So we’re asking you to spread the word and expand our audience—in December we averaged about 250 readers daily, so our new goal is 2500 per day.  

Please become a partner in the food reformation.  Make a difference by commiting to bring 10 friends or associates to Word of Wisdom Living, beginning right now. Each month I'll report on our progress. (One easy way to spread the word is to share our new Facebook page with your friends and family.)

Healthy Changes

The Healthy Changes are like resolutions, but better—they're done continuously, all year long, one each week.  I measured our family's performance on the 52 Healthy Changes in 2011.  Following the Healthy Changes has made a big difference in our health but we weren’t perfect—I put our compliance at 80%.  The hardest part was eating five vegetable servings daily.  So we square up our shoulders and resolve to do better in 2012.  If we do this for three yars, I think we shall have mastered it. 

Over the Holidays we worked on the 52 changes, keeping most, improving others, replacing a few.  We didn’t invent these changes—we sorted through the available literature and distilled the recommendations of doctors, scientists, and journalists into 52 topics.  It’s a good list, the fruit of 1000s of hours of study, but if you have health issues, follow your doctor’s counsel first.  And we're always open to suggestions for Healthy Changes.

We're making some improvements to this site too, watch for them over the coming weeks. (If you view this blog through a reader, you might want to click over to the actual site to see how things are changing.) We've thought a lot about how we can improve things and have come up with an ambitious list that includes small daily tips, web videos that expand on posts, and recipes that can make the Healthy Changes a little easier. We hope you'll stick around to see what we're working on and let us know if you have other ideas that would make this site better.

Measure Your Progress

Through 2012 we’ll collect the Healthy Changes into a list with the idea that you can grade yourself monthly as the list grows.  There’s a repeating seasonal pattern—each 13 weeks we cover the key themes of lifestyle and diet reform, each time building upon the prior changes.  The themes include eating less sugar, healthier fats, whole grains, more fruits and vegetables, and less meat.  Other themes are more exercise, better kitchen organization (menus, shopping lists), cooking, and special topics.  Be patient: reforming one’s lifestyle in a year is an audacious project.

Worried that your life is already too complicated without adding 52 things?  The big blessing is the 52 Healthy Changes actually simplify your life.  Factory drinks like sodas are this week's subject.  Drinking water—which is essentially free—is simpler and more natural than constantly buying soda or other drinks.  When we get to factory-made convenience foods we'll make the same argument—home cooking done right is simpler and cheaper.  There's a deep thought here, one worthy of Thoreau:  Living more simply is the first step towards living more deeply.

Please Comment:  Share your thoughts on how we can advance the food reformation.  Whoever puts their shoulder to this worthy task becomes a light upon a hill. 

Fasting

The quick answer:  Though we eat for health, fasting helps.

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I must start with an apology.  Our blog schedule calls for a Healthy Change post each Monday, and a follow-up post on Thursday.  We do that most of the time but September is a little complicated, so thank you for your patience. 

Modern Medicine

We were in Washington DC this past weekend.  My seat companion on the flight back was a young woman from Lebanon with a charming French accent, just out of med school and starting a residency in internal medicine.  “Aha,” I thought, “a perfect victim for a nutrition discussion—a stomach doctor who grew up eating traditional food.”  Not so much it turned out; she’s a city girl (Beirut) who eats the modern diet, plus the demands of a doctor’s education leave zero time for cooking nutritious food.  Bottom line:  Doctors not only lack serious nutrition training, there’s not even time to practice it.

We talked briefly about the business of medicine.  The big money is made doing procedures like cardiac angiograms, by-pass surgery, prostate butchery, joint replacements, or even breast implants.  Doctors who only see patients must work hard to support their practice, seeing 30 or more each day. The quickest way to get a patient out of the office so the doctor can move on to the next: write a prescription. 

Economic pressures have shaped modern medicine; it’s a consequence of our free market society.  Drug companies now spend billions marketing drugs—especially the ones you take the rest of your life—directly to the public.  How many times have you heard this advice in a TV ad: “Ask your doctor if ____________ is right for you.”  There ought to be a law against it.

Which leads to this thought: Much has been learned and then forgotten in the history of medicine.  Some things are best forgotten but others are worthy of remembrance.  Barbers no longer offer bloodletting but the modern practice of donating blood is beneficial to the donor as well as the recipient.   Here’s another practice that’s not only beneficial but practically free:  fasting. 

