View Full Version : Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
I finished reading this over the Chinese New Year holiday last week. Must admit it was a little disconcerting to be reading about factory farm s*it lagoons and all the other gruesome stuff that goes into the industrial production of meat while being surrounded by so much food, much of it that was probably walking around a few days or weeks ago. I am still having a hard time with the idea of totally giving up meat, though -- even though I believe his argument is a strong one. I loved the discussion of Niman Ranch and during that whole chapter was thinking about what I could do to try to get them to expand their model into China, and then the bombshell drops at the end of the chapter (won't say what it is, as I don't want to spoil the book for those who haven;t read it). Anyway, I'm not sure if this is better off here or in food or in environment, but I wanted to talk about the book with others who may have read it.
One thing that really surprised me is that his position in the book on not eating meat, any meat, is so strong, as I had heard him give a talk that was rebroadcast on my local NPR station in the US where he basically said that he understood if people were'nt willing to totally give up meat and thought it was great if they even just reduced consumption a bit. That is not the position he takes in the book -- and he slams on Michael Pollan pretty hard for being wishy washy on many points related to meat production and consumption, so I was really shocked. I was also quite surprised by his negative remarks about Joel Salatin and Polyface Farm.
Anyway, I don't really want this to turn into a whole debate about the health/moral/political virtues of a vegetarian diet. Personally, I found my health suffered quite a bit when I was a vegetarian for a couple of years in my late teens, and I am not sure I can ever go back to it even though some of my dietary habits have changed since then. But I do feel the need to talk about the book and my/other people's reactions to it. Have you read it? what did you think? Did you change any of your purchasing/eating habits after reading the book? I plan to ask DH to read it and discuss whether we should implement more changes in our family diet, such as further reducing meat consumption and shifting to purchasing primarily (or only?) from humane/ethical producers (he has balked at the cost of the latter, but may be won over by someone else's argument). I feel like that is an important step that I potentially can take. I do want to be part of the solution and not continue to contribute to the problems he outlines. Just am not in a place where I feel we can give up meat yet, if ever.
lhamo
I read this book about six months ago and yes, it made me re-think giving up meat. I didn't do well as a vegetarian either when I tried it years back. I guess you could call us flexitarians now since our meat and dairy intake has plummeted. We are focusing more on the health aspects of lessening animal fats in our diets. I was surprised too by the Salatin slam.I figure some modification is better than none regardless of all the opinions.
I would like to read this to see what his ultimate point is. I'm especially curious about his attack on Polyface, which I feel does about as good a job of sustainable and ethical meat production as we can aspire to. The reason I find Polyface et. al. as morally / environmentally acceptable as being a vegetarian is simply this:
There is nothing inherently ethical or kind about a vegetarian diet, it just removes one from the killing process. When I look at a plate of pasta, it might as well have a side dish of dead loons and salmon, because diverting a river to water a wheatfield kills them just as dead as if I'd consumed them. That carton of soy milk should have a picture of ruined trees, badgers and owls on it; razing and destroying a forest and its soil to make way for a soybean field kills them just as dead as a chain saw and a hunting rifle. To pretend that I'm not killing because I'm not eating flesh is a compartmentalization, and it's also a lie. To live is to eat, and to eat is to kill, and every living thing abides by those rules whether it wants to or not. Things that eat and are eaten is a pretty straightforward definition of 'alive'. My opinion: this is not bad, it's reality. Understanding our connection with the web of life and eating animals is a form of spiritual maturity, not debased and unenlightened savagery.
I also disagree with the production per acre figures for animals vs plants, for several reasons. 1. It's always based on factory farm statistics for resources required to produce the meat, when the whole point is to get away from factory methods. 2. We're in overshoot already. We will create as many humans as we can feed, and them some. Harsh but true, the more calories per acre we get, the more people the world will create. Feeding more people per acre seems humane, but it's ultimately a losing game both for the natural world and the people in it. It's a catch-22: yes, if we kept or decreased the current population and concentrated our calorie production to less area, that would be great for the environment, but it's not what we do. We increase production AND area used, and that is a fatal mistake.
OTOH I do agree that the way in which we typically farm animals is unforgiveably cruel and selfish, as well as an environmental nightmare. In our culture, things of primary importance are cost and convenience, and unfortunately obtaining ethically raised meat is neither convenient nor affordable. As always, I will beat a drum loudly for more locally produced meat raised in small enough quantities to ensure humane and sustainable treatment of the animals we eat and the environment they exist in.
Just a wee moment on the soapbox, a year of reading has convinced me that the whole idea of cholesterol, animal products and saturated fat as bad for health is the biggest load of malarkey ever foisted on the western world. Ironically, if there's anything that's coming to light as a culprit in obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis, heart disease and stroke, it's plants: processed grains and sugars, to be exact. It's astonishing to actually read through the collected data, and then the completely irrational conclusions presented from it. Sort of like collecting data that shows a correlation between bandaids and cuts, and then presenting a summary of the findings that purports there is obviously a danger of getting a cut if one has a bandaid, and furthermore, we need to spend more dollars on research, and in the meantime, make sure every individual in the country buys a bandaid prevention kit, prefereably one for each bathroom. The lack of logic / manipulation of data is almost frightening.
I recently picked up a sample chapter on my Kindle. Maybe I'll get it and read it. At this point, I'm a bit overdone on reading books like his because I've been already heavily influenced by Peter Singer, Jon Robbins, Joel Fuhrman, etc. I've also read two of Michael Pollan's books. So Foer would DEFINITELY be preaching to the choir. However, the book has gotten great response so maybe I will read it.
I am a huge believer of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It would be far more productive if people could step back a bit from an either/or mentality. I started on my own vegetarian journey about 12 years ago. Back then I started with being about 60% vegetarian, then 75% vegetarian, then 85%, then 100% for a few years, and now I'm down to about 90%, but I've also started to eat much less dairy. So, I'm more in the Flexitarian camp.
Side note to Kib, your note about the cause of obesity being more plant-related than meat related--I accept the "processed" part of that equation, but certainly not the "plant" part. I know sugar cane is a plant, and Captain Crunch is grain-based, but come on--it's the processing that's making us fat and sick--along with no exercise and too much readily available fast food, it's certainly not the plants! Read the China Study, which I believe to be sound science on the topic.
I'll read the book and get back to you!
The Storyteller
2-9-11, 1:34pm
It is a very well written book and his attacks on factory farming extremely effective. His arguments against Polyface, though, were weak, and the reason he slams Pollan is because Pollan was dismissive of vegetarianism in his two books.
