[-V-]

Author and conscious living counselor, Kathy Freston, starts out this terrific article on the Huffington Post with:

When I tell people that I'm a vegan, the most popular question, by far, inevitably follows: "But, how do you get enough protein?"

There it is again, I think, the meat industry's most potent weapon against vegetarianism--the protein myth. And it is just that--a myth.

I'm an Italian from NY. So, when people ask me where I get my protein from, and they always do, my response and gesture is, "I got your protein right here...". Then I boldly proclaim that anyone getting enough calories, is probably getting enough protein. In 15 years of a no-meat, very little dairy diet (I can't go cold-pizza, it's in my blood) I've never once concerned myself with protein and I haven't had any health issues to be concerned about. (Oh, and I confess to not taking any supplements or vitamins either)

Here's more of her more tactful and informative article:


Posted May 31, 2008 | 09:58 PM (EST)
Conscious Eating, Kathy Freston, Nutrition, Protein, Living News
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/conscious-eating-okay-but_b_104502.html

...
In fact, humans need only 10 percent of the calories we consume to be from protein. Athletes and pregnant women need a little more, but if you're eating enough calories from a varied plant based diet, it's close to impossible to not get enough.

The way Americans obsess about protein, you'd think protein deficiency was the number one health problem in America. Of course it's not--it's not even on the list of the ailments that doctors are worried about in America or any other countries where basic caloric needs are being met.

What is on the list? Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity--diseases of affluence. Diseases linked to eating animal products. According to the American Dietetic Association, which looked at all of the science on vegetarian diets and found not just that they're healthy, but that they "provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases."

They continue: "Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence... Vegetarians have been reported to have lower body mass indices than nonvegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; vegetarians also show lower blood cholesterol levels; lower blood pressure; and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer."

Dr. Dean Ornish writes of his Eat More, Weigh Less vegetarian diet--the one diet that has passed peer-review for taking weight off and keeping it off for more than 5 years--that in addition to being the one scientifically proven weight loss plan that works long-term, it "may help to prevent a wide variety of other illnesses including breast cancer in women, prostate cancer in men, colon cancer, lung cancer, lymphoma, osteoporosis, diabetes, hypertension, and so on...."

...

Beans, nuts, seeds, lentils, and whole grains are packed with protein. So are all vegetables as a caloric percentage, though they don't have enough calories to sustain most people as a principal source of sustenance. And these protein sources have some excellent benefits that animal protein does not--they contain plenty of fiber and complex carbohydrates, where meat has none. That's right: Meat has no complex carbs at all, and no fiber. Plant proteins are packed with these essential nutrients.

Plus, since plant-based protein sources don't contain cholesterol or high amounts of saturated fat, they are much better for you than meat, eggs, and dairy products.

It is also worth noting the very strong link between animal protein and a few key diseases, including cancer and osteoporosis.

According to Dr. Ornish (this may be the most interesting link in this article, by the way--it's worth reading the entire entry), "high-protein foods, particularly excessive animal protein, dramatically increase the risk of breast cancer, prostate cancer, heart disease, and many other illnesses. In the short run, they may also cause kidney problems, loss of calcium in the bones, and an unhealthy metabolic state called ketosis in many people."

The cancer connection is spelled out at length in a fantastic book by Cornell scientist T. Colin Campbell, called The China Study. Basically, there is overwhelming scientific evidence to implicate that animal protein consumption causes cancer.

And just a few quick anecdotal points:

• Olympian Carl Lewis has said that his best year of track competition was the first year that he ate a vegan diet (he is still a strong proponent of vegan diets for athletes).

• Strength trainer Mike Mahler says, "Becoming a vegan had a profound effect on my training. ... [M]y bench press excelled past 315 pounds, and I noticed that I recovered much faster. My body fat also went down, and I put on 10 pounds of lean muscle in a few months."

• Bodybuilder Robert Cheeke advises, "The basics for nutrition are consuming large amounts of fresh green vegetables and a variety of fruits, to load yourself up with vibrant vitamins and minerals."

A few other vegans, all of whom sing the praises of the diet for their athletic performance: Ultimate fighter Mac Danzig, ultramarathoner Scott Jurek, Minnesota Twins pitcher Pat Neshek, Atlanta Hawks Guard Salim Stoudamire, and Kansas City Chiefs tight-end Tony Gonzalez.

And let's not forget about tennis star Martina Navratilova, six-time Ironman winner Dave Scott, four-time Mr. Universe Bill Pearl, or Stan Price, the world-record holder in bench press. They are just a few of the successful vegetarian athletes.
...

[Wafflepudding]

I thought it was common sense that:

1.- Herbivores make protein out of vegetables
2.- We can eat vegetables and have most of the same organs
3.- We can make protein out of vegetables

I'm not vegan, but I'm not buying the meat industry's bs either.

