Red meat halves risk of depression

The Australian government recommends eating 65 -100g of lean, red meat three to four times a week Photo: ALAMY

Experts admitted surprise at the findings because so many other studies have linked red meat to physical health risks.

The team made the link after a study of 1000 Australian women.

Professor Felice Jacka, who led the research by Deakin University, Victoria, said: “We had originally thought that red meat might not be good for mental health but it turns out that it actually may be quite important.

“When we looked at women consuming less than the recommended amount of red meat in our study, we found that they were twice as likely to have a diagnosed depressive or anxiety disorder as those consuming the recommended amount.

“Even when we took into account the overall healthiness of the women’s diets, as well as other factors such as their socioeconomic status, physical activity levels, smoking, weight and age, the relationship between low red meat intake and mental health remained.

“Interestingly, there was no relationship between other forms of protein, such as chicken, pork, fish or plant-based proteins, and mental health. Vegetarianism was not the explanation either. Only nineteen women in the study were vegetarians, and the results were the same when they were excluded from the study analyses.”

Professor Jacka, an expert in psychiatric health, believed the diet of the sheep and cattle was relevant.

“We know that red meat in Australia is a healthy product as it contains high levels of nutrients, including the Omega-3 fatty acids that are important to mental and physical health,” she said.

“This is because cattle and sheep in Australia are largely grass fed. In many other countries, the cattle are kept in feedlots and fed grains, rather than grass. This results in a much less healthy meat with more saturated fat and fewer healthy fats.”

But eating too much red meat could be as bad for mental health as not eating enough.The Australian government recommends eating 65 -100g of lean, red meat three to four times a week.

“We found that regularly eating more than the recommended amount of red meat was also related to increased depression and anxiety,” Professor Jacka added. “We already know that the overall quality of your diet is important to mental health. But it seems that eating a moderate amount of lean red meat, which is roughly three to four small, palm-sized serves a week, may also be important.”

The results of the study are published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.The Department of Health recommends consuming no more than 70g of red meat a day – the equivalent of a Big Mac burger. ends

Originally posted in – The Telegraph

Grass Fed Meat: our true environmental savior

By The Nourisher

This article was originally published here and is part of the January 2009 round up.

How many times have you heard that we need to eat more vegetarian fare to curb Climate Change? Greepeace and even David Suzuki put it in their top ten actions we can take. It seems every green magazine I pick up, every green blog I read, I’m shamed for living as what my body is designed to be, an omnivore. This makes me feel very sad and a little angry. Here’s why:

1. The current population of cattle in the US is only marginally more than the numbers the Native Bison (or Buffalo) enjoyed before Europeans arrived: 96 million cattle have replaced most of the estimated 60 to 100 million Bison that existed in the 19th century. How could there be too many cattle now? This is how..
   The figures Suzuki and Greenpeace are working from actually reveal what industrial factory farming is using and outputting. The ancient practice of subsistence grass farming is a totally different picture. Much of the resources used for the beef industry are used in the production of grains fed to confined cattle. There is no reason for this except to boost the bottom line of ‘agricorp’ companies. No ruminant should be eating grain or soy. Industrial agriculture only does so because governments subsidise their feed.
2. It is very easy to throw about grandiose, knee jerk recommendations which get headlines but it is Greenpeace’s very followers who will suffer from living by them. I live in Byron Bay, some call it a vegetarian paradise. Australia’s modern affair with vegetarianism began right here, more than 30 years ago. Looking around me, I witness first hand the ravages such a diet leaves in it’s wake. Young, idealistic 20 somethings may not notice immediately the affects of such a diet. However, coming into their 50s and 60s now, I see many long time vegetarians; exhausted, overwhelmed and caffeine addicted from years of underNourishing themselves. (BTW It takes 140 Litres of water to make enough coffee for one cup. I challenge you to find a vegetarian who isn’t caffeine addicted. I haven’t yet.)
   Many lose their creativity and the naturally buoyant, positive attitude which is our birthright. Many wind up, infertile, unmotivated, ineffective and resentful without knowing why. Greenpeace needs robust, energetic, creative people to work with them toward change. Their recommendations threaten to deny them and our Earth of just this.
3. Grass fed, properly managed animal foods are actually a great way to sequester many billions of metric tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere.

To be more responsible, Greenpeace should recommend we boycott confined, grain fed animal foods and demand grass fed animal foods. Is that too complicated for our ‘dumbed down’ population?