He held up as more ethical than Salatin a turkey farmer who raises heritage breeds (Salatin doesn't) who then ends up shipping his birds on a traumatic trip to a processor hundreds of miles away where they will likely be treated with as little regard as any factory farm bird. Salatin processes his own birds, humanely, on his own farm, where the trauma is minimized. So, I found Foer's comparison misguided, misinformed, and misplaced. Both farmers are doing the best they can in a system that is hardly kind to either one.
He also plays little rhetorical tricks often used by PETA folks. They play up the inhumane nature of factory farms, then conveniently ignore the thousands of sustainable farmers out there who treat their animals well, right up to the end. The fact is, the choice is not just between factory farmed meat and vegetarianism, but among three options: factory farm, humanely raised, or vegetarianism.
Still, a good read I highly recommend. Just look out for those little traps. Those, and the fact that he obviously knows so little about farming in the first place he makes a poor judge.
The Storyteller
2-9-11, 3:06pm
I plan to ask DH to read it and discuss whether we should implement more changes in our family diet, such as further reducing meat consumption and shifting to purchasing primarily (or only?) from humane/ethical producers (he has balked at the cost of the latter, but may be won over by someone else's argument).
Well, here is mine. I believe knowing what I know now that every time I consume factory farmed meat, eggs, or milk I am participating in the inhumane treatment of animals as practiced within that system. I am the one who is forcing those birds to live in tiny cages in massive buildings their entire lives with a million other birds stacked on top of one another, or keeping that sow in a farrowing pen so small she can't even turn around, or producing meat birds that are so grossly manipulated that they can have heart attacks at the young age of 6 weeks.
Mind you, I don't judge others by those standards. Those are for me alone. But as people become more aware of these issues, these ethical questions are certainly something they should consider for themselves.
a year of reading has convinced me that the whole idea of cholesterol, animal products and saturated fat as bad for health is the biggest load of malarkey ever foisted on the western world
I have such mixed feelings on this because it really depends on whose studies and research one decides to believe. I have been reading about the Essylen (sp?) diet and other similar ones where heart disease can be reversed by eliminating animal fats from the diets. He also omits processed grain foods and sugar or excessive fruit. He does have a lot of physical research to back his studies up but again I just don't know who or what to believe anymore. Common sense tells me that humans have been eating animals since time began but probably far less and back when humans were far more active. So I aim for the middle of the road in my diet and follow the old axiom of all things in moderation. Having seen animals butchered before, I am still not terribly comfortable with eating them even though I crave meat sometimes.
:|( I'm dragging this totally off topic below, but I'll start out better this time. :|(
lhamo, I sympathize. My DH really doesn't want to know about it, he just wants to eat meat. And for us to have lots of money left over for other things than groceries. Which is understandable. But it makes for a rock and a hard place when it comes to deciding how to allocate our dollars. Ethical meat is really expensive, but a vegetarian diet doesn't appeal to either of us. I do agree with Storyteller, if you want to focus on ethical meat and you can get DH to read the book, it sounds like a start.
The solution I've come up with is this: I'm committed to "happy meat" only. But I shop with a price limit, so we will get less of it. (Happy eggs are actually a great animal protein source for the money). I grow most of our veggies. So we wind up with about 1200 calories a day per person of happy meat/fat/dairy and veggies. DH supplements his diet with about 1000 calories of carbs (I try to help him avoid the higher gylcemic load carbs but he's of course free to eat whatever he wants), and I might have 200-300 calories worth of nuts, grains or seeds. In this way we should manage to partake of animal products ethically. I hope.
***
Pinkytoe, I know what you mean about it being confusing. The latest thing that has really opened my eyes is a book called Fat and Cholesterol are Good for You. It's a really unfortunate title, just too sensational to be taken seriously, but once you crack the binding all sense of foolishness departs. I'm not sure Uffe Ravnskov actually proves his assertion, but he's definitely done the dirty boring work of statistical analysis and deep reading, which clearly shows that dozens and perhaps hundreds of studies that purport in their summaries to show a relationship between saturated fat/dietary cholesterol, blood cholesterol and heart disease actually show nothing of the kind. Or worse, simply start with that assumption and then go on to show how a wonder drug like Lipitor will lower cholesterol (SO WHAT? That's like saying calamine lotion cures chicken pox.) They stretch the truth to the breaking point to find a correlation, or dismiss any data that doesn't fit the conclusion they wanted, or ignore obvious oversights or contradictions, or they simply skip over logic entirely and blithely announce that their findings agree with what they expected to find, regardless of what the data shows.
"He also omits processed grain foods and sugar or excessive fruit" ... that is actually a very good example of exactly the sort of scientific quandary Ravnskov is exposing. It simply can't be asserted that the elimination of animal fat is improving heart health if at the same time the other suspected culprit of heart disease is also being eliminated. We all "know" that animal fat is a problem, and that is the problem. ... we also knew we had 24 pairs of chromosomes up until the mid 1950's, when someone without an agenda finally counted them without expecting to find 24. (we only have 23).
Catherine, I'm not blaming plants, I'm blaming refined carbohydrates. Which come from plants. Mypothesis ;) : Refined carbs = glucose spikes = insulin spikes = insulin resistance = obesity and eventual diabetes. Refined carbs = glucose spikes = insulin spikes = arterial damage = atherosclerosis, which + infection = burst and release of arterial plaque packets = heart attack and stroke. My point wasn't an attack on plants, it was an assertion that it's not animals (or cholesterol, or being fat, or eating fat) causing all these diseases. High blood cholesterol and high body fat are the symptoms of carb overload/insulin issues and arterial damage, not the cause.
The irony for me is that I agree with the "middle of the road" concept, except for the elimination of refined carbs, which I'm pretty sure is essential. But in the modern world, practically every processed food made from spaghetti to spumoni is loaded with refined carbs, so the suggestion to omit highly refined carbs, which once would have still left the diet perfectly "middle of the road", has over time become a radical departure from a typical western diet.
Thanks for the discussion, everybody -- lots of stuff to think about/respond to, but I got a late start on my lunch hour today so I'll just give some quick thoughts (with a longer post to follow when I get home tonight)
I'm hypoglycemic, so that complicates things for me in terms of diet -- I am definitely in sympathy with you about the dietary research KIB, because I have been tracking my reaction to foods over the past several weeks and there is a DEFINITE correlation between consumption of carbs (even the good ones) and my blood sugar spikes and drops. I just can't see going vegetarian as an option for me, and my family members also love meat and I don't think it is likely for them. I also suspect strongly suspect my DS has hypoglycemia based on my observation of his eating habits and how they correlate to moods/behaviour. Not sure about DD yet, she may have her dad;s genes on that front.
