Prescription for Health: An Animal-Free Diet

It's come to this: Researchers in the United Kingdom are now suggesting that fast-food chains should hand out cholesterol-lowering drugs with cheeseburgers, milkshakes, and other menu items to combat the effects of these fatty foods. But they also say that statins don't stop all of the unhealthy effects.

As a doctor, I agree that statins are not the solution and I'm calling for a reality check.

Decades ago, we learned that the fat and cholesterol in meat boost the amount of cholesterol in consumers' blood. And that leads to heart attacks. So doctors advised us to cut back on meat and get to know vegetables.

Then it was carcinogens. As meat is grilled, cancer-causing chemicals called heterocyclic amines form on its surface, suggesting an explanation for the higher cancer rates in meat-eaters, compared with vegetarians. Chicken turned out to produce much higher levels of carcinogens than beef.

Then it was chemicals. Studies showed that mercury, other heavy metals, and various pesticides show up in animal tissues. Suddenly, fish was our worst nightmare: State and federal monitoring agencies issued strong warnings, especially for children and for women in their reproductive years. Vegetables could be washed or peeled, but that wasn't possible with fish or other meats.

Then it was germs. Salmonella and campylobacter from the meat counter ended up on our kitchen counters and caused thousands of cases of illness every year. The bacterial threat reached a new level when E. coli O157:H7 in hamburgers killed diners at the Jack-in-the-Box chain in the Pacific Northwest. These and other dangerous uninvited guests still turn up routinely on beef, poultry and shellfish. And government agencies spend millions of dollars trying to contain the problem.

The headlines went a step further. Mad cow disease emerged in Europe and sporadically in North American cattle. It is not caused by fat, cholesterol, carcinogens or germs, but by a rogue protein, known as a prion. Government and industry officials spend millions on testing and culling operations, and neurological researchers study the relationships between mad cow disease and rare forms of dementia. Meanwhile, scientists might observe that there is no mad asparagus or mad eggplant disease.

And there is no strawberry flu or avocado flu, either. But bird flu and swine flu have emerged as potential pandemics. Birds and swine carry viruses, just as other animals do. Ordinarily they would pose no risk to humans. But our collective appetite for pork and poultry means millions of pigs and chickens are raised for meat. Once the H5N1 virus enters a poultry farm, it spreads rapidly. And overcrowded pig farms offer a breeding ground for new forms of influenza, like H1N1. For months last year, swine flu hovered just below pandemic level. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all it takes to trigger a pandemic is for the bird flu to infect a person carrying a seasonal flu virus; the two viruses could spawn a disease vector like the one that killed 50 million people in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.

And now, in an attempt to counteract heart attack-inducing meat and dairy products containing saturated fat and cholesterol, we need to take a statin every day.

It's time to wake up and smell the problem. Another study has shown that a vegetarian diet has essentially the same effectiveness as cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. Millions of Americans now say no to meat. As they do so, their cholesterol levels plummet. Their coronary arteries open up again. Their waistlines shrink, and their cancer rates drop 40 percent. A healthy vegetarian diet could revolutionize the health of the nation. 

Neal D. Barnard, MD, is President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at the George Washington University. He conducts research studies on diet and health and is the author of 15 books. Web: www.pcrm.org

Facebook | Twitter | Email

Comments (0)

Show/hide comments

Show/hide comment form