BEYOND THE MEAT MYTH
Most foods contain protein, including fruits and vegetables, yet many people still believe the myth that meat is the best or only source of protein. This myth and the dietary habits that support it are having serious health ramifications.
The average person in the United States or Canada eats more than 248 pounds of meat every year. That’s about the equivalent of eating a whole pig each year and comprises about 40 percent of the typical person’s diet. Most health and nutrition experts agree that meat should not exceed 10 percent of our overall food intake, but most people eat four times that amount. When you consider that our ancestors ate an estimated 5 percent of their total food intake in the form of meat and that they ate substantially less food than us, you might begin to understand why this extremely high amount of meat consumption is a problem. Yet people still ask me, “If I cut back on meat, where will I get my protein?” The food pyramids and other equally irrelevant systems of nutrition we were taught in school have led us to believe that we will be protein starved if we don’t eat the whopping amounts of meat we consume daily.
Sorry, meat lovers, but a study at the University of Columbia found that eating bacon fourteen times a month was linked to damaged lung function and an increased risk of respiratory diseases.21 Eating processed foods like bacon also increases the risk of dying young.22 And according to research in the journal Circulation, daily consumption of processed meats like bacon, sausage, and deli meats can increase the risk of heart disease by 42 percent and diabetes by 19 percent.23 Although some meat is fine, processed meat is not part of a health-building, immune system–restoring diet and is best avoided.
High-protein diets like Atkins and South Beach have left many people thinking that animal products are the only foods that contain protein. That is simply not true: fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains all contain protein. Most people actually eat excessive amounts of protein from animal sources, which requires a tremendous amount of energy for digestion. Additionally, excessive meat—and, incidentally, dairy—consumption is linked to imbalanced levels of certain microorganisms in the gut, according to Harvard University research published in the journal Nature.24
It has long been known that diet influences the type and activity of the trillion microorganisms residing in the human gut, but Harvard scientists found that even what we eat in the short term can have drastic effects on the type and numbers of microbes in our gut and their capacity to increase inflammation in the GI tract, which can cause inflammation anywhere in the body, including the sinuses, lungs, and nasal passageways. Additionally, this GI inflammation can also result in immune system imbalances like the overreactivity of the immune system to dust, pollens, molds, or other environmental substances. I’ll share more about this GI-immune system link in the next chapter.
The Harvard scientists discovered that microbes found in the food, including bacteria, fungi, and viruses, quickly colonize the gut. They also found that an animal-based diet such as the SAD caused the growth of microorganisms that are capable of triggering inflammatory bowel disease within only two days of eating these foods. Other research links inflammation-causing microbes to the degradation of our health, suggesting that the Harvard study has potentially far-reaching implications for the prevention and treatment of many conditions, allergies included.
The scientists put volunteers on a meat and cheese diet, then switched them to a fiber-rich, plant-based diet to track the effect on intestinal microbes. The study participants ate a breakfast of eggs and bacon, a lunch of ribs and briskets, and then salami, prosciutto, and assorted cheeses for dinner, along with pork rind snacks. After a break from eating this diet, the volunteers ate a plant-based diet of granola for breakfast; jasmine rice, cooked onions, tomatoes, squash, garlic, peas, and lentils for lunch; and a similar dinner, with bananas and mangoes for snacks.
The scientists analyzed the volunteers’ microbes before, during, and after each meal. The effects of the meat and cheese were almost immediate. The abundance of bacteria shifted about a day after the food hit the gut. After three days on either diet, the bacteria in the gut also changed their behavior.
Lead scientist Lawrence David, PhD, admits that the meat-and-cheese diet used in his experiments was extreme; however, such an extreme diet helps paint a clear picture of the outcome of a diet heavy in meat and cheese—and frankly, this is a typical diet for many people who use high-protein diets or follow the SAD. This high-animal-protein diet clearly demonstrates the microbial impact of animal-protein-rich diets. Dr. David said in an interview with the online journal NPR, “I love meat . . . but I will say that I definitely feel a lot more guilty ordering a hamburger . . . since doing this work.”
If you want to restore your health and address the inflammation and immune system overreactions involved in allergies, you’ll want to reconsider reaching for that bacon-wrapped sausage, cheese platter, or burger. Does that mean you have to become a vegan? Of course not—unless you want to. It means that you should cut back on meat as your source of protein and move to an increasingly plant-based diet.
Before you panic wondering where you will get your protein, here are some of the best nonmeat sources of protein:
• avocado
• coconut
• legumes, such as kidney beans, black beans, navy beans, pinto beans, Romano beans, chickpeas, soybeans, and edamame (green soybeans)
• nuts (preferably raw, unsalted), including almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, macadamia nuts, pecans, pistachios, and walnuts
• quinoa
• seeds, such as chia seeds, flaxseeds, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds
• soy products (organic only, as soy is heavily genetically modified), such as tofu, miso, and tempeh
• dairy alternatives, including almond milk, coconut milk, hemp seed milk, and soy milk
You may notice that protein powders are not on the list. That’s because many are heavily processed, sugar laden, or contain neurotoxic MSG in one of its many guises, particularly protein “isolates.” Ground seeds, like those mentioned on the list, are a much better way to add protein to your smoothies than by using protein powders.
A GRAIN OF TRUTH
It’s important to select the right types of carbohydrates, or carbs, to include in your diet to help reset your immune system to reduce or eliminate allergies. Some of the carbs to avoid include white potatoes, white rice, and white flour and foods made with it. These foods act similarly to sugar in the body, causing wild blood sugar fluctuations and the resulting inflammation and changes to the gut terrain. Some of these bad carb foods include pastries, doughnuts, candies, cakes, white bread, “multigrain” bread (which is actually mostly white flour with a handful of grains added to it), and whole-wheat bread (which also tends to be largely white flour with a small amount of whole wheat added to it). Whole wheat has been heavily sprayed with harmful inflammation-causing pesticides and is best avoided. That doesn’t mean you have to give up all your favorite foods. Most bread, cakes, pastries and other foods can be made with whole-grain flour that does not have the same inflammatory effect on your body. Here are some suggestions about which grains to enjoy and which to avoid:
| Enjoy This | Avoid That |
|---|---|
| 100 percent whole-grain bread (no wheat) |
|