Why Grass-Fed Beef Is Better for the Environment…and Us!

Rancher Dave Evans of Marin Sun Farms raises 500 head of cattle on nothing but grass in Nicasio, California. Here he explains how his farm works.

By: Dave Evans, as told to Joel Weber; Illustrations: Heather Jones
Published: March 2008   [ Updated: Nov 7, 2008 – 3:44:18 PM ]

The grass that fills my pastures is a diverse array of mostly native perennials and legumes, such as rye grass and clover. The grass stores the sun’s energy and converts it into carbon, which my cows will eventually convert into protein. Grassland can sequester as much carbon as a forest, which is a claim no factory farm can make. Grass and soil need a break from grazing to recover and regenerate, and I use electric fences to divide the land into paddocks as large as 100 acres and as small as two acres to restrict animals’ access. I change my pasture-management strategy almost daily, but typically the grass will measure about six inches tall when the cattle enter a paddock. I’ll lead them into a new paddock once the grass is half that length.
When cows eat grass, an organ called the rumen—something we humans don’t have, which is why we don’t eat grass (notice what he says here, we DON”T eat grass- ie. GRAINS!!)  —converts the sun’s energy into high-quality protein. As the cattle move throughout the pasture, their hooves help spread and plant grass seed while their feces acts as fertilizer. And because they don’t stand in the same place all day, covered in their own dung, I don’t need to pump them full of antibiotics, the way factory farmers do.
After I move cattle off a paddock, I bring in laying hens to eat the parasites and fly larva that thrive in cow pies. The chickens eat the bad stuff most farmers eliminate with pesticides, and those bugs give the hens’ eggs more flavor. Chicken excrement also contains a lot of nitrogen, which functions as a fertilizer. Most commercial farms increase yields with synthetic nitrogen, and the farms excrete so much fertilizer that it ends up in the ocean where it kills sea life. Keeping free-range chickens prevents that sort of pollution. I simply move the hens so that excess nitrogen never builds up and the soil stays healthy.

Learn more about Dave Evans or find grass-fed beef near you by visiting eatwild.com.

Smart Choices? NOT!

“You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal,” Dr. Kennedy said, evoking a hypothetical parent in the supermarket. “So Froot Loops is a better choice.”

She said the program was also influenced by research into consumer behavior. That research showed that, while shoppers wanted more information, they did not want to hear negative messages or feel their choices were being dictated to them.

I say this is a load of crap, this study is bought and paid for by the food industry! I find that people ARE desperate for information on what constitutes great nutrition!  My clients are thrilled when they learn that organic grass fed meat, eggs, coconut oils and butter are wonderful healthy foods that they should be eating every day, are indeed crucial for health…

PS; if you see this label, run!

Read the article in the NYTimes and tell me what you think!

September 5, 2009

For Your Health, Froot Loops

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

A new food-labeling campaign called Smart Choices, backed by most of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, is “designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter food and beverage choices.”

The green checkmark label that is starting to show up on store shelves will appear on hundreds of packages, including — to the surprise of many nutritionists — sugar-laden cereals like Cocoa Krispies and Froot Loops.

“These are horrible choices,” said Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health.

He said the criteria used by the Smart Choices Program were seriously flawed, allowing less healthy products, like sweet cereals and heavily salted packaged meals, to win its seal of approval. “It’s a blatant failure of this system and it makes it, I’m afraid, not credible,” Mr. Willett said.

The Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture have also weighed in, sending the program’s managers a letter on Aug. 19 saying they intended to monitor its effect on the food choices of consumers.

The letter said the agencies would be concerned if the Smart Choices label “had the effect of encouraging consumers to choose highly processed foods and refined grains instead of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.”

The government is interested in improving nutrition labeling on packages in part because of the nation’s obesity epidemic, which experts say is tied to a diet heavy in processed foods loaded with calories, fats and sugar.

The prominently displayed label debuts as many in the food industry and government are debating how to provide information on the front of packages that includes important elements from the familiar nutrition facts box that usually appears on the back of products.

Eileen T. Kennedy, president of the Smart Choices board and the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said the program’s criteria were based on government dietary guidelines and widely accepted nutritional standards.

She said the program was also influenced by research into consumer behavior. That research showed that, while shoppers wanted more information, they did not want to hear negative messages or feel their choices were being dictated to them.

“The checkmark means the food item is a ‘better for you’ product, as opposed to having an x on it saying ‘Don’t eat this,’ ” Dr. Kennedy said. “Consumers are smart enough to deduce that if it doesn’t have the checkmark, by implication it’s not a ‘better for you’ product. They want to have a choice. They don’t want to be told ‘You must do this.’ ”

Dr. Kennedy, who is not paid for her work on the program, defended the products endorsed by the program, including sweet cereals. She said Froot Loops was better than other things parents could choose for their children.

“You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal,” Dr. Kennedy said, evoking a hypothetical parent in the supermarket. “So Froot Loops is a better choice.”

Froot Loops qualifies for the label because it meets standards set by the Smart Choices Program for fiber and Vitamins A and C, and because it does not exceed limits on fat, sodium and sugar. It contains the maximum amount of sugar allowed under the program for cereals, 12 grams per serving, which in the case of Froot Loops is 41 percent of the product, measured by weight. That is more sugar than in many popular brands of cookies.

“Froot Loops is an excellent source of many essential vitamins and minerals and it is also a good source of fiber with only 12 grams of sugar,” said Celeste A. Clark, senior vice president of global nutrition for Kellogg’s, which makes Froot Loops. “You cannot judge the nutritional merits of a food product based on one ingredient.”

Dr. Clark, who is a member of the Smart Choices board, said that the program’s standard for sugar in cereals was consistent with federal dietary guidelines that say that “small amounts of sugar” added to nutrient-dense foods like breakfast cereals can make them taste better. That, in theory, will encourage people to eat more of them, which would increase the nutrients in their diet.

Ten companies have signed up for the Smart Choices program so far, including Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, ConAgra Foods, Unilever, General Mills, PepsiCo and Tyson Foods. Companies that participate pay up to $100,000 a year to the program, with the fee based on total sales of its products that bear the seal.

The Smart Choices checkmark is meant to take the place of similar nutritional labels that individual manufacturers began plastering on their packages several years ago, like PepsiCo’s Smart Choices Made Easy and Sensible Solution from Kraft.

In joining Smart Choices, the companies agreed to discontinue their own labeling systems, Ms. Kennedy said.

Michael R. Taylor, a senior F.D.A. adviser, said the agency was concerned that sugar-laden cereals and high-fat foods would bear a label that tells consumers they were nutritionally superior.

“What we don’t want to do is have front-of-package information that in any way is based on cherry-picking the good and not disclosing adequately the components of a product that may be less good,” Mr. Taylor said.

He said the agency would consider the possibility of creating a standardized nutrition label for the front of packages.

“We’re taking a hard look at these programs and we want to independently look at what would be the sound criteria and the best way to present this information,” Mr. Taylor said.

Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, was part of a panel that helped devise the Smart Choices nutritional criteria, until he quit last September. He said the panel was dominated by members of the food industry, which skewed its decisions.

“It was paid for by industry and when industry put down its foot and said this is what we’re doing, that was it, end of story,” he said. Dr. Kennedy and Dr. Clark, who were both on the panel, said industry members had not controlled the results.

Mr. Jacobson objected to some of the panel’s nutritional decisions. The criteria allow foods to carry the Smart Choices seal if they contain added nutrients, which he said could mask shortcomings in the food.

Despite federal guidelines favoring whole grains, the criteria allow breads made with no whole grains to get the seal if they have added nutrients.

“You could start out with some sawdust, add calcium or Vitamin A and meet the criteria,” Mr. Jacobson said.