I watched "Fast Food Nation" last night, and while there were many scenes that struck (and bothered me), I think one of the things that sticks with me the most is that scene where Don is talking to the Bruce Willis character and tells him bluntly "our food is full of s*it" (which is true in every sense in the context they are discussing, which is the lack of hygiene and safety practices at the processing plant they have contracted to produce their hamburger patties) and Bruce just keeps taking bite after bite of his big old burger and basically says "everything's full of s*it". I guess that just kind of represented the whole issue so well for me -- we have a major problem on our hands in terms of the environmental, health, and socio-political fallout of this current system of factory farming and industrialized food production, but most of us are just ignoring it. Some out of ignorance, but many just because it is easier to accept the status quo. If I don't change the way I/my family eats, I'm just like Bruce, chomping down on food I know is full of **** and continuing to support a system I know is corrupt, evil and unsustainable. But I agree that self-righteously shifting over to a vegetarian diet that still includes a lot of imported and factory farmed produce is not an appropriate or effective response either! I guess more and more it is really coming down to the logic of localizing food consumption. I am lucky in that there are some good local organic producers here in Beijing who I can buy from -- my organic farm lady does seasonal vegetables, eggs, chickens/geese/ducks/turkeys, some canned preserves (tomatoes and fruits, mostly), wheat and corn flour, noodles, tofu, and I could get milk and yogurt from her too. There is an organic dairy that does delivery, and a cheesemaker who makes his cheese from their milk, though not in all the styles I like. Another cheesemaker in a nearby province does gouda and cheddar, so I can get those from him. I can get really great fair trade organic coffee from Yunnan province, which is better than getting it from halfway around the world -- not going to be easy to give up my coffee habit, so very pleased to have that option. I haven't yet bought organic rice, but will be shifting to that (latest news one of my grantees posted on Facebook today is that they have discovered fake rice from China made with starch from sweet potatoes and plastic resin...). I suppose I could learn to make pasta, but since we only have that once a week I don't think I have TOO much of an evil impact. I did find a nice brand of organic Italian pasta that I like and will buy in bulk via mail order from southern China, along with organic olive oil and tomato sauce (to use as an alternative when my organic lady doesn't have tomatoes/sauce available). I need to start cooking more beans myself rather than buying canned. DS really likes tuna, but I limit how much he eats for health reasons and will explore other alternatives (thought very difficult to find organic/sustainably harvested fish here in China). I bought the artisan bread book and as soon as I can find a suitable storage container for the dough will try to shift over to making our own breads again instead of eating store bought. Need to shift to milk from the organic dairy, though this will likely start an argument with DH as it is 3x more expensive than what we currently get (which is already 2x more than US prices, easily). Want to try making our own yogurt -- will be hard to shift DD off her addiction to a local brand, but I will try. Need to research options for organic nuts and other flours -- do have a good lead on flours, but nuts are probably going to be a challenge and/or very expensive. There are good options in local Korean markets for organic soy sauce and other asian cooking things. So that leaves fruit (organic/local options very limited), a limited range of other pantry items we use regularly, chocolate, pork and beef.
Actually, when I look at this long list, I can see that we have already made and/or are planning to make significant changes and what is left isn't really so much in the grand scheme of things. Makes me feel a bit more encouraged and less overwhelmed. I have actually been working on this transition for almost two years already, and now that I look at it I have made some significant progress. NO, I am not ready/able to go vegetarian myself yet, but I will make a commitment to doing more research about what the options are for more ethical meat. And I will continue to work on cutting back on our family's meat consumption overall.
And I don't think I will be eating hamburgers for awhile!
That's a start, right? Ok, time to get back to work...
lhamo
And there's growing evidence that even unrefined grains contribute to inflammation in some not inconsiderable subset of the population. The constant drumbeat of "Eat piles of grains, avoid natural fats as if they were poison, and ignore your body's need for quality protein" is hard to avoid. It's almost as if "they" want us to be $ick...:sick:
loosechickens
2-10-11, 1:05am
I don't think there's a lot of doubt that factory farming of animals is an ugly business all around, but I'm also not against all meat in general. When meat animals are raised as they were meant to be raised, so that they produce high quality protein by eating foods that humans cannot process, i.e., cattle out on the range eating grass, chickens running around eating bugs and weeds, etc., they have a useful position in the food chain. And, eaten in moderation, which is how most meat was eaten until recently, not all that bad. Animals produce manure for crops, create protein from foods unable to be assimilated by humans, produce milk, eggs, leather, glue and a host of other products, etc., so to me, it's not a black and white issue.
We eat far less meat or dairy than most, make a real effort to seek out meat/dairy/eggs that are raised in healthy ways that are sustainable for the small amounts we do eat, but it seems to me to be more important to understand that if these products are raised in a healthy and sustainable manner, we probably can't consume them in the amounts that we've become accustomed to having.
Meat used to be a "special occasion" food. The farm wife killed a chicken when the preacher was coming to dinner. It's like sugar. Not all that much harm in sugar when you only got "birthday cake" once a year, and the average per capita consumption of sugars was less than 5 pounds per year (in 1900). It's only when sugar started being an everyday food, that we saw problems.
And when meat was raised by having animals graze on marginal land not suitable for crops, producing their meat/milk/eggs naturally by ingesting food not suitable for humans, and eaten in those small amounts as a "special food", it was fine.
Obviously, that's not addressing the animal rights issue, but I tend to agree with kib and others.....everything lives by eating something else, and the whole natural world works by one species preying on another, so to me, isolating out part of that food chain to be eliminated completely probably is just not considering everything involved, as vegetables, grains, etc., are not free of their own difficulties were we to look carefully.
I was vegetarian for a number of years, and am still at least semi-vegetarian most of the time, but I think I've moved more closely to the flexitarian camp, and recognize there is nothing that I eat that doesn't have some effect on something or someone. And that is how nature works.
I kind of follow the "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" philosophy, and it seems to work well.
Well, one thing is clear, I think food should be added to the list of touchy subjects like politics and religion. Food is a VERY emotional topic!
We can all cite statistics to support our points of view. Mine is that:
1) Vegetarianism or near-vegetariansm, when practiced correctly (so as not to replace animal protein with empty calories and processed foods), provides a superior diet than that of our traditional Western meat-and-potatoes diet. I believe in moderation and common sense, and I don't believe in demonizing any one food group. Basically, I think Michael Pollan says it best: Eat Food. Mostly Plants. Not Too Much.
2) The case for our nutritional need for dairy is probably supported more by lobbyists than by science. Jack LaLanne used to point out that we are the only species that continues to drink milk past weaning. And we drink another species milk, at that!
3) The demise of our health as a nation is complex--not just because of any particular focus on or lack of one macronutrient or micronutrient, but also because of our lifestyle and our easy access to food, particularly processed, convenience foods. In my market research study on obesity, one doctor blamed the women's movement, because women entering the work force en masse made it difficult for families to maintain family dinners of home-cooked meals. A stretch, but there's an element of truth in it (don't beat me up--I was a working mom, too!)