Some Facts about Grass Fed Meat

• Grazing land comprises more than half the total land surface of the Earth.
• Soil organic carbon is the largest reservoir in interaction with the atmosphere. It contains 82% of terrestrial carbon.
• Forests can be net carbon emitters in their early stages and take many years to reach their sequestration potential
• “An acre of pasture can sequester more carbon than an acre of forest.” We can offset the nations entire emissions, simply by planting more grass either as winter crops or instead of crops. – Dr Chistine Jones of the Carbon Coalition.
• “Soil represents the largest carbon sink over which we have control. Improvements in soil carbon levels could be made in all rural areas, whereas the regions suited to carbon sequestration in plantation timber are limited.” – Dr Christine Jones
• 50% to 66% of the historic carbon loss (42 to 78 gigatons of carbon) was created by the world’s poorly managed, degraded agricultural soils and is therefore ripe to become the world’s greatest carbon sink.

Difference between carbon farming pasture (right) and ordinary pasture: courtesy of the Carbon Farmer’s of Australia Association.

• Introducing carbon credits for grass farmers who manage their grazing so they actually sequester carbon will also help improve water retention and soil erosion issues.

Raising grain-fed cattle is resource-intensive. It takes more than 35 fossil fuel calories to create one calorie of energy from grain-fed meat. A cow must consume about 8 pounds of grain (3.6kg) in order to yield one pound of meat (450gm), grain which is grown with fossil fuels and pesticides. Much of the exorbitant water use in grain feeding CAFOs is for cleaning the tonnes of waste, waste that in grass farming is a vital resource for soil fertility. Why do this when you can just let the cow go on the grass? Answer: corporate ‘bottom line’ industrial farming.

The ‘methane cattle fart’ statistic we hear all the time is taken from the writings of Dr Andrew Moxey, a widely respected economist who exposed modern agriculture’s contribution to emissions. He says “methane from livestock accounts for 20 per cent of green house gas emissions”, but reading just a little further, you’ll find he also says: “nitrous oxide from fertilizer adds up to 26 per cent [and] carbon dioxide from ploughing up grassland is the major contributor…45 per cent“.

What is on the agenda of people who continually misquote Moxey?

What environmentalists are saying is we should eat the grains instead of the cattle. What they don’t realise is neither we nor the cattle need the grains. They don’t realise this because they’ve been indoctrinated into the idea that we can (and should) eat a grain based diet. No mind that our ancestors never did. No mind that following a grain based diet has brought us to the point where 8% of the western population suffer diabetes (this is expected to quadruple by 2050). No mind that by 2020, 80% of all Australian adults and a third of all children will be overweight or obese. 37% of American Children are already overweight and the CDC predict that figure will be 50% by 2020. It also predicts that the generation of children who are currently under 10 years old are unlikely to outlive their parents.

Even so the USDA still recommends we continue with the sudden diet change that they initiated post world war II. (Please note the USDA food pyramid is created by the US Department of Agriculture – not the US department of Nutrition nor the US department of Health.) Before their self serving dietary recommendations, humans had never tried to consume 6 servings of grain foods. That’s three sandwiches a day. We couldn’t grow, harvest and process that much grain by hand. Only with the advent of the petrol driven harvest combine and industrial processing (dollars for the new manufacturing giants of the 50s) could we even consider eating this much grain, let alone feed it to our livestock. So why is it now the only other option to vegetarianism?

MORE….

Risks: Sugary Drinks Linked to Heart Disease

A man who drinks one 12-ounce sugar-sweetened drink a day sharply increases his risk for heart disease, according to a large epidemiological analysis.

Researchers analyzed data from a prospective study of 42,883 male health professionals, ages 40 to 75. The men responded to diet questionnaires every four years, and more than 18,000 of them provided blood samples.

Over 22 years, 3,683 of the men had heart attacks. Even after controlling for factors like smoking, exercise and family history, the scientists found that men who drank the sweetened beverages most often were 20 percent more likely to have had a heart attack than those who drank the least.

They calculated that one serving daily of a sugar-sweetened beverage was linked to a 19 percent increase in the relative risk of cardiovascular disease. The study was published online in the journal Circulation last week.

Sugar-sweetened drinks were linked with adverse changes in levels of HDL,triglycerides and C-reactive protein. Dr. Frank B. Hu, senior author of the analysis and a professor of medicine at Harvard, said that a study a little over two years ago found similar results in women.

Is diet soda a good alternative? No, said Dr. Hu.

“Some studies have found a relationship between diet soda and metabolic disease,” he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 20, 2012, on page D6 of the New York edition with the headline: Risks: Sugary Drinks Linked to Heart Disease.

Crohn’s Disease is EASY to Reverse and Heal…

Science Daily published an article recently saying that Crohn’s Disease could be greatly helped by a NEW THERAPY.

They reported, “researchers found that Crohn’s patients who took supplementary CLA showed noticeable improvement. "In our recent open label study of CLA as a supplement in study subjects with mild to moderate CD there was a marked improvement in disease activity and quality of life in 50% of the subjects. CLA was well tolerated by all of the study subjects”.

