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Meat and Dairy Products
Meat, poultry, eggs, milk, cheese, and other dairy foods are the backbone of the modern diet.
Physiologically, they give the human organism an immediate burst of energy and strength. It was this raw power that allowed nomadic tribes of Indo-Europeans to overrun traditional grain- and vegetable-consuming cultures in ancient Greece, Italy, the Near East, and India. In the Americas, a heavy meat-centered diet enabled pioneers to level whole regions of the continent quickly and efficiently, though at high cost to native peoples and the environment.
While meat and other naturally processed animal-quality foods are part of the traditional diet in colder and polar regions of the world, their regular consumption in temperate and tropical climates can have adverse effects on human health. Meat begins to decompose as soon as it is killed, even with traditional preservatives such as salt or with refrigeration to retard spoilage. Meat is harder to digest than plant foods and continues to putrify in the digestive tract, taking about 4 to 4 1/2 hours to be absorbed in the intestines versus 2 to 2 1/2 hours for grains and vegetables. Putrefaction produces toxins and amines that accumulate in the liver, kidneys, and large intestine, destroys bacterial culture, especially those that synthesize the vitamin B complexes, and causes degeneration of the villi of the small intestine where metabolized foodstuffs are absorbed into the blood. Saturated fatty acids, from meat and other animal products, accumulate in and around vital organs and blood vessels, often leading to cysts, tumors, and hardening of the arteries. Saturated fat also raises the amount of cholesterol in the blood, further contributing to the buildup of atherosclerotic plaque.
To compensate for eating meat, poultry, eggs, and other animal foods, the body requires more oxygen in the bloodstream. The breath rate rises after eating animal food, making it difficult to maintain a calm mind. Thinking in general becomes defensive, suspicious, rigid, and sometimes aggressive. A very narrow, analytical view is often the result.
The relation between saturated fat and dietary cholesterol- the main ingredients of meat and poultry- are now well known. For example, women who eat beef, lamb, or pork as a daily main dish are at two and a half times the risk for developing colon cancer as women who eat meat less than once a month. The conclusion, drawn from a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1990 of 88,751 nurses, over a ten-year period, found that the more beef and other meat in the diet the greater risk of getting colon cancer. "The substitution of other protein sources, such as beans or lentils, for red meat might also be associated with a reduced risk of colon cancer in populations that consume more legumes," researchers concluded. "The less red meat the better," recommended Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, who directed the study. "At most, it should be eaten only occasionally. And it may be maximally effective not to eat red meat at all."
Dairy food, which often accompanies meat consumption, contributes a soothing, stabilizing, and overall calming influence on a digestive and nervous system subjected to volatile red meat elements. However, it can lead to illness in its own right or in combination with other factors. Casein, the protein in cheese, milk, cream, butter, and other dairy foods cannot be assimilated easily and begins to accumulate in an undigested state in the upper intestine, putrefying, producing toxins, and leading to a weakening of the gastric, intestinal, pancreatic, and biliary systems, as well as mucous deposits.
The inability to digest milk or other dairy products is known as lactose intolerance and is found in about 50 to 90 percent of the world's population groups with the exception of those of Scandinavian origin and of some other European ancestries.
Dairy food affects all organs and systems. However, because it is a product of the mammary gland, it primarily affects the human glands and related structures, especially the reproductive organs. The most commonly affected are the breast, uterus, ovaries, prostate, thyroid, nasal cavities, pituitary gland, the cochlea in the ear, and the cerebral area surrounding the midbrain. Its adverse effects first appear as the accumulation of mucus and fat and then the formation of cysts, tumors, and finally cancer. Many people who eat dairy food have mucous accumulations in the nasal cavities and inner ear, resulting in hay fever and hearing difficulty. Accumulation of fatty deposits from dairy food consumption in the kidneys and also gallbladder leads to stones. The development of breast cysts, breast tumors, and finally breast cancer follows a similar pattern. Common problems from dairy also include vaginal discharges, ovarian cysts, fibrosis and uterine cancer, ovarian cancer, and prostate fat accumulation with cyst formation. Many diseases of the reproductive organs, including infertility, are associated with dairy consumption. In the case of the lungs, fat and mucous accumulation in the air sacs causes breathing difficulties. In combination with tobacco, dairy food can trap tars and other ingredients of tobacco smoke in the lungs, leading often to lung cancer.