[FDRfollower]

TO FEED THE WORLD, FEED THE FARMERS!

Basic fact sheet on the physical realities
of world food and agriculture

By Karel Vereycken, Paris, June 7, 2008

1) World food crisis

What are we talking about? What are the present conditions of our
beloved mankind?

First: out of the approximately 6.5 billion people living
currently on the planet, 3.2 billion live with less then 2
dollars per day and 1 billion with less than 1 dollar a day.

Two billion people have no access to electricity, while 1 billion
have no drinking water.

This deprives 2 billion people of permanent food security
(quantity and access), provoking what is called invalidating
deficiencies: 1.5 billion lack iron; 700 million lack iodine; 200
million lack vitamin A and other vitamins.

FAO statistics for 2005 say that 852 million people suffer
chronic hunger. Out of these, 815 million live in the developing
countries, 28 million in communist countries and 9 million in the
developed countries. The number of people dying from chronic
hunger amounts to 24,000 per day, out of which 16,000 are
children.

2) Trends

However, if Jacques Diouf says that in 2008, those suffering
chronic hunger are 860 million (one out of seven), the number was
920 million in 1970 when the world population was only 3,696
billion (close to one out of four). So chronic hunger reduction
did take place and was seen so far as reducing the average number
by around 2.3 million per year over 35 years (Which means it
would take several centuries to bring it to zero).

In 1996, 180 chiefs of state met at the FAO conference and
adopted the principle of reducing chronic hunger by 50% before
2015, meaning a reduction of the number by 20 million per year
(i.e., ten times more). But nothing was done to ameliorate the
situation; on the contrary, globalization ruined agriculture.

3) Who are they?

Out of the 852 million of people suffering from chronic hunger in
2005, 560 million live outside the cities, in the countryside,
ill equipped and in areas with terrible climates. The rest,
around 300 million, left the farmland to try to survive in the
large slums around urban centres.

So this gives us one of the most dramatic paradoxes to look at,
namely the fact that the largest number of people dying from
hunger in the world are farmers themselves!

4) Agriculture and agriculture

Specialists say analyzing agriculture implies identifying three
distinct types of agriculture, defined by the use of energy:
motor, animal, and physical human labor.

The total number of working farmers in the world is estimated at
1,340 millions (2.6 billion when one includes the families).

1) MOTOR

The modern agriculture which resulted from the agricultural
revolution: These are the guys that drive the 30 million tractors
that operate in the world (around 2% of all farmers!).

Mechanization and motorization increases not only the yields but
also the size of farmland that can be cultivated. The
introduction of motorization, helped with seed and animal species
selection, fertilizer, chemicals and irrigation, increased
productivity drastically. For example, in France, in 1900, one
farmer could produce 100 quintals (1 quintal = 100 kg) per
harvest, while in 2000, one farmer produces 20,000 quintals per
harvest, i.e. a 200-fold increase of productivity.

The agricultural revolution produced a rural exodus, which was
solved, as during FDRs New Deal, by creating industrial jobs and
useful services (education, health, etc.).

2) ANIMAL AND PHYSICAL HUMAN POWER

800 million farmers have access to selected plant and animal
species, fertilizer and some irrigation, but no access to
motorization. Out of these 800 million, 400 million use oxen and
horses (labouring up to 5 hectares (ha) per farmer), while
another 400 million use physical human labor (labouring around
0.5 to 1 ha per farmer). Yields are estimated between 100 and 500
quintals/ha. (One hectare = 2.471 acres.)

3) ORPHANED AGRICULTURE

The remaining 500 million farmers (1/3 of all farmers) covering
the vast regions of Africa, Asia, and parts of Ibero-America,
have neither motorization, nor fertilizer, nor animal or seed
selection, nor irrigation. All labor is done by hand, and farmers
generally labor on 1 ha and produce a maximum of 10 quintals per
farmer harvest. This makes the total number of farmers labouring
only with the human body more than 900 million (400 with
fertilizer and seeds, and 500 million carrying out orphaned
agriculture).

The energy mode employed defines both yields per ha and the size
of farm area cultivable per farmer.

To summarize the figures in terms of energy (machine) use:

Out of total number of the 1.34 billion farmers of the planet:
--26.7 million use tractors (FAO figures for 2002) (yields
up to 20,000 quintals per ha)
--400 million use oxen and horses (farmland limited to 5 ha
per harvest)
--1 billion labour with their bare hands (farmland limited
to 1 ha per harvest of around 10 quintals, i.e., a yield 2,000
times less then motorized farming!)

These facts alone, prove that unbridled competition is a total
fraud, since those competing have differences by a factor of
2,000!

5) How many people can be fed by a single productive farmer?