4) Because we have such ready access to plant foods and can almost always make a choice to consume plants over animal foods--a choice that does not compromise our health, and in fact enhances it--I personally feel morally bound to make compassionate choices whenever possible.
Question: If you could wipe away your history with food with all the emotions tied up with the warm memories and experiences eating certain things, and if you based all of your eating choices strictly on nutrition and not necessarily on taste, and if you had to produce the food yourself--raising, killing, planting, harvesting, what would you choose to eat? Just curious.
Sorry, but the "only animal to drink milk past weaning" argument is a very culturally conditioned one, and fails to acknowledge many traditional herding cultures where milk and milk products are a key and essential part of the diet -- Mongols, Tibetans and Masai all have a heavily milk-based diet, to name a few. It would be interesting for some of these medical researchers to look at things like heart disease, etc. in those cultures, though there are a lot of complicated issues that impact longevity in those cultures, including widespread poverty. But you would think that if you really want to test the "fat causes heart disease" hypothesis, all you have to do is go to any Tibetan village and do a study of the people there who drink butter tea, eat tsampa (barley flour mixed with butter) and eat a lot of meat and sausages -- seems like a pretty direct way to prove your hypothesis. Has anybody done a study of these issues in populations that still eat a high fat, but more traditional diet? I know there are issues with access and human subjects protections, but seems like it would be a productive approach so I am kind of surprised there isn't any literature on it, but that so many millions go into testing these hypotheses in "developed" cultures where everyone acknowledges that it is almost impossible to control and/or get reliable data about the diets of research subjects. Anyway, I think there is a lot that we don't know about how diet impacts the human body, and I agree with KIB that much of the current research seems to be biased by pre-existing ideas about causality that may or may not be true.
Sorry -- there I am turning this into an argument, I guess. ;)
To answer your question, I don't think it is possible to wipe out our individual histories with food, nor do I want to. Like Foer, I have very deep cultural and emotional associations with certain foods, and I will admit that is a significant issue for me. I also have a very real physical condition that is directly related to what I eat. But if I did have the option to produce my own food, my ideal would be to set up a localized version of Polyface farm -- maybe somewhere on the Mongolian grasslands, traditional home of my husband's family -- and raise sheep and chickens cows and pigs in a sustainable and humane/ethical way, and grow grain and vegetables make for ourselves and others some of the wonderful foods that come from both of our food/cultural traditions and others we enjoy. I don't think I would enjoy slaughtering animals, but I think I could do it, and my attitude is very similar to that of the Niman Ranch guy -- give the animals a good life and honor them in both life and death.
lhamo
Thanks, lhamo. This is what I mean. We could all probably argue until our deaths--at a very old age, some of us having lived on fat, some on animal protein, or some on plant-based foods.
To play Devil's Advocate with myself, I actually found a criticism of the China Study (I found the China Study to have very compelling data with strong, credible correlations) related to your question about high fat-eating cultures:
For example, Campbell conveniently fails to mention the county of Tuoli in China. The folks in Tuoli ate 45% of their diet as fat, 134 grams of animal protein each day (twice as much as the average American), and rarely ate vegetables or other plant foods. Yet, according to the China Study data, they were extremely healthy with low rates of cancer and heart disease; healthier, in fact, than many of the counties that were nearly vegan.
So, again, the Foodie can cite statistics to suit his purpose, and I'm not going to push my agenda anymore. The reason I asked the question about how you would approach food if you could wipe out your history with it is because it's impossible for us to be objective about food with the emotional ties we have with it. If we COULD be completely objective about food choices, what would we do? I grew up in a very meat-and-potatoes environment--and my favorite meals are roasts and stews, but I have tried to take that out of the equation when making food choices. From what I can see, Foer has done the same--given his opening chapter is all about his love for his grandmother's cooking.
I KNOW that if I had a chicken coop in half of my backyard, and a vegetable garden in the other, I would farm that vegetable garden like crazy just so I wouldn't have to take a knife to a chicken's throat. Call me chicken. ;)
I am reading a book called Farm City by Novella Carpenter. It is about eating local only her experiment is to eat only what she herself can produce in her own urban garden lot. For the first few weeks, she does OK on primarily produce but begins to lose weight rapidly; she literally craves fat and resorts to killing some of her own animals to keep from feeling like she is starving. It makes her realize that when you are truly hungry, you will sometimes eat anything. I highly recommend this book for an up close and personal look at eating local, killing animals along with a good laugh.
I loved Farm City! One of my favorite books, actually. And one of the things that makes me think I, too, probably would and could kill animals I raised myself for food (even ones I love). Of course, maybe I would end up being just as happy with tons of eggs, milk, yogurt, cheese, and seeing my animals run around and enjoy life on the farm. I hope one day I have the chance to find out.
Thanks again for all the discussion, everybody. It really does help me think through things.
lhamo
I checked the book out from the library and for me it was so simplistic and mambsy-pambsy that I only read a few chapters. It didn't compare to a Pollan or John Robbins book in terms of writing quality or communication of ideas. So my comments may be a little off topic. I think Pollan has the best middle ground. In his TV appearences he gives the impression that he personally buys a little meat, but is concious of the source and at least within the limits of our distribution systems, tryies to avoid "factory farmed" meat. I can't find too much fault with that approach.
I have a friend who is a university scientist and well versed in statistics who is convinced of the points in the China Study and claims that meat has some inherent disease causing qualities regardless of how or where it was raised. I've not read the China Study, but summaries of it's findings in other books. It is a huge study that seems to leave little in question. I could probably go down the vegan road, but have never been able to stick to it 100%. My opinion is that from a both a health and ethics standpoint, it's probably the most perfect. Any more there seem to be a huge amount of healthy and readily available meat alternatives in my area.
Then there is the "white death" sugar, white flour, and processed carbohydrates. A person could spend a huge amount of time studying, weighing and preparing diet options.
I don't think Farm City is meant to be educational, just one woman's adventure in growing her own food and meat. I looked into seeing M Pollan when he was here but couldn't justify the ticket price. They even closed off nearby public parking spaces and charged astronomical prices. No doubt some of the money went to some corresponding nonprofit, but it seemed kind of "elitist" to me to charge so much for the tickets and parking. Isn't it funny what an issue food has become? I guess we have the luxury of analyzing our food choices.
Meat has never been a special occasion food in my family of origin, nor in the families of my parents or grandparents. People would have starved to death in the nineteenth century if it had been. You had a community general store if you were lucky, and you ordered flour, salt, and sugar (along with coffee!) to complement venison, game birds, fish, fruits--cultivated and wild--and vegetables from the family plot. It probably was a special occasion if you killed a laying hen, since you could certainly use the eggs. As a culture, we eat less meat and less fat--radically less saturated fat--than we did a couple of generations ago, and a lot more processed food. And soy--which is in everything now--was unheard of fifty years ago.