Nutritionists questioned other foods given the Smart Choices label. The program gives the seal to both regular and light mayonnaise, which could lead consumers to think they are both equally healthy. It also allows frozen meals and packaged sandwiches to have up to 600 milligrams of sodium, a quarter of the recommended daily maximum intake.

“The object of this is to make highly processed foods appear as healthful as unprocessed foods, which they are not,” said Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University.

Nutrition Activists Celebrate Cholesterol during National Cholesterol Education Month

From The Weston Price Foundation

Group Cites Key Roles of Cholesterol in Body Chemistry, Hormone Balance, Longevity

WASHINGTON, DC, September 1, 2009–September is National Cholesterol Education Month, when government officials will stress cholesterol reduction as a top priority, claiming that “high levels of cholesterol significantly increase the risk of heart disease.” However, the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit nutrition education organization, urges citizens to celebrate September by learning about the vital roles of cholesterol in the body chemistry and by embracing nutrient-dense, cholesterol-rich foods.

“Cholesterol is deemed a deadly poison. Most people are afraid of eating foods containing cholesterol and of receiving a diagnosis of ‘high’ cholesterol,” says Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation. “Yet, having adequate cholesterol levels in the body is key to good health. The notion that cholesterol is a villain in the diet is a myth, based on flimsy evidence and opposed by many honest scientists, including prominent lipids researcher, Dr. Mary Enig. But, this theory was promoted by the food processing industry to demonize animal fats, which are competitors to vegetable oils and by the pharmaceutical industry to create a market for the sales of cholesterol-lowering drugs.”

Cholesterol is an important building block of the cell, providing structure and impermeability to the cell membrane, making it waterproof.  “Without adequate cholesterol in the cell membrane, our cells become ‘leaky’ and cannot function properly,” says Fallon. “In addition, many important substances are made out of cholesterol, including stress hormones like cortisol, sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone, the bile salts for digesting fats, and vitamin D.”

Cholesterol is vital to proper neurological function, playing a key role in the formation of memory and the uptake of hormones in the brain, including serotonin, the body’s feel-good chemical. When cholesterol levels drop too low, the serotonin receptors cannot work, leading to depression and anti-social behavior. Cholesterol is a major component of the brain, much of it in the myelin sheaths that insulate nerve cells and in the synapses that transmit nerve impulses.

Fallon notes that cholesterol-lowering is associated with numerous health problems including depression, cognitive impairment, amnesia, cancer, muscle pain, weakness and neuropathy. “The all-cause death rate is higher in those with cholesterol under 180 mg/dl, yet this is the level the medical profession urges us to meet. People with low cholesterol levels have more deaths from cancer, stroke, intestinal diseases, accidents and suicide.  And having low cholesterol does not necessarily protect against heart disease—many people with low cholesterol suffer heart attacks.”

National Cholesterol Education Month is focusing on cholesterol lowering in the elderly; however a 2001 report from the on-going Honolulu Heart Study, published in the Lancet,  found  “increased mortality in elderly people with low serum cholesterol. . . [and that] long-term persistence of low cholesterol concentration actually increases risk of death.” Corroborating studies indicate that high cholesterol levels in the elderly are associated with a longer lifespan, partly because cholesterol protects against infectious diseases like pneumonia and influenza.

However, Fallon’s biggest concern is the effect of cholesterol fear-mongering on growing children, noting that, “Cholesterol is vital for normal growth and development of the nervous system. Pregnant and nursing women and growing children need cholesterol-rich foods like whole milk, butter, egg yolks and liver to ensure optimal development. Children are being denied these foods on the spurious claim that they will cause obesity and heart disease later in life. The result is an epidemic of learning disabilities and growth problems, and later in life the specter of infertility and chronic disease.”

The Foundation urges parents to learn the other side of the story during National Cholesterol Education Month, by educating themselves on the benefits of a cholesterol-rich diet and by feeding nutrient-dense foods like cheese, eggs, bacon and meat to their children, so that they can do well in school and enjoy protection from disease.

For further information:

• The Oiling of America (History of the anti-cholesterol movement)
• Dangers of Statin Drugs

The Weston A. Price Foundation is a 501(c)3 nutrition education foundation with the mission of disseminating accurate, science-based information on diet and health. Named after nutrition pioneer Weston A. Price, DDS, author of the book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, the Washington, DC-based Foundation publishes a quarterly journal for its 11,000 members, supports 400 local chapters worldwide and hosts a yearly conference. The Foundation headquarters phone number is (202) 363-4394, website is westonaprice.org, and general email address is info@westonaprice.org.

The obvious advantage of organic food over conventional

Posted 12:23 PM on 11 Aug 2009
by Tom Philpott

A bit of nitrogen with those veggies? A recent literature review [PDF] by the U.K. Food Standards Agency concluded that organic foods offer no nutritional advantages to ones grown with conventional chemical agriculture.

The report quickly bounced around the media and the internets and has congealed into received wisdom. For example, in a recent chat with readers, Washington Post food politics columnist (and general policy writer) Ezra Klein engaged in the following exchange:

Santa Fe, N.M.: I saw a report today on a study finding that organic food isn’t any healthier than conventional food. Is buying organic a waste of money, in your opinion?

Ezra Klein: Honestly? Yes. It’s definitely not healthier, at least not according to any study I’ve seen. There’s some argument that it’s more environmentally friendly. But it’s not something that I’m convinced is worth a premium. I’d rather buy from a local farm that uses some pesticides than a major producers who has gone organic.

Whoa—lots going on there. Let’s stick to the “definitely not healthier” bit for now. (As for the idea that there’s just “some argument” for the environmental benefits of not dousing fields of food with synthetic poisons and greenhouse-gas-spewing fertilizer, I’m not sure what to say.)
Well, Ezra, here is a study, released last year by the U.S.-based Organic Center, that comes to a conclusion quite different from the U.K. agency’s findings. It’s called “New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods.” The Organic Center recently released a cogent rebuttal to the U.K. findings as well.

True, the Organic Center is funded by Big Organic companies like Dean Foods (owner of Horizon Dairy) and Whole Foods, which have an interest in promoting organics as healthier. But I’ve never seen the Center’s scholarship successfully challenged.

Moreover, as Paula Crossfield’s excellent recent post on Civil Eats shows, the U.K. Food Standards Agency itself, despite its governmental status, can hardly be seen as a neutral adjudicator. Like our own FDA, the FSA is shot through with once and future food-industry execs and flacks. (Paula also points us to another study finding nutritional advantages to organic food—this one commissioned by the European Union.)

The Organic Center claims that the FAS study neglected to consider total antioxidant content—which seems a pretty gaping oversight, giving that antioxidants are emerging as a key micronutrient for fighting cancer and other maladies. (The Center’s own study found significantly more total antioxidants in organic food than conventional.) The Center also makes a convincing case that the FAS researchers botched the measurement of another key micronutrient, polyphenols.

But what I find most immediately significant is this: Both studies found that conventionally grown produce has substantially higher levels of nitrates than organic—most likely from widespread use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer on conventional farms.

This consensus around a nitrogen gap suggests a non-trivial advantage for organic food: A growing body of literature indicts heightened levels of nitrates in the U.S. diet as a significant health menace. For a while, we’ve known that nitrates are a powerful carcinogen.

The latest: a rather stunning recent report from the Journal of Alzheimer Disease (press release here) linking nitrates in food to “increased deaths from diseases, including Alzheimer’s, diabetes mellitus and Parkinson’s.”

The study’s lead author, Suzanne de la Monte of Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University, declares that we have become a “nitrosamine generation,”  exposed to increasing levels of nitrogen-derived compounds that pose a threat at even in low doses. She indicts nitrate-preserved foods like bacon—but also conventional agriculture.

According to de la Monte, “We receive increased exposure through the abundant use of nitrate-containing fertilizers for agriculture,” which are both taken up in food crops and also seep into drinking water.