Modern medical studies have begun to link milk and dairy food consumption with a wide variety of sicknesses including cramps and diarrhea, multiple forms of allergy, iron-deficiency anemia in infants and children, aggressive and anti-social behavior, atherosclerosis and heart attacks, arthritis, and several forms of cancer. Since more oxygen is needed to carry hemoglobin to cells enveloped with mucus, dairy food consumption contributes also to un-even thinking, dulled reactions, and emotional dependency.
In a large case-control study in France, published in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1986, involving several thousand women, increased risk for breast cancer was found among those who consumed dairy products. For daily cheese consumption, the risk was 1.5 times higher, and for full cream consumption the risk was 1.8 times as great. A 1989 study of women with breast cancer in the northwestern province of Vercelli, Italy, found that they tended to consume considerably more milk, high-fat cheese, and butter than healthy women of the same age in Italy and France. Breast cancer risk tripled among women who consumed about half their calories as fat, 13 to 23 percent of their calories as saturated fat, and 8 to 20 percent of their calories as animal protein. "These data suggest that during adult life, a reduction in dietary intake of fat and proteins of animal origin may contribute to a substantial reduction in the incidence of breast cancer in population subgroups with high intake of animal products," researchers concluded. "[A] diet rich in fat, saturated fat, or animal proteins may be associated with a twofold to threefold increase in a woman's risk of breast cancer."
Dairy food consumption has also been linked with ovarian cancer by researchers. In 1989 Harvard University researchers noted that women with ovarian cancer had low blood levels of transferase, an enzyme involved in the metabolism of dairy foods. The researchers theorized that women with low levels of transferase who eat dairy foods, especially yogurt and cottage cheese, could increase their risk of ovarian cancer by as much as three times. The researchers estimated that women who consume large amounts of yogurt and cottage cheese increased their risk of ovarian cancer up to three times. "Yogurt was consumed at least monthly by 49 percent of cases and 36 percent of controls," researchers reported in The Lancet. "World wide, ovarian cancer risk is strongly correlated with actase persistence and per capita milk consumption, further epidemiological evidence that lactose rather than fat is the key dietary variable for ovarian cancer . . . Avoidance of lactose-rich food by adults may be a way of primary prevention of ovarian cancer. . . . "
In recent years, the American Heart Association, the World Health Organization, and other major scientific and medical associations have issued dietary guidelines calling for everyone, not just middle age, or older people at risk for heart disease, but also children over the age of two to limit whole milk or eating cheese, butter, ice cream, and other whole milk products. A small amount of nonfat or skim milk is generally allowed. However, Dr. Spock, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and others have gone further, recommending that even low-fat dairy foods be avoided because they are high in animal-quality protein that is associated with heart disease, osteoporosis, and other disorders.
The difference between human milk and cow milk is substantial. The ratio of protein to fat and carbohydrate in mother's milk is about 1:7, which is the proper ratio of human width to height, while that of cow's milk is about 2:5, which is the ratio of a cow's width and length. This is why people who eat dairy products tend to develop large bone structures and other bovine characteristics. Mother's milk also contains less protein, but it is soluble in water and easy to digest, while cow's milk protein is insoluble, coagulates (curdles) in the stomach and diarrhea occurs. The fat content is the same, but in human milk fat is more finely emulsified. The pH reaction means that with human milk, the blood's normal alkaline condition can be maintained without buffer action, whereas cow's milk requires minerals to offset the acidic reaction. In addition to more natural human qualities, breastfeeding creates psychological and spiritual unity between mother and child.
Human milk is the ideal food for human infants. The chief nutrients for which cow's milk and dairy foods are often eaten, such as calcium and iron, are found in proportionately greater amounts in vegetable-quality foods as shown in the accompanying tables. If animal food is desired, fish and seafood may be taken occasionally. Marine products such as these contain unsaturated rather than saturated fat, and among them white-meat fish and slower-moving shellfish are less fatty than red-meat, blue-skin, or faster-moving varieties.