A local issue I am faced with is deer.
We have more deer here than people. We have more deer here than the local ecosystem can support. There are no real predators for them except cars, and there are endless quantities of food available for them
We have several recent studies showing that they are destroying a very unique and productive ecosystem, which is a breeding source point for peregrine falcons, bald eagles, marbled murrelets, and all sorts of other species.
Now, it isn't the fault of the deer that this area is now so attractive to them. By making food, water, and shelter more available, and by not predating much upon them ourselves, we've allowed them to breed unchecked. Eventually they will suffer a population crash from a hard winter, or disease, but in the meantime, they are negatively impacting some critical areas for other species.
So. To harvest and eat them? I can see 9-10 of them out my window as I am typing this...
loosechickens
2-10-11, 11:28pm
we had the same problem with deer back in northern PA when we lived there. By fall, it was worth your life to go out on the roads anytime near dusk, because deer would run into YOU, when you weren't running into them. Because of availability of farmers' crops and apples in old orchards to eat, and the elimination of the predators that used to keep them in check, without hunting seasons, including several days of doe season, they would have overrun the place within a couple years.
Most families in that rural area tried for "doe tags", and of course, went hunting in buck season. And most people pretty much ate venison much of the winter. The hunting (except for some 'flatlanders' as they were called in that area, from the city) wasn't for "trophies" although a nice rack was certainly appreciated. The hunting was for meat for the table, and pretty much the calendar of the winter was figured as "before doe season", "between doe and buck season", "after I got my buck", etc. in most families.
I always saw it as healthy meat. The deer ate a good diet, browse supplemented with corn and apples. And unless those animals were harvested by hunting on a regular basis, the farmers wouldn't have had crops. It was hard for even non-hunters to come up with solutions to their numbers that didn't involve killing a number of them every year in the absence of mountain lions and other predators who would have kept their numbers in check long ago.
Carnivores logically are at the top of food chains to keep things in balance or else herbivores would destroy the environment. The snakes, birds of prey, coyotes, an occasional weazel and maybe the local bobcat help keep the ground squirrels, rats, gophers and bunny populations in control or my garden would be totally destroyed every year.
God bless the carnivores. If animals weren't meant to be eaten, they wouldn't be made out of meat. ;)
A local issue I am faced with is deer.
So. To harvest and eat them? I can see 9-10 of them out my window as I am typing this...Yes, to harvest and eat them, ideally to participate in a sustainable ecosystem of your island, or if deer really can't be incorporated into that, at least until the unnatural overshoot of deer is gone. Why not? You are, basically, the only limiter of deer in your specific ecosystem to keep them in check. And by eating deer, you decrease the demand for meat to be bred elsewhere, which, considering the tightrope beef currently walks to stay in environmental balance at the best of times, is a good thing. To me this seems like an absolutely graced solution. Thank them, and eat them.
I obviously have a bias in one direction, but what I'm really taking away from this month's reading is that anyone can find a reason to see what they want in numbers, ignore confounding variables or come up with a reason someone else is crazy for seeing a bat in the inkblot. Admittedly, Ravnskov mentioned above irked me beyond belief when after 300 badly written pages criticizing the poor interpretations of other studies, he suddenly ... well, lost his mind. How can you prevent heart disease? : Mostly old people die of heart disease so you can either accept that and die quickly of heart disease when you are old or die of something else that might be worse. In other words, after a whole book of firmly criticizing those who have bad or preexisting prejudices for preventing heart disease, your agenda is that it shouldn't be prevented at all? Ah ... Excuse me? Did some of that atheroma escape into your brain, Uffe, or have you maybe, um ... confused relative and absolute risk, just like you taught us was so bad in chapter 7? Sigh.
But just for giggles, from Chris Masterjohn's critique of The China Study:
What is most shocking about the China Study is not what it found, but the contrast between Campbell's representation of its findings in The China Study, and the data contained within the original monograph.
Campbell summarizes the 8,000 statistically significant correlations found in the China Study in the following statement: "people who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease."26 He also claims that, although it is "somewhat difficult" to "show that animal-based food intake relates to overall cancer rates," that nevertheless, "animal protein intake was convincingly associated in the China Study with the prevalence of cancer in families."27
Figure 1
Associations of Selected Variables with Mortality for All Cancers in the China Study Total Protein +12%
Animal Protein +3%
Fish Protein +7%
Plant Protein +12%
Total Lipids -6%
Carbohydrates +23%
Total Calories +16%
Fat % Calories -17%
Fiber +21%
Fat (questionnaire) -29%*
* statistically significant ** highly significant *** very highly significant
==============================
(Data taken from the original monograph of the China Study.)
But the actual data from the original publication paints a different picture. Figure 1 shows selected correlations between macronutrients and cancer mortality. Most of them are not statistically significant, which means that the probability the correlation is due to chance is greater than five percent.
It is interesting to see, however, the general picture that emerges. Sugar, soluble carbohydrates, and fiber all have correlations with cancer mortality about seven times the magnitude of that with animal protein, and total fat and fat as a percentage of calories were both negatively correlated with cancer mortality.
hmm. Indeed, Masterjohn's rebuttal is page upon page of similar findings, and it all boils down to the same thing: the actual data collected seemed to have little bearing on Campbell's conclusions, and in fact might have been completely unnecessary to collect at all. :~) . Actually a fun set of debates between the two men.
A question occurred to me today. is there anyone actually doing research motivated by finding the truth? It kind of blew me away to really stop and ask myself that question. Is there anyone left who isn't funded by the food or the drug industries, which both clearly have a vested interest in NOT discovering the truth if it's unprofitable?
There is evidence that indicates cholesterol has no causative role in heart disease. That it's at best a weak marker with no causative association, and at worst, that LDL is actually a first stage immune response. As infection and inflamation seem to get more closely linked with heart attack, the idea of lowering LDL if it's only there because we're sick and it's playing a role in protecting us ... doesn't sound particularly intelligent, to say the least.
My point is not that this is a correct hypothesis, it's interesting but totally unproven, it's that I wonder rather uneasily: if it is true, who's going to fund the study that absolves cholesterol and ends the Reign of King Lipitor? How many other incorrect conclusions is our medical community basing its protocol on that may take generations to expose, given the profit motive of our current climate?
Yes, by all means, harvest the deer. Venison is awesomely good. And get the hides tanned with the hair off - you can sew them with a regular, heavy duty sewing machine needle, and make beautiful things out of them.