De la Monte reports that incidence of the diseases in question—Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and type 2 diabetes—have “all increased radically over the past several decades and show no sign of plateau.” According to de la Monte:

Because there has been a relatively short time interval associated with the dramatic shift in disease incidence and prevalence rates, we believe this is due to exposure-related rather than genetic etiologies.

The press release adds:

The findings indicate that while nitrogen-containing fertilizer consumption increased by 230 percent between 1955 and 2005, its usage doubled between 1960 and 1980, which just precedes the insulin-resistant epidemics the researchers found. They also found that sales from the fast food chain and the meat processing [industry] increased more than 8-fold from 1970 to 2005, and grain consumption increased 5-fold.

To me, the study stands as a pretty damning indictment of industrial agriculture—and in particular efforts to extend its alleged benefits to the global South. Hey, grow more food with our agrichemicals—and melt your brains and become dependent on pharmaceutical insulin in the process!

It bears remembering, too, that industrial agriculture’s reliance on synthetic fertilizer contributes significantly to climate change [PDF] and coastal dead zones.

Organic agriculture, meanwhile, relies on slow-release fertilizers that don’t get taken up as readily by plants, leaving lower residue levels in food. And because organic ag builds carbon in soil, it also tends to hold nitrogen better, not letting it leach into soil or air nearly as much.

From The Grist

A debate about soil, organics, and nutrition

From The Grist

by Tom Philpott

“The whole problem of health—in soil, plant, animal, and man—is one great subject.”
—Albert Howard, The Soil and Health

Ezra Klein and I are engaged in a little debate over the value of organic food. I’m honestly a little surprised to be arguing with the Washington Post’s food-policy columnist about the desirability of removing toxic, ecologically damaging chemicals from food production. But no matter.

I got the ball rolling here; and here’s Ezra’s riposte. Narrowly, we’re debating whether organically grown foods offer more nutritional value than ones raised with synthetic chemicals.

I say they almost certainly do; Ezra is skeptical. From reading Ezra’s post and several comments from his readers, I find that people seem downright nonplussed by the idea that soil conditions and growing methods might affect the nutritional content of the resulting food. Their puzzlement in turn puzzles me. If we are what we eat, then so are plants; and plants are mainly eating soil (and the various nutrients and substances contained therein).

It makes me wonder what—or if?—people in our post-agricultural society think about the whole question of soil. Yet methods of soil stewardship are key to this debate. So before I dig into the details with the celebrated policy wonk—which study says what, funded by whom—I want to take a broad look at soil. In the process, I hope to open people’s minds to the idea that soil stewardship could affect food quality.

In his In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan pretty much debunked the tenets of what he called “nutritionism”—the idea that human nutrition could be reduced to a set of macronutrients (vitamin A, the B vitamins, etc.), which could then be isolated and fed to be people to keep them healthy. Scientists have known for a while that a given dose of, say, isolated vitamin A in pill form (or added to bread as fortification)  does not provide anything close to the same benefit as an equal dose in the context of a carrot. You can’t live well on 2,500 calories from sugar water plus oat fiber and a One a Day vitamin. Scientists now know that, but haven’t quite figured out why. Human nutrition turns out to be more mysterious than people in white lab coats have so far been able to decipher.

For about 100 years now, a form of nutritionism has also held sway among soil scientists, too. Where human nutritionists focused on vitamin A, etc., soil scientists seized upon N, P, and K—nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. No one disputes that these are basic building blocks of plant life—without sufficient access to each of them, plants can’t flourish. But just as human nutritionists at one time thought that nutrition could be isolated into macronutrients and delivered to people out of the context of food, so plant scientists decided that N, P, and K were sufficient, in isolated form, for plant life.

This idea marked the rise of what become known as NPK thinking—the nutritionism of soil scientists. By learning to synthesize nitrogen and mine phosphorous and potassium, technologists sparked an agricultural revolution. Farmers could abandon the time-consuming task of recycling nutrients and building soil; instead, they could merely purchase newly available inputs (on the installment plan, of course).  Society had “solved” the whole vexing problem of soil fertility; farmers could now focus on growing food, and lots of it (meaning fewer farmers).

In the NPK-think that still rules conventional agriculture, soil is essentially an inert medium for conveying isolated blasts of synthesized and mined NPK to crops. The effect on soil quality has been dreadful. Writing in The Fatal Harvest Reader (2002), the California farmer Jason McKenney describes the effect:

We now know that massive use of synthetic fertilizers to create artificial fertility has had a cascade of adverse effects on natural soil fertility and the entire soil system. Fertilizer application begins the destruction of soil biodiversity by diminishing the role of nitrogen-fixing bacteria and amplifying the role of everything that feeds on nitrogen. These feeders then speed up the decomposition of organic matter and humus. As organic matter decreases, the physical structure of soil changes. With less pore space and less of their sponge-like qualities, soils are less efficient at storing water and air. More irrigation is needed. Water leeches through soils, draining away nutrients that no longer have an effective susbstrate on which to cling. With less available oxygen the growth of soil microbiology slows, and the intricate ecosystem of biological exchanges breaks down.

I saw it in extreme form on a trip last spring to Immokalee, Florida—source of 90 percent of the winter tomatoes grown in the United States. As I and many others have pointed out, workers are abused there as a matter of course.

But the growing conditions are also quite startling. When you look down in an Immokalee tomato field, what you see is sand—there’s no evident organic matter in the growing medium (the word “soil” doesn’t quite apply here). To prepare for tomato growing, you start by sterilizing the ground with an extremely toxic pesticide—and in the process wipe out any beneficial microbes that might be lingering there. Then you inject the doses of NPK to maximize output, and you’re ready to go. (You may need more insecticide sprayings as the season wears on.)

More than in any other place I’ve seen, plants there live on a diet equivalent to sugar water, oat fiber, and vitamin pills. Can there be any real wonder that the resulting tomatoes are so pathetically lacking in flavor? And do people still doubt that they may be less healthful as well?

Indeed, there’s strong evidence that the nutritional value of industrially grown vegetable crops has declined significantly since 1950.

In contrast to industrial agriculture’s reliance on NPK, organic ag focuses on building soil as a living ecosystem. Even large-scale industrial-organic farms nourish their soil with nitrogen-fixing cover crops and well-composted manure, which along with NPK deliver loads of organic matter and micronutrients. And the nitrogen available from legume cover crops and manure releases slowly, not jolting crops into rapid growth like straight anhydrous ammonia. And whereas the harsh chemicals and poisons of conventional farming squeeze out microbial life in the soil, organic farmers seek to nourish it.

Given all of this, I would be surprised if a tomato grown in Immokalee’s chemical-infused sands delivered as much health-giving properties as one grown in rich, living humus.

All right, so back to the details of the debate.

I pointed to a literature review conducted by the U.S.-based Organic Center, which is funded by Big Organic groups like Horizon and Whole Foods; Ezra pointed to one funded by the U.K. Food Safety Agency, the equivalent of the U.S. FDA. And like that agency, the FSA has not managed to remain free of food-industry influence. For example, its current chief executive is Tim Smith, whose bio reads like this:

Tim Smith is the former Chief Executive of Arla Foods UK plc. The company, which is responsible for a number of major food brands, is now part of Arla Foods amba, Europe’s largest dairy manufacturer. He was appointed Chief Executive of Arla Foods in early 2005.

Tim Smith graduated from Leeds University with a degree in microbiology and zoology. He has spent his entire career in the food business: from 1979 to 1994 he was at Northern Foods, finishing his career there as a Divisional Director. After five years at Sara Lee Corporation, where he was President of UK operations, he joined Express Dairies plc as Executive Director. Express Dairies merged with Arla Foods in October 2003.

Impressive. I don’t think even a U.S. president would appoint a career Big Food exec to the top food-safety post upon his first swing through the revolving door. Even Michael Taylor, the former Monsanto exec (and before that, lawyer) Obama recently handed a top position at FDA, served a few stints in government before the appointment.