The estimate is that the work of 1 productive farmer can produce
the needs for pork and chicken of 5,000 persons for a full year.
How does that work?

a) The farmer has 100 ha of land. To feed the cattle he can
grow 60 ha with cereals, 20 ha with peas and 20 ha with rapeseed.
b) The 60 ha of cereals produce 432 tonnes of wheat, the 20
ha produce 94 tons of peas and the 20 ha of rapeseed produce 62
tons of seeds of rapeseed, transformed into 35 tons of cattle
cake and 27 tons of oil.
c)The well proportioned mixture of wheat, peas and rapeseed
cattle cake can feed 82,000 chicken and 1,800 pigs for a full
year.
d) These cattle will give us 123 tons of poultry meat and
150 tons of pork.
e) This is enough meat for 5,000 people for a full year,
produced by one single farmer.

Two questions arise. A simple mathematical calculation indicates
that if one farmer can feed 5,000 people, then only 1 million
farmers would be sufficient to feed 5 billion people! We don't
eat only meat, so we could say we need 5 times more for fruits,
vegetables, fish, etc. It still means we only need 5 million
productive farmers to feed the planet! So, over 1 billion people
are definitely wasting their lives as they are forced to be
unproductive.

6) Why animal protein in the first place?

The latest Malthusian fashion is to claim that if we go back to
eating only vegetables, we can feed the world population, since,
as we saw, you need 100 ha of farmland to produce the meat for
5,000 people. And farmland takes a lot of water and energy.

To understand the importance of animal protein, one has to
understand some of the ABCs of nutrition.

[FDRfollower]

<Continued>

What basically feeds human beings are basically two vital
elements: proteins and lipids (fats).

a) Lipids (animal or vegetable) are mainly forms of grease
(1 gram of lipids equals 9 calories) and vitamins we get from
butter, vegetable oil, etc.

b) Proteins (animal or vegetable) have millions of different
structures. However, all are combinations of the only 20 amino
acids that exist.

c) Out of the 20 amino acids, 12 are constructed by the
human body. The remaining 8 are called "essential" because they
have to be brought to the body from outside. If you don't
introduce them, you have a problem, and the living organism will
start eating the only proteins stored in the body: the muscles.
That's why human starvation and the concentration camp look
alike.

d) If you have a protein with only seven of the eight
indispensable amino acids, that protein will have a far less
usefulness for your nutrition.

e) Most vegetables have some essential amino acids, but
never the combination of the vital 8. Animal protein (meat, fish,
eggs, milk, etc.) unite in correct proportions the 8 vital
essential amino acids and that's why animal protein is obviously
the most efficient way to feed humanity.

f) Extreme cases of vegetarianism (zero animal protein) are
suicidal. A pregnant woman refusing to eat animal protein
generally kills her baby.

g) If you are a multimillionaire boomer you could select,
with the help of a nutritionist, those vegetables which give you
the same combinations of the vital 8 essential amino acids. Good
public policy can go in that direction. For example combining
beans and maize as the Mexicans do is not so bad, but remains
insufficient.

Meat has been demonized over the years (cholesterol, weight,
aggressiveness, etc.)

Also, it is said, a meat eating society consumes at least 5 times
more water resources than a non-meat-eating society.

The latest argument is that global warming is caused by global
farting. CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas. Methane (CH4) is
another one massively produced by cattle. According to the IPCCC,
one molecule of methane is 23 times more destructive then a
single molecule of CO2. Even worse, manure produces laughing gas
(NO2) whose impact on climate is 296 times greater than CO2.
Raising cattle, according to an FAO report of 2006, produces 18%
of all greenhouse gases, i.e., more than world transport!

Of course, the British scientists Tony McMichael and John Powles
called for reducing red meat consumption by 10% to lower
significantly the impact of modern cattle on climate change.

So let's laugh a good fart about these British lies and get the
food on everybody's table.

[Jennifer_SFBA]

Hi, FDRfollower.

Thank you for posting that. It's interesting to contemplate.

"First: out of the approximately 6.5 billion people living
currently on the planet, 3.2 billion live with less then 2
dollars per day and 1 billion with less than 1 dollar a day."

Areas termed developing countries have the greatest population, 4.2 billion human beings out of the total of 6.5 billion human beings presently inhabiting planet Earth.

"Two billion people have no access to electricity, while 1 billion
have no drinking water."

"Out of the 852 million of people suffering from chronic hunger in
2005, 560 million live outside the cities, in the countryside,
ill equipped and in areas with terrible climates. ..."

NOTE: By and large, the industrialized world eats meat, but the issue below is not who eats what, but, rather, that many human beings have little to nothing to eat and, thereby, die of starvation.

"FAO statistics for 2005 say that 852 million people suffer
chronic hunger. Out of these, 815 million live in the developing
countries, 28 million in communist countries and 9 million in the
developed countries. The number of people dying from chronic
hunger amounts to 24,000 per day, out of which 16,000 are
children."