I used to be a commercial farmer, raised lamb as well as a few calves for butcher as income, and for home use, we butchered lambs, chickens, hogs & calves - though we had the larger ones done professionally - a goose, and I once butchered out and cooked a rabbit I hit driving home. We got road kill deer and dressed it out, and helped butcher poached deer that friends shot out of season to protect their produce crops. I've killed, dressed and consumed A LOT of meat.
That said, good meat should be expensive - it's a luxury product unless it lives outside your front door as game or as your livelihood. I only eat organic meat, and try to get it locally raised as well. The price means I eat less than I'd like to, but that's probably good for me too since I now live in the city & don't exercise much.
Actually, we eat almost entirely organic. It's one area neither my DH or I will skimp on, and consequently, our grocery bill is high. We raised our kids on organic food too, and I am so glad we did. Of course, we live in Seattle, with literally dozens of Farmer's Markets (there's one every Wednesday IN the hospital up the street from my office!), and organic everything raised in the state - well, not citrus, but with all the good fruit here, we don't eat citrus, or coconuts, and rarely avocados. My DH does love bananas and cashews, which both have a very high carbon footprint.
My Dad is in end stage cardiac disease, and I link it to the trans fats he ate in the 50's-80's, when my Mom served margarine thinking it was the healthy choice, as well as all the red meat that was factory-farm raised - lots of Omega 6's and high inflammation. And he smoked for some years. Had a heart attack at 58, bypass in his late 60's, etc. He's 83 and we're all shocked that he's still alive.
I love food, am overweight, but have low heart disease indicators. Maybe because I love broccoli as much as red wine & chocolate - who knows? In addition to all the meat I ate the several years I farmed, I also drank raw Jersey milk - whole fat milk - daily, made butter, yogurt and ice cream out of it. It was astonishingly good. Best milk ever... the 2" of cream on the very top of a gallon jar of milk was as thick as mayonnaise, and the next 2" of cream was like heavy whipping cream. Yummm......
A question occurred to me today. is there anyone actually doing research motivated by finding the truth? It kind of blew me away to really stop and ask myself that question. Is there anyone left who isn't funded by the food or the drug industries, which both clearly have a vested interest in NOT discovering the truth if it's unprofitable?
There is evidence that indicates cholesterol has no causative role in heart disease. That it's at best a weak marker with no causative association, and at worst, that LDL is actually a first stage immune response. As infection and inflamation seem to get more closely linked with heart attack, the idea of lowering LDL if it's only there because we're sick and it's playing a role in protecting us ... doesn't sound particularly intelligent, to say the least.
My point is not that this is a correct hypothesis, it's interesting but totally unproven, it's that I wonder rather uneasily: if it is true, who's going to fund the study that absolves cholesterol and ends the Reign of King Lipitor? How many other incorrect conclusions is our medical community basing its protocol on that may take generations to expose, given the profit motive of our current climate?
kib, here I do I agree with you, which is what I said in earlier posts about data being available to suit everyone's purpose. I also agree with you that Big Pharma is the one with all the research cards, and has used them to build the case for prescribing a lot of drugs. I'm surely not saying that drugs themselves are bad, but I have had a front row seat in watching companies elevate the importance of certain symptoms or conditions in order to make taking their drug an urgency. Many guidelines and treatment protocols are initiated by pharma companies.
In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, he starts off by talking about a small Italian community in PA that is extremely long-lived and he talks about how a doctor and a sociologist went there to try to get the secret of their long, healthy lives. He started at the logical place, diet and exercise. But they learned that 41% of the community's diet was fat. Most of them smoked, and they struggled with obesity. To make a long story short, they concluded it was their community, tradition, their practice of walking from house to house and speaking with each other, and their affiliation with organizations and community groups that kept them alive so long. So there are too many variables really to come up with the definitive formula for health.
But, the health aspect is one thing--but to me it's about the ethics of eating animals. When I first became vegetarian it was not health related at all. Interestingly, what kind of pushed me over the edge was one of the points Foer makes early on. I love my dog. I have a relationship with it. So, I wouldn't eat it. I wouldn't consider eating it. Now, maybe if there were a nuclear holocaust and it was me and the dog in the basement waiting for the fall-out to end, and I had no food, that might be a different story. But, as I said earlier, I DO have a choice.
I can't justify NOT wanting to eat one animal just because I "know" it but eating another animal because I have no emotional investment in it. Seems kind of an ego-centric way to make food choices. Remember the story about the cow in the line of cows being transported to a slaughterhouse in Brooklyn? She broke free and ran through the streets until someone got her. Turned out, they gave THAT a cow a reprieve and sent to some pastoral grazing spot in upstate New York. Just like us. Reward the creature that has pluck, the creature that makes us smile, the creature we get to "know." Damn the rest.
I like to occasionally go on a retreat at a Benedictine monastery in VT. They raise sheep, chicken, pigs, and they eat them. It is SO beautiful to see the animals grazing against the backdrop of the Green Mountains. If you go on retreat there, they have two entrée offerings—meat and vegetarian. One of the monks told me that some of them eat the meat because they feel that they have given the animals a good life, and so, the animals return the favor by providing sustenance to the monks. The other monks have come to look at the animals as their friends, and just can’t bring themselves to eat them.
So, again, they exercise personal choice, but both decisions are based on mindfulness, awareness, and respect. As such, in my mind, both are ethical decisions. But how many Americans approach their meat eating in the same way?
The argument that we need the carnivores in nature is, of course, correct. But again, We don’t have to fly over miles of land to get a little morsel. First of all, we can choose what kind of protein we eat. Second, we drive to a supermarket where the meat has been sanitized, cheaply and readily available, and so you can eat far more than you need with very little investment or thought.
Multiply these mindless acts by hundreds of millions of people in this country alone, with no sense of the reciprocity such as the monks had, and you have a travesty of suffering that defies the natural order.
Yum indeed!
- small side note, I apologize if I'm driving everyone crazy, my Dh comes home tomorrow (we think) and I've been sitting in a hotel for a week waiting for him, entertaining myself with a pile of studies and the internet. The thing that prompted my last post is this: I've found so much info I can actually begin to sketch out what seems like a really solid hypothesis for heart disease that fits from end to end. I keep coming across more bits of data that just fit, like the fact that statins do two things: reduce LDL and suppress a key chemical in the infection process. It fits, it fits! But I have to ask myself where this data is coming from, and it's such a catch-22: The big drug/food funded studies have an agenda, and the small studies that others can afford to create just aren't as statistically important simply because they are so small. I mean really, when one study includes 161,000 participants for 10 years and the other includes 19 people in a university basement, it's hard to take it seriously, even if the basement study is the one that's purely scientific without an agenda.