At any rate, neither Ezra nor I is leaning on a pristine study untainted by special interest. And in this age of industry dominance of research agendas, there may be no pristine studies. So let’s look at details.

Ezra makes two major points to refute my position: 1) organic food may have more total antioxidants than conventional, but that’s irrelevant, because of the “wealth of studies showing that antioxidants do not appear to reduce the risk of cancer or heart disease or anything else”; and 2) that my contention that the lower nitrogen content of organic foods makes them healthier is based on a “circumstantial argument” about the danger of nitrates “that is plausible, but hasn’t been studied.”

Ezra links to two studies to back up his claim about the irrelevance of antioxidants. The first one is itself irrelevant, because it is measuring the value of antioxidant supplements—ie, isolated antioxidants—and we’re talking about antioxidants in whole foods. I agree that taking, say, beta-caratene pills is probably worthless; I doubt that beta-caratene in, say, the context of a carrot is worthless.

The second study is more interesting. This investigates whether “natural antioxidants, i.e. Vitamin C, Vitamin E and carotenoids” fight certain kinds of heart damage. It concludes:

Animal studies indicate that dietary antioxidants may reduce atherosclerosis progression, and observational data in humans suggest that antioxidant vitamin ingestion is associated with reduced cardiovascular disease, but the results of randomised controlled trials are mainly disappointing.

I assume that by “dietary antioxidants,” the researchers mean nutrients from whole foods and not isolated supplements. So the finding would seem to support Ezra’s claim. But then we get this:

The favorable effects shown by some studies relating antioxidant dietary intake and cardiovascular disease, may have been exerted by other chemicals present in foods. Flavonoids are the ideal candidates, since they are plentiful in foods containing antioxidant vitamins (i.e. fruits and vegetables) and are potent antioxidants. Tea and wine, rich in flavonoids, seem to have beneficial effects on multiple mechanisms involved in atherosclerosis.

So flavonoids may actually help, according to this study. Now, both the FSA and Organic Center studies measured something called “total phenolics,” a category than encompasses flavonoids. The FSA study found no difference; and the Organic Center study showed a more than 20 percent advantage for organic food. Both studies are essentially gathering results from past studies and consolidating their results. As such, they’re looking at much the same data. So why the difference? According to the Organic Center’s critique of the FSA study:

Unlike the London study, The Organic Center review focused on nutrient differences in “matched pairs” of crops grown on nearby farms, on the same type of soil, with the same irrigation systems and harvest timing, and grown from the same plant variety. It also rigorously screened studies for the quality of the analytical methods used to measure nutrient levels, and eliminated from further consideration a much greater percentage of the published literature than the FSA team.

While the FSA team found 80 comparisons of phenolic compounds, the TOC [Organic Center] team focused on the more precise measure of total phenolic acids, or total polyphenols, and found just 25 scientifically valid “matched pairs.” By mixing together in their statistical analysis the results of several specific phenolic acids, the FSA team likely lost statistical precision.

The “matched pairs” thing seems legit. Crops draw nutrients from soils; different soils have different levels and types of nutrients. Different vegetable varieties, too, have different properties—including levels of nutrient uptake.

At the University of California-Davis, scholars at the Long Term Research on Agricultural Systems project have been examining “matched pairs” of organic and conventional crops since 1993. In a 2007 paper, the group compared the nutritional content of organic and conventional tomatoes grown between 1994 and 2004. The result: organic tomatoes showed significantly levels of two flavonoids called quercetin and kaempferol that were on average, respectively, 79 percent and 97 percent higher than conventional. Moreover:

The levels of flavonoids increased over time in samples from organic treatments, whereas the levels of flavonoids did not vary significantly in conventional treatments. This increase corresponds not only with increasing amounts of soil organic matter accumulating in organic plots but also with reduced manure application rates once soils in the organic systems had reached equilibrium levels of organic matter.

Okay, on to the question of nitrogen. As I wrote in the earlier post, both the FSA and Organic Center studies acknowledge that organic foods show lower levels of nitrogen in organic food. I cited that fact as a serious nutritional advantage for organic food, and pointed to a recent study by a Brown researcher linking type-2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease to increased exposure to nitrogen-related compounds.

Ezra dismissed the argument as “circumstantial.”

I should have been more precise. As the Organic Center put it in its rebuttal to the FSA, “Elevated levels of nitrogen in food are regarded by most scientists as a public health hazard because of the potential for cancer-causing nitrosamine compounds to form in the human GI tract.”

And it’s nitrosamine compounds that the Brown study linked to diabetes and Alzheimer’s. The researcher makes a circumstantial link between the explosion in nitrogen fertilizer applications after 1960 and the abrupt rise in Alzeimer’s and diabetes over the same period. But they also demonstrate the ability of nitrosamines to cause significant cellular damage. According to the study’s press release:

Nitrosamines basically become highly reactive at the cellular level, which then alters gene expression and causes DNA damage. The researchers note that the role of nitrosamines has been well-studied, and their role as a carcinogen has been fully documented. The investigators propose that the cellular alterations that occur as a result of nitrosamine exposure are fundamentally similar to those that occur with aging, as well as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Given that information, it seems wise to minimize the level of nitrogen—which can turn to nitrosamines in the digestive process—in food. Moreover, the researchers evidently aren’t finished with the topic. The press release adds, chillingly: “Two subsequent papers have been accepted for publication in the near future that demonstrate experimentally that low levels of nitrosamine exposure cause neurodegeneration, NASH [non-alcoholic steatohepatitis], and diabetes.”

Nor are these the only ways that organics are “better for you.” Here’s an important one: they carry drastically lower pesticide residues. The Chicago Tribune recently obtained USDA data showing that “more than 50 pesticide compounds showed up on domestic and imported peaches headed for U.S. stores.” Moreover:

Five of the compounds exceeded the limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency, and six of the pesticide compounds present are not approved for use on peaches in the United States.

Ezra ended his response like this: “[W]hat we do know is that organic produce is more expensive and harder to find.”

I agree completely; but it seems clear to me that the answer is not to marginalize organics, but rather to stop using government cash and lax antitrust/environmental/labor regulation to prop up a destructive food system. We get the food system that we as a society pay for.

The way we eat is trashing the fragile conditions that make human life possible

‘Feeding the world’–or consuming it?

Posted 5:04 PM on 31 Aug 2009
by Tom Philpott

In the ongoing debate about whether sustainable agriculture can “feed the world,” it’s important not to lose sight of what industrial agriculture is doing to ecosystems—both in specific areas and on a grand scale.

Producing and distributing lots and lots of calories, leveraged by fossil fuel and synthetic fertilizers and poisons, may solve certain short-term problems; but the practice also creates long-term ones that won’t be easily solved.

In June, a study emerged showing that so-called inert ingredients in Roundup, Monsanto’s widely used flagship herbicide, can kill human cells even at low levels—“particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells,” reports Scientific American. This is an herbicide that’s used on virtually all of our nation’s corn and soy fields, covering tens of millions of acres of cropland. (It’s also widely used by landscapers and on home lawns.)

Then there was the recent atrazine imbroglio. For years, the EPA has been assuring the public that the highly toxic herbicide, still widely used in the Corn Belt, wasn’t showing up in drinking water in worrisome levels. Turns out that was a lie, as some excellent muckraking by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund revealed. Atrazine exposure has been strongly associated with reproductive health maladies, including a rise in hermaphroditism among frog populations.

Note that corn and soy production, as practiced today, is completely reliant on these two broad-spectrum herbicides.

Now comes news about the hazards of another input critical to the project of industrial agricultire: synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. When farmers apply nitrogen to farm fields, a certain amount enters the atmosphere as nitrous oxide. And according to a study conducted by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and published in Science, human-generated nitrous oxide is now the No. 1 contributor to ozone-layer depletion.

