Quote from: Laura_7 on August 08, 2015, 05:48:43 AM
There is no need to rush things. A gradual change in the right direction should help much.
And it might stick better.
Why ? I read an analysis that people were predominantly vegetarians before an ice age. Plants were abundant, and there was no need to hunt that much.
Only after plants were less abundant people resorted to eating more meat.
Well those times are over. There is a huge variety of plants available.
The body is able to process both plant and non plant food. It even needs plant food, a purely non vegetarian diet cannot be sustained without artificial additions.
There are analyses saying that processing plant food is less straining for the body, especially compared to red meat.
And there are millions of healthy vegetarians worldwide showing that a diet can be healthy.
If you picture a vegetarian it is rarely an overweight or very muscular person. Rather a well toned person.
As others have pointed out, eating more vegetarian helped them.
You might try by cutting on red meat, switching to lean meat like poultry and cutting the overall amount gradually.
Instead maybe lentils and beans, and fresh cooked vegetables... which also taste delicios.
Some of them taste very delicious grilled or fried, like eggplant.
Some recipes are delicious and easy... selfmade flatbread with salad and tomatoes or onions...
soups with onions... etc...
hugs
I feel overwhelmed to talk about this , it's such a huge topic and also usually people become angry and all becomes kind of a doctrinary fight , losing the only fact that matters , our health .
Basically one of the things i realized when i was overwhelmed by nutrition is that there is no need for science , studies , ... , only common sense , eat what your ancestors did , the real ones - many generations away , no grandma that might be into junk food too .
There are millions of smokers around that look healthy , that doesn't prove anything .
I don't even try to find or debate if a civilisation who maybe wouldn't have eaten meat , because that is not the point , the point is that at least the majority ( although i believe all ) evolved into eating meat too .
Beside there are many nutrients only found in reasonable amounts and absorbable states , in meat . And this is what we know now . It is like breast milk or in fact all the real foods , we only know part of the substances they contain , there is no substitute made for them because we don't know yet all the conmponents and their role . We could just eat what we ate for hundreds of thousands of years and end the debate here .
Veganism is clearly bringing a lot of defficiencies : b12 , d3 , omega 3 in the states we need most DHA and EPA , vitamin A as vitamin A not betacarotene , minerals in the absorbable forms . heme iron , ..., just too many
And also people didn't always need to hunt , we were scavengers too , We were opportunists .
Beside the animal products are just ready for absorbtion . It doesn't really matters how much we ingest but how much we absorb . If i ate a piece of iron i wouldn't absorb much fom it . Or a piece of calcium containing mineral deposit , it will just pass through the system .
Plants are ok , some of them , and they complete a healthy diet , but care should be made in quantities and preparation . I don't eat grains at all , except maybe for rice from time to time ( a pseudo-grain ) .
There are just so many chemicals in most of the plants people eat , and they also don't prepare them properly .
Think it this way , a plant is an organism , who wants to live and reproduce . It does not to be eaten . The parts that are ok to eat are the parts the plant designed them so : usually the fruits , these can be eaten although many have different risks : tomatoes are technically fruits and they are part of the nightshades so some people need to be careful with them , ...
Other parts are ok to eat but prepared thoroughly , or else the nutrients won't be absorbed and , even worse they will damage a lot : grains and legumes need to be soaked or even sprouted especially for the phytic acid to be neutralized, yet for that they need to be raw to begin with ( almonds are pasteurised in the us and they don't respond to soaking sprouting as much , rolled oats have the phytase destroyed and also the soaking doesn't do much) .
Others have a lot of oxalates , others have purines , most of them have lectins ( and the vegetable form of lectins are worse than the animal ones - they can even destroy the insects digestive tract if they try to eat them ) , and so on .
Soy is hopeless , except for the natto , which is fermented enough , soy has just too many , lectins , oxalates , a lot of phytic acid that doesn't neutralize easily , phytoestrogens , ...
The cruciferous are well known as healthy plants yet they have a lot of oxalates and affect the thyroid ( manifest goitrogenic effects ) . They should be cooked well and the water thrown away , not used in the dish .
The ' scientists ' tried to make people eat whole grains for the fiber and extra minerals , the truth is that those fibers are damaging our guts and the minerals are just locked by the other substances in the bran .
Many plants we eat are growing in depleted soils , also many species are GMO , and virtually all are sprayed ( even the bio industry / standards allow some pesticides )
Vegetable fats - PUFA specifically are really unhealthy - so except for the coconut and red palm oil , they sohuld be avoided .
Animals proteins are complete proteins , only a few plants have complete proteins and even there the aminoacid proportions varies .
Think it this way - animals are similar , it is easier to use something similar in a construction or renovation than to get a totally different material and convert it .
There is just too much , but if you wish you can have a look on the WAPF site or
thehealthyhomeeconomist.com , they have great articles .
The thing is that both vegetarian and vegan diet are doctrines , are antropic concepts , and we don't really need to think our nutrition . I mean people have this stupid pride that we are superior to other animals yet the people also don't know yet what to eat - a thing all the animals just do .
Anyway , it's just a part of my point , i am working now and can't focus much .
