Thursday, April 4, 2013

correlation = causation?


And while I'm on the subject of nutrition for health - 

About 6 or 7 years ago, my dad read the book "The China Study" and was preaching it to everyone he met. "Animal protein is the cause of cancer, heart disease, obesity, and all other modern/western epidemic health problems and a 100% plant-based diet would cure all these maladies."

Then they made the book into a movie: "Forks over Knives."

I even bought it and tried to go vegan. That lasted about 2 weeks. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I've never been much of a wheat eater (rarely eat bread and pasta) so to fill myself up I needed lots of fruits, vegetables, and nuts - which got very expensive very quickly and still always left me hungry. It was also about that time I started to figure out I was intolerant of soy, as I had switched out cow's milk with soy milk - and was feeling BAD. So after giving up on veganism I figured - oh well, I exercise enough, and it's sedentary people who get most of those diseases - I'm not too worried about it.

What brought this to mind was that recently a vegetarian friend of mine made the claim that eating meat was "bad."

My thought was: "that's what the human race evolved eating over hundreds of thousands of years... how has it suddenly become 'bad' for you now? (In just the past 50-60 years)"

How would we succeed and evolve as a species, eating something that was harmful to our health?

Then a quick turn of the Google got me this:
http://www.westonaprice.org/vegetarianism-and-plant-foods/the-china-study-myth

So if you're a vegetarian because you believe meat is bad for your health, you're a victim of popaganda. Sorry. Have a steak. It's delicious and won't kill you. And even if it did, who would want to live that kind of life?

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