An installment in a series: Red Pill Reality Dispelling Blue Pill Delusions
This is a portrait of the man who is responsible for much of the mythology, shibboleths and lies about diet and human nutrition that is now the basis of much of the Government's "guidelines" and the recent epidemic of ill health and malnutrition that plagues Western Civilization.
He is John Harvey Kellog. He was a seventh day Adventist and one of the founding Father's of American militant veganism. This man promoted some of the myths surrounding animal foods that still are repeated to this day. Ideas like meat impacts the colon and putrifies in your gut, that meat eating and saturated fats are the causes of so many diseases today - he was a militant vegan who made it his life's goal to promote veganism to the masses as the key to long, healthy living.
He is almost solely responsible for changing the typical American breakfast of bacon, sausage and eggs to his most famous invention: grain-based breakfast cereal.
What many modern day vegans do not realize is that they are the ideological heirs of Kellog. None of his memes and shibboleths that he spread to market his cereal as a more 'healthy' breakfast was ever founded on scientifically proven experiments. He simply promoted his Seventh-Day Adventist dietary proscriptions to the masses (and for his cereal companies enormous profit).
One of the paleo-blogs I regularly read,
Free the Animal, has a guest post up today, written by a former long time vegan and animal rights activist, Lorette Luzajec, entitled
Life and Death and the Garden of Eden in which she expounds further on exactly how and why Kellog's vegetarian myths that have become largely conventional wisdom are based nothing more than on his faith that meat eating was the primary driver of the sexual sin of "lust" and how that legacy is unknowingly carried on today by the modern day vegan and animal rights movements.
We’ve been told so frequently that vegetarians are healthier and live longer than shameless carnivores that even Paleo diet proponents may be surprised by new headlines refuting this common “wisdom.” Because we’ve had to dig deeply for truth under the monocrop and animal liberation propaganda. When Sally Fallon suggested that saturated fat is “good for you,” her outrageous assertions spawned websites bickering about how some people also think the world is flat. The idea that shunning animal foods is the ticket to paradise is widespread today. It is considered common knowledge that vegetarians enjoy better health benefits, a miraculous life span, and shining skin, along with a squeaky clean conscience. But the truth is that behind all these glowing good intentions 0and nutrition “facts” is that vegetarianism is not a diet- it is a fundamentalist religion.
This is exactly the kind of dietary wisdom I thought I "knew" years before I discovered the Weston Price Foundation's website. It was also the diet I thought was most healthful, and I tried following as much as possible. It took years of continuous weight gain and a host of mild health afflictions for me to finally question my dietary "knowledge."
Now I know the reality - there are a whole host of industries, corporations and government agencies in bed with those corporate entities, that all profit enormously off of the status quo of nutritional disinformation started by the likes of Kellog.
When the 1950s Lipids Hypothesis guessed that animal fat in the western diet was responsible for our growing rates of death and disease, it was good news for the vegetable oil industries to glom onto. Where for millennia, we had used lard and butter, now we used corn and soy oils. That these same oils and white sugar and flour might be the guilty party in the deadly western diet wasn’t given the time of day. Forever after, animal fat was vilified as a vicious foe.
Some of you may wonder why I haven't had a new blog posting in over a week. For the sake of maintaining some semblance of internet anonymity, let's just say I've been in the hospital for an extended visit. (For anyone that cares, It wasn't myself but a family member that was hospitalized. All is well now.)
While suffering in boredom in a hospital bed, I found the hospitals own "video on demand" channel. I dialed up the "Diet and Nutrition" video.
I think it's no mystery, the healthcare "industry" in this country profits immensely from the continued promulgation of the kind of dietary propaganda started by the likes of Kellog. It was all there..avoid eating fats and meats. If you MUST eat meat, make sure it's lean, with all the fat trimmed off. Substitute plant based fats in place of animal fats - like margarine instead of butter, corn and soy oil instead of lard, etc. Healthy grains instead of meat. Exercise more, eat less calories. And all of these ideas were reinforced by the hospital cafeteria and the crap they dare call "food" that I found myself having to eat because I simply didn't have the time or opportunity to leave the hospital for some real food.
It's rather ironic, that the three things I consider the most essential for a sick or injured human being needs to aid his or her recovery - good sleep, good food, and intervals of fresh air and sunshine - are all bereft in the hospital environment.
I hope that the day I die, it is NOT in the sterile, climate controlled, politically correct institution of an American hospital, eating their crappy "food" and kept from the sun and a truly restful sleep.