The study is the first ever to look closely at nitrous oxide’s role as an ozone destroyer. The results are alarming. From a summary of the study on the NOAA website:

For the first time, this study has evaluated nitrous oxide emissions from human activities in terms of their potential impact on Earth’s ozone layer. As chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which have been phased out by international agreement, ebb in the atmosphere, nitrous oxide will remain a significant ozone-destroyer, the study found. Today, nitrous oxide emissions from human activities are more than twice as high as the next leading ozone-depleting gas.

The withering away of the ozone layer, which was slowed but not stopped by the 1987 Montreal Protocol phasing out CFCs, is no trivial matter. As the NOAA summary puts it:

The ozone layer serves to shield plants, animals and people from excessive ultraviolet light from the sun. Thinning of the ozone layer allows more ultraviolet light to reach the Earth’s surface where it can damage crops and aquatic life and harm human health.

Moreover, the Montreal Protocol does not regulate nitrous oxide.

Of course, agriculture-induced nitrous oxide isn’t just eating the ozone layer. It’s also a greenhouse gas with 300 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide.

Thus the implications of agriculture’s reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer are literally earth-shaking: The way we’re feeding ourselves is contributing dramatically to two processes—climate change and ozone depletion—that could literally make the planet uninhabitable by humans.

Worse still, we my be seriously underestimating industrial agriculture’s nitrous oxide emissions. When considering agriculture’s contribution of nitrous oxide to the atmosphere, scientists have assumed that about 1 percent of the nitrogen fertilizer applied by farmers ends up in the atmosphere as nitrous oxide. The EPA operates under that assumption, as did the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But the real number may be considerably higher. A 2008 study [PDF] by the Nobel-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen found that as much as 5 percent of nitrogen fertilizer applied by farmers turns into nitrous oxide—which would make agriculture a much larger contributor to climate change (and ozone depletion) than is currently assumed.

On top of all of that, nitrogen runoff from agriculture is also strongly implicated in the creation of coastal dead zones—large algae blooms that suck oxygen out of the sea and snuff out marine life.

What all of this points to is the need to bring ecological considerations into agriculture. And in fact, there’s already a budding field known as agroecology. Agrocecology is now at best a fringe field in academia; as public funding for university research dries up, giant agribusiness firms like Monsanto increasingly finance—and control—the research agenda. They have little interest in ecology and vested interests in pushing their own proprietary products.

It’s the Beef

by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD

With the exception of butter, no other food has been subjected to such intense demonization in recent years as red meat, particularly beef. The juicy hamburger, that delicious marbled steak and the Sunday roast have been accused of terrible crimes. Beef causes heart disease, say the Diet Dictocrats. Beef causes cancer, particularly colon cancer, beef causes osteoporosis, beef causes autoimmune diseases like asthma, beef harbors E. coli leading to food-borne illness, beef causes Creutzfeldt Jakob disease.

Recently a vegetarian group called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals placed billboard ads warning men not to eat beef because it causes impotence! Red meat is an acid-forming food, say the vegetarians, which putrefies in the gut because humans can’t digest meat. Beef production destroys the environment, according to the zealots, and takes away land that could be dedicated to grain for starving millions. Let’s examine these accusations one at a time.

Does beef cause heart disease?

First is the notion that beef causes heart disease. This actually dates back to the 1950’s when the lipid hypothesis was &taking hold on the American consciousness. At that time, scientists were grappling with a new threat to public health-a steep rise in heart disease, especially myocardial infarction (MI)-a massive blood clot leading to obstruction of a coronary artery and consequent death to the heart muscle. MI was almost nonexistent in 1910 and caused no more than three thousand deaths per year in 1930. By 1960, there were at least 500,000 MI deaths per year in the US.

Many scientists believed that the culprit was cholesterol and saturated fats found in animal foods like butter, eggs and beef. They reasoned that saturated fat and cholesterol raised the level of cholesterol in the blood which in turned caused the deposition of cholesterol as plaques in the arteries, leading to obstructions and heart disease. This, in a nutshell, is the lipid hypothesis.

This theory was tested in 1957 when Dr. Norman Jolliffe, Director of the Nutrition Bureau of the New York Health Department, initiated the Anti-Coronary Club. With great media fanfare, a group of businessmen, ranging in age from 40 to 59 years, were placed on the so-called Prudent Diet. Prudent Dieters used corn oil and margarine instead of butter, cold breakfast cereals instead of eggs and chicken and fish instead of beef. Anti-Coronary Club members were to be compared with a "matched" group of the same age who ate eggs for breakfast and had meat three times a day. Jolliffe, an overweight diabetic confined to a wheel chair, was confident that the Prudent Diet would save lives, including his own.

The results of Dr. Jolliffe’s Anti-Coronary Club experiment were published in 1966 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Those on the Prudent Diet of corn oil, margarine, fish, chicken and cold cereal had an average serum cholesterol of 220, compared to 250 in the meat-and-potatoes control group. However, the study authors were obliged to note that there were eight deaths from heart disease among Dr. Jolliffe’s Prudent Diet group, and none among those who ate meat three times a day. Dr. Jolliffe was dead by this time. He succumbed in 1961 from a vascular thrombosis, although the obituaries listed the cause of death as complications from diabetes.

The truth is that in spite of all the propaganda you have heard, the lipid hypothesis has never been proved. In fact, inadequate protein intake leads to loss of myocardial muscle and may, therefore, contribute to coronary heart disease.

There are many societies where the populace consumes high levels of animal food and saturated fat but remains free of heart disease. Dr. George Mann, who studied the Masai cattle herding peoples in Africa, found no heart disease, even though their diet consisted of meat, blood and rich milk. Butterfat consumption among Masai warriors, who consider vegetable foods as fodder for cattle, can reach one and one half pounds per day. Yet these people do not suffer from heart disease. Mann called the lipid hypothesis "the greatest scam in the history of medicine." It is a scam that has been used to convince millions of healthy people that they are sick and must take expensive drugs with serious side effects, a falsehood that has persuaded Americans to adopt a bland, tasteless diet simply because their cholesterol has been defined as being too high.

It is true that beef consumption in the United States has gone up during the last eighty years, the period of huge increases in heart disease. Today we consume 79 pounds of beef per person per year versus 54 in 1909, a 46% increase-but poultry consumption has increased a whopping 280%, from 18 pounds per person per year to 70. Consumption of vegetable oils, including those that have been hydrogenated, has increased 437%, from 11 pounds per person per year to 59; while consumption of butter, lard and tallow has plummeted from 30 pounds per person per year to just under 10. Whole milk consumption has declined by almost 50%, while lowfat milk consumption has doubled. Consumption of eggs, fresh fruits (excluding citrus), fresh vegetables, fresh potatoes and whole grain products has declined; but consumption of sugar and other sweeteners has almost doubled. Why, then, do today’s politically correct dietary gurus continue to blame beef consumption for our ills? Is it because it is the one wholesome food that has shown an increase over the past ninety years?

What’s the likely cause of heart disease?

The most likely causes of increased heart disease in America are the other changes in our diets-huge increases in consumption of refined carbohydrates and vegetable oils, particularly hydrogenated vegetable oils; and the decline in nutrient levels in our food, particularly minerals and fat soluble vitamins-vitamins found only in animal fats.

The only claim that can be made against beef as a cause of heart disease is that some studies have shown beef consumption to temporarily raise cholesterol levels in short term feeding experiments. Other studies have shown that beef consumption, including beef fat consumption, lowers cholesterol levels. But even if all studies show that beef consumption raises cholesterol levels, the only conclusion you can draw is-so what? There is no greater risk of heart disease at cholesterol levels of 300 than at 180, and people with cholesterol levels below 180 are at greater risk of death from other causes, such as cancer, intestinal diseases, accidents, violence and suicide.

In other words, it’s much more dangerous to have cholesterol levels that are too low than cholesterol levels that are too high.