There is much more, just in the article you posted, for people here to consider, FDRfollower.

As a side note;

"chemtrails" have been independantly analyzed. They are sprayed to lessen area warming. They contain extremely high concentrations of aluminum and barium crystals.

According to the inventor, the justification for building HAARP was to modify weather. Following the U.S. lead, other countries developed a HAARP system. HAARP has been operational in several countries for many years.

[-V-]

FDR, that's a peculiar, all over the place article by some writer, Karel Vereycken, who doesn't appear to have any medical or nutrition background, spewing out a lot of statistics with very few references and I can't really figure out where she stands or what her point is.

For example, she says,
"The latest Malthusian fashion is to claim that if we go back to eating only vegetables we can feed the world population"

Then, she never refutes the claim.

She adds,
"And farmland takes a lot of water and energy."

It sure does, and after you've used a lot of it to grow the feed you've got to use that and a lot more water and energy to grow the animals instead of feeding people directly with it.

And this,
"If you are a multimillionaire boomer you could select,
with the help of a nutritionist, those vegetables which give you
the same combinations of the vital 8 essential amino acids."

For the past 15 years I've been living very nicely on a couple of dollars worth of vegetarian foods per day which I buy at any grocery store. As for those "8 essential amino acids" :jerk:

Here's some of my own research:

"Hunger is really a social disease caused by the unjust, inefficient and wasteful control of food", declares John Robbins. "The livestock population of the United States today consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population of the country. We feed these animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats" (351-353).

Speaking for many environmentalists, Robbins goes on to say that over half of the country's harvest land is used to grow crops for animals and that for every 16 pounds of grain and soybeans we feed cattle, we get back only one pound as beef and 15 pounds as manure. In addition we waste 90% of its protein, 96% of its calories, 100% of its fiber, and 100% of its carbohydrates. Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council estimates that if Americans were to reduce their meat consumption by only 10%, "it would free enough grain to feed every one of the 60 million human beings who will starve to death on the planet this year" (352). The gravity of the situation is exemplified by the fact that, at the height of the Ethiopia famine in 1984, millions of dollars in food crops were being imported out of Ethiopia to be eaten by animals in our factory farms (Gold).

Our topsoil and forests also pay the price. Between 1960 and 1985 40% of all Central American rainforests were destroyed to create pasture for beef cattle (Living). An article by Mark Gold in the New Internationalist informs us that each hamburger we eat costs us 55 square feet of rainforest to produce (9). Economists David Fields and Robin Hur estimate that for every person who switches to a pure vegetarian diet, an acre of trees is spared every year. Likewise, John Robbins estimates that 200 million acres of American land could be returned to forest if we were to stop raising food to feed livestock, and instead raise food directly for people (263).

Overgrazing and non-sustainable methods of growing feed also result in the ruination of the topsoil that is needed to grow all crops. The U.S. Soil Conservation Service reports that 85% of our annual topsoil loss is directly associated with livestock raising (Robbins). A total of 1/3 of the countries topsoil has already been lost, stresses Marcus Halevi in a Humane Society "Close-Up Report" (3).

Our water supply is also sacrificed. Halevi points to statistics that over half of our country's water use is directed to raising livestock. Another statistic states that to produce a single pound of meat takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water (Living). Or, as Newsweek magazine puts it, "The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer would float a destroyer" (Robbins). Meanwhile, says Robbins, "The excrement from America's animals (250,000 pounds a second) often ends up back in our rivers streams and lakes. This amounts to twenty times as much organic waste water pollution as the human population of the U.S. and 3 times as much as the rest of the nation's industries combined (371) . Additionally, Marcus Helevi explains how the methane expelled by billions of farm animals and their excrement, along with the related de-forestation, greatly contribute to the destruction of the ozone layer which protects us from ultraviolet radiation (2).

Though it may seem on the surface, that modern farming methods save the consumer money at the grocery store, it has already been demonstrated to have many hidden costs. There are several more that should be identified. One, is that the exorbitant consumption of water by the agricultural industry is subsidized by state and federal government which, of course, is subsidized by the public (Robbins). To make matters worse, in relation to the energy crisis, agricultural engineers at Ohio State University found that even the least efficient plant production is nearly ten times as efficient as any animal breeding operation. A feature article in Scientific America proclaimed, "The trends in meat consumption and energy consumption are on a collision course" (368) . Robbins further observes that, "If we kicked the meat habit there would be no need for nuclear power plants, our electric bills would be far lower, and our dependence on foreign oil would be greatly reduced (376) . His message is reinforced by economists Fields and Hurr who predict increases in personal savings resulting from reduced spending on alternate foods, prescription drugs, medical care and insurance. They claim, "Savings on health care alone could be expected to reach 200 billion within 5 years" (Robbins).