I refuse to pick up the gauntlet you have thrown down and will refrain from mentioning that "somewhere out there is a proctologist reading this post and feeling reassured that he'll be able to afford blah blah" (by performing "removing heads from butts" operations, in case the meaning of what I am too mature to say is not clear)
Interesting. One of my sons was vegan for years and now eats a diet very similar to yours. He eats grass fed beef only though = nothing from Walmart. (see below and if you are eating lots of meat I suggest you look into purchasing it from For The Health of It (they have grass fed) or order it online - I can give you a link. Back to my son. He doesn't eat dairy because we did not evolve with dairy and he is looking for a more paleo type diet but without lots of fruit (Paleo Diet advocates lots of fruit) - he eats around 60 grams of carbohydrates a day (not 60 carbs) and he also eats green veggies. His weight is perfect, he looks like a million bucks, he has no digestive difficulties and he is having all of his bloodwork done Monday so I can give a full report. Now, do I think this is sustainable for the entire world? No. But I know that not everyone will be vegan - I do suggest at least once a week being vegan (not junk food vegan either) - and I highly think everyone who eats any animal products to remember how this thread was started. It was started because of inhumane treatment of animals. Peace begins on our plates and I think we have a moral obligation to treat animals far far better than we do.
Here's more on grass fed beef - if one chooses to eat beef:
Feeding grain to cattle has got to be one of the dumbest ideas in the history of western civilization. Cows, sheep, and other grazing animals are endowed with the ability to convert grasses, which those of us who possess only one stomach cannot digest, into food that we can digest. They can do this because they are ruminants, which is to say that they possess a rumen, a 45 or so gallon (in the case of cows) fermentation tank in which resident bacteria convert cellulose into protein and fats.
Traditionally, all beef was grassfed beef, but in the United States today what is commercially available is almost all feedlot beef. The reason? It?s faster, and so more profitable. Seventy-five years ago, steers were 4 or 5 years old at slaughter. Today, they are 14 or 16 months. You can?t take a beef calf from a birth weight of 80 pounds to 1,200 pounds in a little more than a year on grass. It takes enormous quantities of corn, protein supplements, antibiotics and other drugs, including growth hormones.
Switching a cow from grass to grain is so disturbing to the animal?s digestive system that it can kill the animal if not done gradually and if the animal is not continually fed antibiotics. These animals are designed to forage, but we make them eat grain, primarily corn, in order to make them as fat as possible as fast as possible. Author and small-scale cattleman Michael Pollan wrote recently in the New York Times about what happens to cows when they are taken off of pastures and put into feedlots and fed grain:
?Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which is normally expelled by belching during rumination. But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the animal?s lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure (usually by forcing a hose down the animal?s esophagus), the cow suffocates.
A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike that in our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio.?
All this is not only unnatural and dangerous for the cows. It also has profound consequences for us. Feedlot beef as we know it today would be impossible if it weren?t for the routine and continual feeding of antibiotics to these animals. This leads directly and inexorably to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These are the new ?superbugs? that are increasingly rendering our ?miracle drugs? ineffective.
As well, it is the commercial meat industry?s practice of keeping cattle in feedlots and feeding them grain that is responsible for the heightened prevalence of E. coli 0157:H7 bacteria. When cattle are grainfed, their intestinal tracts become far more acidic, which favors the growth of pathogenic E. coli bacteria, which in turn kills people who eat undercooked hamburger. E. coli 0157:H7 has only recenty appeared on the scene. First isolated in the 1980s, this pathogen is now found in the intestines of most U.S. feedlot cattle. The practice of feeding corn and other grains to cattle has created the perfect conditions for microbes to come into being that can harm and kill us. As Michael Pollan explains:
?Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their way into our food get killed off by the acids in our stomachs, since they originally adapted to live in a neutral-pH environment. But the digestive tract of the modern feedlot cow is closer in acidity to our own, and in this new, manmade environment acid-resistant strains of E. coli have developed that can survive our stomach acids ? and go on to killl us. By acidifying a cow?s gut with corn, we have broken down one of our food chain?s barriers to infections.?
Many of us think of ?corn-fed? beef as nutritionally superior, but it isn?t. A cornfed cow does develop well-marbled flesh, but this is simply saturated fat that can?t be trimmed off. Grassfed meat, on the other hand, is lower both in overall fat and in artery-clogging saturated fat. A sirloin steak from a grainfed feedlot steer has more than double the total fat of a similar cut from a grassfed steer. In its less-than-infinite wisdom, however, the USDA continues to grade beef in a way that rewards marbling with intra-muscular fat. Grassfed beef not only is lower in overall fat and in saturated fat, but it has the added advantage of providing more omega-3 fats. These crucial healthy fats are most plentiful in flaxseeds and fish, and are also found in walnuts, soybeans and in meat from animals that have grazed on omega-3 rich grass. When cattle are taken off grass, though, and shipped to a feedlot to be fattened on grain, they immediately begin losing the omega-3s they have stored in their tissues. As a consequence, the meat from feedlot animals typically contains only 15- 50 percent as much omega-3s as that from grassfed livestock.
So see why it is very important to purchase meat that is grass fed. Or, get it from your local hunter.
Lastly, this heart warming article is a must read for all of us - vegans, meat eaters, breatharians (LOL - I swear there are some who say they "live" on air!
)
The Pig Farmer - Healthy at 100 ::: by John Robbins
If you read it, tell me how you liked it.
Thanks
G