Cholesterol is your best friend

The truth is that cholesterol is your best friend. It is vital for the function of the nervous system and the integrity of the digestive tract. Steroid hormones that help the body deal with stress are made from cholesterol. Sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone are made from cholesterol. Bile salts that the body uses to digest fats are made from cholesterol. Vitamin D, needed for thousands of biochemical processes, is made from cholesterol.

Cholesterol is a powerful antioxidant that protects us against cancer. It is vital to the cells because it provides waterproofing and structural integrity. And, finally, cholesterol is the body’s repair substance. When our arteries are weak and develop fissures or tears, cholesterol is sequestered and used for repair. When cholesterol levels in the blood are high, it’s because the body needs cholesterol. Blaming heart disease on cholesterol is like blaming a fire on the firemen who arrive to put out the flames.

Does beef cause cancer?

What about the accusation that beef causes cancer, in particular cancer of the colon? The genesis of this myth involves more than just muddied thinking, but actual skulduggery. In 1965 an influential physician, Ernst Wynder, took the data for the mostly processed vegetable oils, called them animal fat (which they were not) and compared them with worldwide colon cancer mortality. The table he produced showed high rates of colon cancer in European countries and low rates of colon cancer in Japan, and concluded that there was a positive effect, in other words, that saturated fat, the kind found in beef, caused colon cancer. What the data actually showed was that consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils, not saturated animal fats, was associated with the incidence of colon cancer. And Wynder forgot to mention that Asians have much higher rates than Americans of other types of cancers, particularly cancers of the liver, pancreas, stomach, esophagus and lungs.

Then in 1973, William Haenszel and his colleagues from the National Cancer Institute reported the findings from a study that relied on dietary recall and lacked matched controls-in other words, a very poorly designed study. The researchers stated that they found a relationship between beef and colon cancer that fit the earlier work of Wynder. Actually, what they really found was that among westernized Japanese Americans, those who said they consumed lots of macaroni, green beans and peas, as well as beef, had the highest rates of colon cancer; while among traditional Japanese Americans, those who said they consumed lots of dried cuttlefish, Chinese peas, bamboo shoots, rice and fermented soy products had the highest rates of colon cancer. Thus, the researchers singled out beef as the culprit from a choice of several foods associated with cancer in Westerners and ignored politically correct foods like soy products, fish and vegetables as a potential cause of cancer in Japanese Americans. Instead, this second-rate and inconclusive study has become firmly fixed in the consciousness of the scientific community as providing evidence for the assertion that beef causes colon cancer.

Two American studies conducted in the 1990’s have found a higher risk of colon cancer among those who eat red meat. However, no study done in Europe has ever shown an association between meat consumption and cancer. This suggests that European sausage and luncheon meat, included in the rubric of "meat consumption," are prepared by traditional methods that require few additives, while the similar products in the United States contain many carcinogenic preservatives and flavorings. Unfortunately, the American Cancer Society’s 1996 recommendation that Americans cut down on their consumption of meat-particularly fatty meat-in order to avoid cancer makes no distinction between fresh meats and those that have been embalmed with modern chemicals.

While two US studies have implicated meat consumption as a cause of colon cancer, there are several that contradict these findings. In 1975, Rowland Philips compared Seventh-Day Adventists physicians, who do not eat meat, with non-Seventh Day Adventist physicians, and found that the vegetarian doctors had higher rates of gastrointestinal and colon-rectal cancer deaths. National Cancer Institute data show that Argentina, with very high levels of beef consumption, has significantly lower rates of colon cancer than other western countries where beef consumption is considerably lower. A 1997 study published in the International Journal of Cancer found that increased risk of colon and rectal cancer was positively associated with consumption of bread, cereal dishes, potatoes, cakes, desserts and refined sugars, but not with eggs or meat. And a 1978 study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found no greater risk of colon cancer, regardless of the amounts of beef or other meats ingested. The study also found that those who ate plenty of cruciferous vegetables, such as cabbage, Brussels sprouts and broccoli, had lower rates of colon cancer. So just because it’s all right to eat beef doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat your broccoli.

Actually, we know one of the mechanisms whereby colon cancer is initiated, and it does not involve meat per se. Colon cancer occurs when high levels of dietary vegetable oils and hydrogenated fats, along with certain carcinogens, are acted on by certain enzymes in the cells lining the colon, leading to tumor formation. This explains the fact that in industrialized countries, where there are many carcinogens in the diet and where consumption of vegetable oils and carcinogens is high, some studies have correlated meat-eating with colon cancer; but in traditional societies, where vegetable oils are absent and the food is free of additives, meat-eating is not associated with cancer.

Riding piggy back on the alleged association of beef with colon cancer are supposed links with other cancers, such as breast cancer. Here the evidence shows a similarly inconsistent pattern. Cancer is a disease of rich countries where numerous factors can be fingered-altered fats, fabricated foods, low levels of protective nutrients, high levels of carcinogens-and rich countries consume lots of beef. But association is not the same as cause. Countries where there are more telephones have more cancer, but that does not mean that telephones cause cancer. Fat consumption in general also gets the blame for high rates of breast cancer. But a recent survey showed that women on lowfat diets have just as much breast cancer as those on high fat diets.

High protein diets are said to cause osteoporosis and Americans are now being advised to avoid beef in order to protect their bones. Once again, it’s important to look at the studies carefully. Research that showed a link with bone loss and protein consumption was done with purified protein powders. With meat, a natural protein food, there was no negative calcium balance. New evidence indicates that women who eat lots of meat had fewer hip fractures compared to those who avoided it.

High protein diets are said to contribute to kidney problems but, again, the evidence is contradictory. Although protein restriction can be helpful for those who are suffering kidney failure, there is no evidence that eating meat causes kidney disease. The fat-soluble vitamins found exclusively in animal fats are very important for healthy kidney function.

Does beef cause autoimmune diseases or asthma?

What about the accusation that meat contributes to autoimmune diseases and asthma? This hypothesis is predicated on the fact that meat contains arachidonic acid, a fatty acid from which the supposedly pro-inflammatory Series Two prostaglandins-local tissue hormones-are formed. This is one of the nuttiest notions to take hold in the scientific community for a long time. It was promulgated by Barry Sears, author of The Zone, and taken up with a vengeance by the anti-meat forces. These people know nothing about prostaglandins. Some of the prostaglandins that the body makes from arachidonic acid do indeed promote inflammation-which is a very important protective response when you have injured yourself. But the same arachidonic acid also forms the basis of anti-inflammatory prostaglandins that the body uses, when appropriate, to reduce inflammation. And besides, the amount of arachidonic acid in beef is very low-less than half a percent of total fat content. It is much lower than the amount of omega-3 fatty acids, the current darlings of the nutritional community, yet none of the voices promoting omega-3 fatty acids ever tell us that we can get them from beef.

What about "Mad Cow Disease"?

Beef consumption in England plummeted recently with the ‘Mad Cow Disease" scare. Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is a wasting disease of cattle characterized by nervous disorders and weakness, said to be related to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. Scientists have not been able to link a virus to this disease, so they theorize that an abnormal protein particle called a prion, found in the brains of cattle with BSE and humans with CJD, is the cause. The theory is that these prions are infectious agents, passed along to cows though the practice of animal part feeding and then to humans who eat infected meat, particularly meat from the nervous system, like brain.

There’s a lot wrong with this theory. For one thing, BSE is nonexistent in the USA, where animal part feeding has been going on for almost one hundred years. Another is recorded cases of CJD among vegetarians; yet another is the absence of CJD in the Shetlands where scrapie, a disease similar to BSE, is common in sheep and where potted sheeps brain is a national dish.