Fasting

In the way that the Harvard School of Public Health dominates the study of nutrition (without really leading), the New York Times has staked out a claim on reporting nutrition.  I confess to having issues with the NYT but on this subject, they're the best.  Last April, Tara Parker-Pope wrote a provocative article “Regular Fasting May Boost Heart Health”.  She cited a recent study showing people who fasted regularly (monthly) had a 58% lower risk of heart disease.  No drug currently marketed has such impact! 

A second study by the same people asked 30 patients to make a food fast (water allowed) for 24 hours and researchers followed various metabolic markers.  Benefits included a 20x surge in men (13x in women) of the human growth hormone (HGH), which protects muscle tissue during fasting by triggering burning of fat stores.  This subject deserves more study, but fasting appears beneficial to health.

What is it with the Mormons?

The people in the above studies live in Utah and are Mormon—Mormons fast for 24 hours, typically two meals, each month and give the money saved to the poor.  Have you noticed how Mormons are in the news right now?  Two of the leading Republican presidential candidates are Mormon.  Most every TV reality show includes a Mormon, even though the LDS are just 3% of the US population.  There’s a TV show, Big Love, about polygamy (though real Mormons haven’t practiced this for over a century, it still fascinates).  A hot Broadway play titled Book of Mormon follows two young missionaries in Africa.  Mormons are like the Amish: their unique life fascinates people but there’s also a certain stepping away by some.  According to a recent poll, 1/3 of Americans hold a negative view of Mormons.  Perhaps we’re just too different.

Though the scriptures that guide this blog are mainly biblical, they also include the Word of Wisdom, a Mormon scripture.  This blog isn’t written for Mormons, who're good at avoiding tobacco and alcohol but do poorly at following the prescriptions of their Word of Wisdom.  It’s for anyone and everyone who wants to improve their health and replace the modern diet with a healthier diet—one derived from the sum of science, food tradition, and scriptural wisdom.  Frankly, to my best knowledge, if you believe this to be a wise approach, this is the only blog available.

Here’s the good part: if you’re not Mormon, you can get all their diet and lifestyle wisdom without going to all those meetings and paying tithing.  And you don’t have to do one of those missions, though I must acknowledge that my years tromping about Central America were both the hardest and most transformational period of my youth. 

Therapeutic Fasting

On my recent plane trip I reread the book, Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor’s Program for Conquering Disease, by Dr. Joel Fuhrman with foreword by Dr. Neal D. Barnard, president of the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine.  Here are a few points:

• Fuhrman provides research that fasting combined with a plant-based natural diet is more protective of certain chronic diseases than current practices.
• Therapeutic fasting might last from 1-3 weeks, must be done under the supervision of a doctor, requires adequate water, and is stopped before stored nutrients and vitamins are exhausted, which signals the beginning of starvation.  Fasting isn’t starving; it’s a rest for the G.I. tract but also for the immune system.
• The chronic diseases Fuhrman and others treat with fasting and whole diets include overweight and diabetes; vascular disease, including heart disease; autoimmune diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis; and many others.  In Fuhrman’s view, it’s foolish to suffer from these diseases and not discuss fasting with a qualified doctor.
• The natural diet Fuhrman advocates (when not fasting) is similar to the diet of our Healthy Changes, except he’s even more restrictive of meat and dairy.
• Fuhrman reminds how during the World Wars, protracted scarcity of sugar, meat and natural fats forced people to eat more plant foods and there was a drop in mortality from natural causes in the most affected countries, in stark contrast to the mayhem of war raging about them.

Healthy Change

After I read Dr. Fuhrman’s book the first time I went on a three-day water-only fast.  Three days is the longest time Fuhrman suggests fasting without medical supervision and he reminds of the importance of drinking water while fasting.  Here are three things I learned from my fast:

1. It’s true what they say, that your hunger diminishes as the fast progresses.  I also thought it was easier to fast if you had been eating a healthy diet (remembering past fasts).
2. Much of our eating, especially snacking, is done out of boredom rather than hunger.  I kept wandering into the kitchen looking for a snack and realized that I was actually looking for a break, for variety. 
3. There’s a mental benefit to fasting—you’re less distracted by petty issues and see the big picture more clearly.   Fuhrman says people giving up addictions, like smoking, do it more easily if fasting is included.

One other thing—after a fast, good food is more appealing and junk food more repulsive.  As noted, the LDS fast together as preparation for the first Sunday of each month, giving the money saved from the meals skipped to a fund for the poor.  It’s a temporal practice but with a spiritual purpose, and the guidance for this Healthy Change:

Please comment on your experience with fasting, and the benefits thereof.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.