In the end, is it really a matter of trusting your own gut and instinct???
kib, here I do I agree with you, which is what I said in earlier posts about data being available to suit everyone's purpose. I also agree with you that Big Pharma is the one with all the research cards, and has used them to build the case for prescribing a lot of drugs. I'm surely not saying that drugs themselves are bad, but I have had a front row seat in watching companies elevate the importance of certain symptoms or conditions in order to make taking their drug an urgency. Many guidelines and treatment protocols are initiated by pharma companies.
In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, he starts off by talking about a small Italian community in PA that is extremely long-lived and he talks about how a doctor and a sociologist went there to try to get the secret of their long, healthy lives. He started at the logical place, diet and exercise. But they learned that 41% of the community's diet was fat. Most of them smoked, and they struggled with obesity. To make a long story short, they concluded it was their community, tradition, their practice of walking from house to house and speaking with each other, and their affiliation with organizations and community groups that kept them alive so long. So there are too many variables really to come up with the definitive formula for health.
But, the health aspect is one thing--but to me it's about the ethics of eating animals. When I first became vegetarian it was not health related at all. Interestingly, what kind of pushed me over the edge was one of the points Foer makes early on. I love my dog. I have a relationship with it. So, I wouldn't eat it. I wouldn't consider eating it. Now, maybe if there were a nuclear holocaust and it was me and the dog in the basement waiting for the fall-out to end, and I had no food, that might be a different story. But, as I said earlier, I DO have a choice.
I can't justify NOT wanting to eat one animal just because I "know" it but eating another animal because I have no emotional investment in it. Seems kind of an ego-centric way to make food choices. Remember the story about the cow in the line of cows being transported to a slaughterhouse in Brooklyn? She broke free and ran through the streets until someone got her. Turned out, they gave THAT a cow a reprieve and sent to some pastoral grazing spot in upstate New York. Just like us. Reward the creature that has pluck, the creature that makes us smile, the creature we get to "know." Damn the rest.
I like to occasionally go on a retreat at a Benedictine monastery in VT. They raise sheep, chicken, pigs, and they eat them. It is SO beautiful to see the animals grazing against the backdrop of the Green Mountains. If you go on retreat there, they have two entrée offerings—meat and vegetarian. One of the monks told me that some of them eat the meat because they feel that they have given the animals a good life, and so, the animals return the favor by providing sustenance to the monks. The other monks have come to look at the animals as their friends, and just can’t bring themselves to eat them.
So, again, they exercise personal choice, but both decisions are based on mindfulness, awareness, and respect. As such, in my mind, both are ethical decisions. But how many Americans approach their meat eating in the same way?
The argument that we need the carnivores in nature is, of course, correct. But again, We don’t have to fly over miles of land to get a little morsel. First of all, we can choose what kind of protein we eat. Second, we drive to a supermarket where the meat has been sanitized, cheaply and readily available, and so you can eat far more than you need with very little investment or thought.
Multiply these mindless acts by hundreds of millions of people in this country alone, with no sense of the reciprocity such as the monks had, and you have a travesty of suffering that defies the natural order.
Ok, let me just start by saying that I'm sitting here bored to death by circumstances and enjoying a good discussion/distraction, it's not my intention to beat this to death or need to be right, my mind just really really craves the exercise. Sorry if I've been all over the board or diverting the topic, but it fascinates me.
My understanding of the idea of "knowing" your meat is not so much that you have to have a close and individual relationship with an animal to eat it, that's probably not emotionally feasible for most people. It's the idea of knowing its life. Bae, for example, knows that those deer in his yard have ranged freely, not been subjected to cattle prods or feedlot conditions etc.. Their quality of life has been the best / most natural it could be, given the territory. They're not his friends, they're a part of his biosphere that's out of balance. In my perfect universe, I'd eat lots of chicken - my neighbor's chickens. He could eat mine. Or perhaps ten of us could go to eachother's yards, pick out a chicken, bring them all to a central butcher, and walk away that afternoon with a nicely butchered, anonymous bird. We still "know" these chickens but we don't have personal relationships with them.
I completely agree with your idea of the atrocity of factory farming. I'm not comfortable with even my own DH's disinterest in acknowledging what that supermarket package of $.99 ground beef represents, but I'm also uneasy about where to draw lines ... what he puts in his mouth is not my line to draw. And frankly, I'm exhausted with being the one behind the scenes ensuring that his options are mom-approved, being the only one responsible for finding ways to afford what he wants while honoring my own ethics. What I said to lhamo is about as far as I'm willing to take it. ETA: my point being that I have no idea how (or even whether it's appropriate) to control or influence even the behavior of the person closest to me and find it an exercise in frustration, so I must admit, I turn away from thinking about how on earth to influence the meat ethics of hundreds of millions of strangers.
Overall it's not that I feel everyone needs to eat meat, if it's a personally repugnant idea then by all means don't! But I resent the pressure to feel there's something inherently less gracious about being carnivorous, it's like telling me I'm morally bereft because I'm an atheist, or inherently not as bright because I'm a woman. I'm a woman, an atheist and an omnivore, but those things do not dictate my degree of intelligence, morality or grace.
Health is complex, and I would once again agree with you, there is no emprical formula for good health. Even if there were no environmental variables at all, human beings are still genetically varied and would presumably have different needs. But I do believe with all my heart that there are certain empirical facts about how systems operate. This food is converted to that chemical which is then acted on by this mechanism to become this final product. Basic biochemistry, physics and math don't change from person to person, and to the extent that chemical reactions do differ based on body chemistry of an individual, understanding the basic mechanism is important for understanding the variations. My concern and frustration is that there is so much we don't know, sooo much, and with almost nothing but profit motive fueling research, the discovery of anything that might lead to better health or common sense prevention Without requiring the manufacture and sale of something seems to have been totally overtaken with searches for profitable cures.
Multiply these mindless acts by hundreds of millions of people in this country alone, with no sense of the reciprocity such as the monks had, and you have a travesty of suffering that defies the natural order.
There are over 300,000,000 people in the US alone, and more than 6,000,000,000 people on earth. It's all well and good to discuss better, more humane as well as nutritious sources of food, but the fact of the matter is humans must harvest in one way or another 9,000,000,000,000 calories each and every day just to feed every man, woman and child on earth a modest 1,500 calories/day. And this number continues to grow each and every day.
I know it's better to be idealistic and we each must live according to our own moral and personal health codes, but the fact is if someone removes themselves from the factory farm food chain, there will be someone else who will happily jump into that slot so they don't go to bed hungry that night. If nothing changes in terms of the sheer numbers of mouths that need food, I only see things getting worse.
Years ago people used to say 'science will find a way' to feed everyone and keep them healthy, yet no one likes they ways they have found - genetically modified foods, big pharma, factory farms with their controlled environments, distance shipping, genetically selected strains of animals, pesticides, fertilizers, irradiation of foods, HFCS filler, soil fumigation, hormones...... These sorts of shortcuts to producing food will only get more common as long as the number of people 'wanting' to eat continues to increase.