The research of Mark Purdey, a diary farmer in England, indicates that the mad cow disease epidemic in England occurred in areas where farmers were forced to treat their cattle with organophosphate pesticides in a warble fly eradication program.²⁰ The warble fly makes holes in the cows’ backs-not dangerous in itself, but it reduces the value of pelts sold to leather manufacturers. These holes are open doors to the spinal cord and organophosphate pesticides are very toxic to the nervous system. By a complex process, these compounds seem to cause certain proteins to fold in pathological ways-these are the prions that are found in the brains of animals with BSE and humans with CJD. Mineral deficiencies are also involved, particularly magnesium, which is a mineral that protects the nervous system. Finally, a similar disease occurs among wild animals living in areas of volcanic soils, whose diets are high in aluminum and manganese, minerals known to be toxic to the nervous system. Clusters of human CJD cases are also found in areas where the soil has mineral imbalances, where there are cement factories and where high levels of organophosphate insecticides have been used.

So the answer to CJD and BSE is good soil management and the elimination of neurotoxic compounds in farming-but it’s easier to just blame it on beef. By the way, now that animal part feeding has been outlawed, feedlot operators are turning to soy feeds as a protein substitute. Soy is very toxic to cows’ livers. Does the use of soy in cattle feeding explain why beef-lean beef-has become politically correct again? After all, the other politically correct meats-chicken and salmon-use up vast quantities of soybean meal in battery feeding and fish farms.

What about E.Coli?

A final slur against beef is that beef is a vector for pathogenic E. coli and therefore a major cause of foodborne illness. Never mind that E. coli shows up in plant foods like apple juice and salad dressings; and never mind that E. coli is relatively benign and never caused foodborne illness in small amounts until recently. Once again, it’s easier to just blame it on beef.

Charles Walters of Acres USA points out that old fashioned all-meat hamburgers, when handled with reasonable care, did not formerly pose a foodborne illness problem. Why, then, are we getting outbreaks of foodborne illness from fast food outlets, where food handling techniques are rigidly controlled-from frozen patty to the grill? He believes that the problem lies in the fact that hamburgers are now bulked out with hydrolyzed soybeans, also called textured vegetable protein, much of it made from genetically modified soybeans. With modern processing, 100 pounds of ground meat can be bulked out to 124 pounds.

E. coli DNA is used as a vector in genetically modified soybeans. The E. coli causing problems in fast food hamburgers is called facultative bacteria, which means that it operates with or without air. Does this bacteria come from the genetically modified soy and is it more dangerous than E. coli that occurs in the guts of cattle? It’s a question that needs answering. Says Walters: "This E. coli the news releases keep talking about is not a consequence of slaughterhouse personnel not washing their hands enough, Involved is the negative spin, which is what it lives on. It is in the tissue. It is not errant E. coli leaving the intestinal tract and infecting the product. The scientists know this and this is why they’re trying to fall back on irradiation and heavy cooking."

There are studies that support Walter’s theory. One found that spoilage was greater and most rapid in "extended" than in "nonextended" (meaning pure) ground beef. Another study showed that coliform counts were significantly higher in beef mixed with textured soy protein after one day of storage in comparison to the 100% ground beef.

Does beef cause impotence?

The accusation that beef causes impotence is a tactic that can definitely be described as "below the belt." Beef causes impotence by "clogging arteries, limiting blood flow to the extremities." So goes the argument proffered by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Nothing could be more unethical than the implied suggestion that vegetarianism is good for your sex life. We know that vegetarianism-the practice of not eating animal foods-can lead to many deficiencies that directly contribute to impotence, infertility and reproductive difficulties-deficiencies in protein, zinc, vitamins B₆ and B₁₂, and fat-soluble vitamins A and D.

The notion that beef is an "acid-forming" food is another favorite vegetarian argument. Beef contains lots of sulphur and phosphorus, which technically form an acid when dissolved in water, but that does not mean that eating meat causes the body to be too acid. Actually, meat provides both high-quality protein and vitamin D (if you eat the fat and organ meats, that is), both of which are needed to maintain proper acid-alkaline balance in the body.

Meat does not putrefy in the gut. Humans are admirably equipped to digest meat. That is the main job of the human stomach, which-unlike the stomach of the cow or rabbit-contains millions of cells that secrete hydrochloric acid. Our intestinal tract is much shorter than that of the vegetarian animals, but somewhat longer than that of purely carnivorous animals. Man is an omnivore-with teeth, stomach, intestines and bowel all designed to handle both animal and plant foods.

Do cattle use land that should be planted with grain?

Vegetarians argue that cows and sheep require pasturage that could be better used to raise grains for starving millions in third-world countries. This argument ignores the fact that a large portion of our earth’s land is unsuited to cultivation. The open range, desert and mountainous areas yield their fruits in grazing animals. Grasslands perfectly suited to grazing cover an area in China’s interior equal to three times the entire amount of land under cultivation in the rest of the country. Citing the arguments of vegetarians, the Chinese government has opted for more intense cultivation of existing agricultural lands rather than development of these untapped regions in order to supply much-needed animal products to the Chinese diet.

A far more serious threat to humanity is the monoculture of grains and legumes, which tends to deplete the soil and requires the use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. The educated consumer and the enlightened farmer together can bring about the return of the mixed farm, where cultivation of fruits and vegetables is combined with the raising of livestock and fowl in a manner that is efficient, economical and environmentally friendly. Cattle providing rich manure are the absolute basis for healthy, sustainable farming. On marginal land, wise grass feeding practices can actually improve soil quality and restore pasture land. It is not animal cultivation that leads to hunger and famine but unwise agricultural practices and monopolistic distribution systems.

Do vegetarians live longer than meat eaters?

Since we’re talking about vegetarianism, let’s examine the claim that vegetarians live longer than meat eaters. The late Dr. Russell Smith, who was a statistician, took a close look at the studies purporting to show that vegetarianism was a healthier life-style. In a review of some 3,000 articles in the scientific literature, he found only two that compared mortality data for vegetarians and nonvegetarians. One was a 1978 study of Seventh Day Adventists (SDA’s). Although published analyses of this study claim that it showed that the vegetarians lived longer, Smith’s analysis of total mortality rates as a function of the frequencies of consuming cheese, meat, milk, eggs and fat attached to meat found that the total death rate decreased as the frequencies of consuming cheese, eggs, meat and milk increased.

The second study was published by Burr and Sweetnam in 1982. Once again, although the authors claim that their study showed that vegetarians lived longer, Smith found quite the opposite when he looked carefully at the hard data. He found that the all-cause death rates were slightly greater for vegetarian men compared to nonvegetarian men; and significantly greater for vegetarian women compared to nonvegetarian women.

Vegetarians never mention a study by Dr. Emmanuel Cheraskin who surveyed 1040 dentists and their wives. Those who had the fewest problems and diseases as measured by the Cornell Medical Index had the most protein in their diets. Yet almost all the treatments for chronic disease found in alternative publications these days begin with the recommendation of a vegetarian diet. Typical is an article by a Dr. Brodie that appeared in Issue #13 of Alternative Medicine Digest, published by Burton Goldberg. Dr. Brodie recommends a "balanced vegetarian diet" of raw fruits and vegetables, whole grains and beans with no "refined sugars, red meat, caffeine and chemically preserved foods." This is truly guilt by association!

But wait! In order to get well, Dr. Brodie recommends certain supplements including vitamin A, vitamin B6, thymus extracts, zinc, cysteine, and bovine cartilage, all of which are largely absent in plant foods and plentifully available in beef! At least they are available if you are eating the whole animal as our ancestors did-meat, organs, cartilage, bones and fat.

Is beef good for you?

What a shame we have demonized red meat because this is one modern food, enjoyed by almost everybody, that is rich in nutrients. Red meat provides complete protein, including sulphur-containing proteins like cysteine. Beef is a wonderful source of taurine and carnitine, needed for healthy eyes and a healthy heart. Beef also provides another key nutrient for the cardiovascular system-coenzyme Q10.