This is absurd, this so called disease is a CONDITION brought about by food intolerances.  It is not that hard to completely heal  this condition by giving up lactose and gluten containing foods and allowing the leaky gut that was the initial cause of this inflammation to return to normal. 

This is NOT new information!  The bottom line in healing and restoring health is remembering the universal principal of cause and effect.  Bad health does not just happen, it is caused. I know it is politically incorrect to say that patients cause their illness…but it is true. Through ignorance, the unwillingness to make changes, emotional issues, trusting doctors who tell them that nutrition plays no part in healing from (I hear this ALL the time!)…there are many reasons that people ignore their health until it is gone…then continue to do so when they are faced with choices and therapies. 

The digestive system is not an inner organ (like the heart, liver, kidneys)..it is an open system, it reacts to what is put in it and we have great control over it’s health. 

Heal a leaky gut, heal digestive problems and health is restored. 

Obesity Infographic

Created by: MedicalCodingCareerGuide.com

Thank you , Tony Shin…for supplying this for my readers!

Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease

Published today in SOTT.net;

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.

I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol. The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.

It Is Not Working!

These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.

The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.
Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defense to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process,a condition occurs called chronic inflammation.

Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.

What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.

The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.

Let me repeat that: The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine. What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.
While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.

When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.

What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.
While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.

Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6’s are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3’s.
If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.

Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.

There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation- causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them.

One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labeled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

Criterion Desserts Availability!

Desserts

My desserts are made with organic butter, gluten free flours, real dark chocolate, organic vanilla….in short, real food, all organic, healthy ingredients.

Chocolate Almond Biscotti– Crispy and mildly sweet these biscotti are flavored with chocolate, almonds, cinnamon and cloves.

Almond Berry Tarts –  Soft and buttery on the inside, crisp on the outside, these tarts are made with almond meal, real butter, and fresh blueberries.

Millie’s Chocolate Almond Macaroons-    These chocolate and coconut delights have remained my customers favorite since I first made them. They have a hint of cinnamon.

All of my other desserts are available by order HERE…many of them, including all three above, can be shipped!

ALL Organic and Grass Fed Meat Offers Protection from Heart Disease!

Science Daily posted this article today-

Nutrient Found in Dark Meat of Poultry, Some Seafood, May Have Cardiovascular Benefits

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2012) — A nutrient found in the dark meat of poultry may provide protection against coronary heart disease (CHD) in women with high cholesterol, according to a study by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center.

The study, published online in the European Journal of Nutrition, evaluated the effects of taurine, a naturally-occurring nutrient found in the dark meat of turkey and chicken, as well as in some fish and shellfish, on CHD. It revealed that higher taurine intake was associated with significantly lower CHD risk among women with high total cholesterol levels. The same association was not seen in women with low cholesterol levels, however.

There is very little information available about taurine, said principal investigator Yu Chen, PhD, MPH, associate professor of epidemiology at NYU School of Medicine, part of NYU Langone Medical Center. While there have been some animal studies that indicate taurine may be beneficial to cardiovascular disease, this is the first published prospective study to look at serum taurine and CHD in humans, she explained. “Our findings were very interesting. Taurine, at least in its natural form, does seem to have a significant protective effect in women with high cholesterol.”

Coronary heart disease is the leading killer of American men and women, causing one in five deaths. Also known as coronary artery disease, it is caused by the buildup of plaque in the arteries to the heart. Large prospective epidemiologic studies have provided evidence that nutritional factors are important modifiable risk factors for CHD. MORE….

Millie; Feed lot meat is deficient in the nutrients we need and is highly toxic. It is detrimental to our health.  But grass fed meat has what we need to protect us from heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure.  The following articles are must reads for more on this subject;

THE IMPORTANCE OF SATURATED FATS FOR BIOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/

The Benefits of Grass Fed Products

Imported Shrimp Has a Carbon Footprint Ten Times Higher Than Rainforest Beef

Animated GIF by Erik Peterson/Wikimedia Commons

A new study from a University of Oregon researcher with the (great) name of J. Boone Kaufmann has found that shrimp from Southeast Asian shrimp farms have a carbon footprint TEN TIMES higher than that of beef cattle raised in clearcut Amazonian ex-rainforests.

Ten times! And as Tom Philipott, Mother Jones’s resident food/enviro/politics guy points out, the glut of cheap South Asian shellfish is what’s turned shrimp from a luxury item (remember when shrimp cocktail actually seemed fancy?) into an everyday, Taco Bell and Red Lobster kind of meat.

Check out the Mother Jones article for more details and links to other research. One of the most interesting statistics is that, in 1990, 80% of America’s shrimp came from domestic wild fisheries. Today? We import 90% of the shrimp we eat.

[via Mother Jones]

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