In 40-50 more years -when the world population has doubled yet again- does anyone think our food sources will be 'better' and more humane? Or even worse?
It really is a depressing picture.
"In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, he starts off by talking about a small Italian community in PA that is extremely long-lived and he talks about how a doctor and a sociologist went there to try to get the secret of their long, healthy lives. He started at the logical place, diet and exercise. But they learned that 41% of the community's diet was fat. Most of them smoked, and they struggled with obesity. To make a long story short, they concluded it was their community, tradition, their practice of walking from house to house and speaking with each other, and their affiliation with organizations and community groups that kept them alive so long. So there are too many variables really to come up with the definitive formula for health."
Roseto. As I recall, once they spread out into the population and got caught up in modern stressors, their offspring started getting just as sick as the rest of us. My oft-stated theory is that illness begins where genes and stress meet, and this community seems to back that up. It's another reason I get so tired of the constant browbeating of smokers and fat people. The bullies are missing the point. Scapegoating people and making pariahs out of them is at least as likely to make them sick as their body shape or habits will.
"In the end, is it really a matter of trusting your own gut and instinct??? "
I think you read and consider, observe the world around you, consult your gut, and move in that direction. The folly of making science your god and sneering at instinct/intuition/unmeasurable variables is that science is generally a lot more corrupt and fallible than your instincts are. IMO.
And I do agree with Ravnskov (and my mother) that you're going to die of something, no matter how obsessive you may be about your health. Worrying about every sneeze and pimple will likely hasten your inevitable demise.
:~) Ya ya, we are. But if 25% of premature death is caused by heart disease that could be easily prevented, even if only 5% of the population dies prematurely, why not incorporate it?
I just got irked, because his ideas / criticisms seemed logical and unbiased and I was patiently ignoring the horrendous grammatical and editing errors that usually goes hand in hand with tracts-from-wackos, and then he mentions as an aside on the last page that his potential conflict of interest, which he has harped on endlessly as a problem with other researchers' positions, is positively gargantuan. It doesn't necessarily negate his work, but it certainly puts a big question mark on it.
It's been awhile since I read Ravnskov, and then mostly articles--though I think I have his latest book--but if I'm interpreting what you say correctly, he may consider the public health implications (macro) less compelling than the physiological ones (micro). I always follow the money, and I doubt he's making much, so I wouldn't worry about this being a conflict of interest.
Also, re statins, you can lower inflammation by avoiding inflammatory substances (including sugar and starchy carbohydrates), by supplementing with B-vitamins (which are consumed by same), by stress-reduction techniques, and probably by regular low-intensity exercise. When triglycerides are brought down this way, LDL generally follows, but if numbers concern you, you can have particle size checked with a VAP test. So-called "large, fluffy" particles are considered harmless. So why take a sledgehammer approach with Lipitor and risk brain damage (see Duane Graveline) or muscle wasting, among other risks.
Re The China Study, Denise Minger does a dazzling (and mind-twisting for those of us disinclined toward statistical analysis) refutation of his tortured findings. Well worth spending time with.
With Ravnskov, I have to wonder ... I believe a lot of the book is a reiteration of his work in Cholesterol Myths. The quality of his analyses only took a nosedive toward the end, where his tone became rather peevish and bitter and his criticisms went from sharp scientific objections to vague harping.
Amazing, that's the third time in two days Graveline has come up in my world. He's the one with the explanation that statins inhibit inflamation-essential NF-bk, and that is the reason they do actually have a positive effect on CHD mortality, it's got nothing to do with cholesterol reduction. This fits so well with the theory of atheroma and vulnerable plaque it made my hair stand up. In one bizzare moment I thought ... heart attack is nothing but the bursting of arterial zits, and grandma was right: sugar gives you pimples. >8)
Perhaps not my most brilliant scientific moment, but I have a feeling there's a grain of truth (and monocyte-engulfed-LDL-bonded bacteria) in there somewhere. :~)
It sounds good to me. I wrote a recent post about scientific breakthroughs being mostly inspiration--sometimes influenced by psychoactive drugs !pow!--and I think your heart-zit theory resonates nicely with that.
:moon:
Well the mechanism of some (all?) heart attacks is almost exactly that, this boil (a "vulnerable plaque") on the artery wall that develops over a cholesterol plaque ("atheroma") inside the wall finally gives way and bursts, releasing chunks of endothelial cells, a pudding-like blob of pus, a thick lump of sebumlike ldl/bacteria, and a tiny bit of blood. The body senses injury and works to create a clot to repair it. This sudden accumulation of glop/clot creates a coronary blockage and results in heart muscle death.
The question is, what's the mechanism that causes the original atheroma, and why can it simply accumulate, causing atherosclerosis but no overt disease, in some people, while it becomes an active inflamed "zit" that causes a heart attack in others. Is the arterial wall damaged, the LDL molecules slip under it and then an infection eventually results? Is the wall damaged and bacteria get in and then the LDL molecules follow to combat the bacteria and get trapped? If so, what damages the arterial wall in the first place? Glucose? Insulin? Fatty Acids? Cortisol? Something else? All of the above? Or is the bonded bacteria and LDL coming in from the other side of the artery, the vasa vasorum, trying to pass naturally through the artery and out of the body and getting stuck in the artery wall for some reason? What is the trigger that causes inflamation of that stuck lump of molecules (or allows it to remain inert)?
The question is: do these atheromas inflame and burst all the time, but only cause a heart attack if they clot fast enough to occlude the artery? That might explain why it's so hard to pinpoint a biochemical difference between heart attack patients and angina patients : the mechanism's exactly the same, heart attack victims just had the bad luck - fast clotting, bigger atheroma or more pus, unfortunate placement of the endothelial flap - to clog the artery. ???
Inquiring minds want to know!!! ... inquiring minds should probably go take a shower already ....
Perhaps a nap would be more productive. You wouldn't be the first inquiring mind who dreamed the solution to a vexing problem.
As far as "what makes the difference?" Lazy thinker that I am, I'd just go back to "genes plus stress." There are assaults, infections, and repair going on all the time inside us, with bodily defenses doing their job and us all unknowing. I figure the best I can do is minimize stressors and not get in the way of the cleanup crew.
Maybe it really is stress, even from a biochemical perspective. Maybe any "sharp" molecule not supposed to be eternally circulating in high levels in the blood, whether it's glucose or cortisol or the remains of howdy doody, eventually causes damage to that raised endothelium over an atheroma. Hmmm.
I divorced Jerry Seinfeld last night because I really just wasn't that into him and frankly he was annoying me and I finally understood that he really wanted to date George. Somehow my naps aren't quite as insightful as the rest of my hours. :~)
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