Beef is an excellent source of minerals like magnesium and zinc-you need zinc for clear thinking and a healthy sex life. The fuzzy-headedness that vegetarians mistake for heightened consciousness is really the fog of zinc deficiency. Vitamin B₆ is abundant in meat, especially rare meat. Red meat is one of the best sources of vitamin B₁₂, which is vital to a healthy nervous system and healthy blood. Vegetarians are especially prone to vitamin B₁₂ deficiency. One of the first signs of vitamin B₁₂ deficiency is a tendency to irrational anger–so much for vegetarian claims that we will have a more peaceful, harmonious world if we all just stop eating meat.

If you use the animal bones and hooves to make stock, and use the stock as our ancestors did in soups, stews and sauces, you will get plenty of calcium and the components of cartilage to give you healthy bones and cartilage. If you eat organ meats, as our ancestors did, you will get vital fat-soluble nutrients like vitamin A and D, both of which are essential for protein utilization and mineral absorption. See- Chicken Stock 101

What about saturated fat?

In fact, the one warning we could give you about meat is not to eat it lean. In spite of claims to the contrary, the diet of the cave man was not one of lean meat. Paleolithic man always ate his meat with fat.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who spent many years living with the Eskimos and Indians of Northern Canada, reports that wild male ruminants like elk and caribou carry a large slab of back fat, weighing as much as 40 to 50 pounds. The Indians and Eskimo hunted older male animals preferentially because they wanted this backslab fat, as well as the highly saturated fat found around the kidneys. Other groups used blubber from sea mammals like seal and walrus.

"The groups that depend on the blubber animals are the most fortunate in the hunting way of life," wrote Stefansson, "for they never suffer from fat-hunger. This trouble is worst, so far as North America is concerned, among those forest Indians who depend at times on rabbits, the leanest animal in the North, and who develop the extreme fat-hunger known as rabbit-starvation. Rabbit eaters, if they have no fat from another source-beaver, moose, fish-will develop diarrhea in about a week, with headache, lassitude, a vague discomfort. If there are enough rabbits, the people eat till their stomachs are distended; but no matter how much they eat they feel unsatisfied. Some think a man will die sooner if he eats continually of fat-free meat than if he eats nothing, but this is a belief on which sufficient evidence for a decision has not been gathered in the north. Deaths from rabbit-starvation, or from the eating of other skinny meat, are rare; for everyone understands the principle, and any possible preventive steps are naturally taken."

Normally, according to Stefansson, the diet consisted of dried or cured meat "eaten with fat," namely the highly saturated cavity and back slab fat that could be easily separated from the animal. Another Arctic explorer, Hugh Brody, reports that Eskimos ate raw liver mixed with small pieces of fat and that strips of dried or smoked meat were "spread with fat or lard." Pemmican, a highly concentrated travel food, was a mixture of lean dried buffalo meat and highly saturated buffalo fat. (Buffalo fat, by the way, is more saturated than beef fat.) Less than two pounds of pemmican per day could sustain a man doing hard physical labor. The ratio of fat to protein in pemmican was 80% to 20%. As lean meat from game animals was often given to the dogs, there is no reason to suppose that everyday fare did not have the same proportions: 80% fat (mostly highly saturated fat) to 20% protein-in a population in which heart disease and cancer were nonexistent.

The beef industry has been forced to be apologetic about its product because it’s very difficult to get the fat out of beef. You can reduce the fat content by using hormones, but you end up with a product that is tough and tastes terrible, not to mention full of hormones. Beef producers need to recognize that the fat is the most important part of the beef, rich in components that promote good health and that help you utilize the nutrients in all the other parts of the beef. In addition to vitamins A and D, fat contributes many important fatty acids, including palmitoleic acid, an antimicrobial fat that protects us against pathogens in the gut. If you want to be sure that you don’t get foodborne illness from your hamburger, use full fat ground beef.

Fat also provides a substance called conjugated linoleic acid or CLA, at least it does if the animals have been on green grass. CLA is a substance that protects us against cancer and that promotes weight loss-that’s right, fat can make you thin, if it’s the right kind of fat.

And the right kind of fat is also saturated fat which, in spite of what we’ve been told, plays many important roles in the body chemistry. The scientific literature delineates a number of vital roles for dietary saturated fats-they enhance the immune system, are necessary for healthy bones, provide energy and structural integrity to the cells, protect the liver and enhance the body’s use of essential fatty acids. Stearic acid and palmitic acid, found in beef tallow and butter, are the preferred foods for the heart. As saturated fats are stable, they do not become rancid easily, do not call upon the body’s reserves of antioxidants, do not initiate cancer, do not irritate the artery walls.

In fact saturated beef fat is one of the most useful fats in the culinary repertoire. As it is very stable and doesn’t go rancid when heated to high temperatures, it’s perfect for frying. While we don’t recommend a lot of fried foods, we know that our children and grandchildren are going to eat them. Fast food outlets used to fry their potatoes in healthy stable beef tallow. They were crisp, tasted delicious and provided many important nutrients. But the phony cholesterol issue has forced these outlets to switch to partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is known to cause a host of chronic diseases including cancer, heart disease, bone problems, infertility and autoimmune disease.

What about the beef industry?

The beef industry should know these things but it doesn’t. Instead the National Beef Checkoff Board, funded by mandatory payments from cattlemen, officially endorses consumption of only three and one-half ounce servings of lean beef, about the size of a pack of cards, and runs ads that say things like this: ". . . when it comes to lowering ‘bad’ cholesterol levels, lean red meat has the same effects as white chicken meat. That means eating lean beef may reduce the risk of heart disease. Since seven cuts of beef fall between a skinless chicken breast and chicken thigh in terms of total fat, consumers can feel good about eating beef." This is damning a good product by faint praise. The Checkoff Board had bought into the phony cholesterol theory and sides squarely with the Diet Dictocrats, calling for irradiation to kill "emerging pathogens" and subsidies to giant processors.

Steve and Jeanne Charter, ranchers from Shepherd, Montana, have refused to make the checkoff payments and are willing to take on the Beef Checkoff Board in court. At preliminary hearings the judge listened while Checkoff bureaucrats defended the Department of Agriculture’s food pyramid, based on seven to eleven servings of grain per day, while the Charters championed the juicy steak-to cheers from fellow ranchers.

We need to stand up and support people like the Charters because beef is not the demon food we’ve been told it is. Beef does not cause disease. In fact beef contributes to good health by providing many important nutrients. All this can be found in the scientific literature. So what’s the beef, then, about beef?

Perhaps it also has to do with the characteristics of cattle-herding peoples. Unlike agriculturists, who require an organized social structure highly susceptible to centralized control, the pastoral way of life favors the independent thinker. And the beef industry, for all its faults, is far less subject to monopolistic control than the grain industry is. And it’s easier to manipulate prices on grain, a commodity controlled by just a few families, than it is to control prices on an industry supported by thousands of cattlemen.

While it is not as true today as it was in the days before the barbed wire fence, cattle keeping families enjoy the luxury of greater independence than those who till the soil or tend vines. They inhabit the wide open spaces and are more accustomed to fending for themselves than relying on their neighbors.

This is not to say there is anything wrong with relying on one’s neighbors-in fact, to survive and revive, more cooperation in the beef industry will be needed-but democracy needs a critical mass of the kind of free thinking, independent businessman that you find in the cattle industry. This may be the real reason the Chinese decided not to develop their western grasslands-even small numbers of forward thinking Chinese cowboys would be a threat to that totalitarian society.

People who raise beef not only tend to be free thinkers, they are also good thinkers, because beef provides many factors needed for the modern equivalent of the quick draw-keen, quick minds-including zinc, B12, cholesterol, omega-3 fatty acids, trace minerals, saturated fat and complete protein. In fact, when it comes to good health-it’s the beef.

From The Weston Price Foundation