But I digress. Back to Luzajic's excellent treatise:
But before that, the monocrop monolith took our meat away for moral motivations, not merely monetary ones. In the 1800s, Doctors Graham and Kellogg came onto the scene, pushing their corn and wheat fibre snake oil. Avoiding constipation with fibre, you see, would keep us pure and save us from our sins. Meat had to be avoided at all costs, not because of compassion for our fuzzy friends, but because it incited lust. Leo Tolstoy’s “peaceful” lifestyle was mainly about how meat inflamed lust. Early waves of western vegetarianism were totally based on the religious ideal of avoiding meat to avoid sexuality. (Yes, monastic practices avoid meat to avoid killing, but also to make celibacy easier. Monks knew that soy had a feminizing effect on their manhood.) Incidentally, the infantile obsession that some vegetarians have with “impacted fecal matter” clogging colons everywhere comes from these ancient cereal quacks. Kellogg wrote extensively about how meat clumped into the colon and rectum and pushed onto the sex organs, pressuring them into lust. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. There is zero truth behind this “condition.” It doesn’t exist.
But as the aftermath of this obsession with sex and feces was a fortune in the cereal markets, and as moralizing brought about vast gains in the vegetable oil industry, the world over came to believe that a vegetarian diet was the key to eternal youth and happiness. This is precisely in line with fundamentalist religions.
The more I read vegan websites and messageboards, the more I see the truth of what Luzajic states: veganism is a fundamentalist ideology, that ignores any facts that contradict the tenets of their faith, or explain away or rationalize inconsistencies so as to avoid dealing with cognitive dissonance.
For myself, the cognitive dissonance was what eventually lead to quitting the blue pill of conventional dietary wisdom cold turkey. Now we know, meat is not murder...it is life sustaining and healing!
It’s turning out that soy protein is deficient in certain animo acids and high in estrogenic compounds, wreaking havoc on human testosterone levels. Turns out meat is loaded with antioxidants, and the strongest antioxidants are not found in plants, but in our own bodies- and they are nourished with, guess what, the amino acids in meat. Turns out that vitamin B12 is one of our most potent protectors from coronary disease. That’s the vitamin found largely in animal foods.
It is reprehensible to withhold knowledge or misguide people for financial gain or an “ethical” agenda. Since B12 was the “only” nutrient found in meat that could not be obtained from plant foods, its importance was greatly minimized in vegetarian literature. Gurus of “compassion” like John Robbins went so far as to instruct followers not to worry about it. But even the China Study’s Dr. Colin Campbell says he takes supplements.
While news about disease caused by the absence of dietary B12 is now finally reaching people, the truth that meat contains a whole host of nutrients not found in plants is still suppressed. Vitamin D, Vitamin A, zinc, iron, chromium, DHA, cholesterol, saturated fat, carnitine….Since some of these nutrients are “technically” found in plants, idealists can fool the populace. Zinc is one example. This extremely important nutrient can certainly be obtained from vegetables. You need to eat hundreds of servings a day. Saturated fat is a vital nutrient, but idealists got rid of the problematic absence in plant foods by declaring it a disease monger.
Yes, our greatest hope of longevity and vibrant health is meat. Cutting modern plant foods out of our diet- grains, sugars, processed foods, vegetable oils- means our antioxidants don’t have as much work to do. Filling up on meat, fish, eggs, and fresh veggies means living longer.
...
Plant eaters and carnivores alike may be surprised to discover that many “aging” processes are nothing more than physical damage caused by carbohydrates. With all the talk about antioxidants, we know that much aging is the result of oxidative stress. The newest darling of discovery is carnosine, and the “carn” part is correct- only carnivores, or meat eaters, get it. What is it? Not to be confused with carnitine, another good friend, it is a dipeptide of the amino acids beta-alanine and histidine, found concentrated in muscle and brain tissue. It occurs in our own bodies, and diminishes with age, oxidative stress, etc. We can consume it in our diet, through animal foods.
It is proven to be a high performing antioxidant. It is an antiglycator- those familiar with words like “glycogen” and so forth will recognize the “glyc” and the “anti” from which you can surmise that it “gets rid of sugar.” Well, yes. It gets rid of sugar damage- helping to prevent and repair glycation and glycosylation. Those are fancy words, loosely referring to sugar aldehydes reacting with the amino acids on the protein molecule. Picture, more simply, what happens when you cut fruit open and it goes yellow. Glycation is one of the primary mechanisms for wrinkles!!!!!
Preventing and repairing glycosylation is far reaching- it positively impacts the immune system, the heart, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, kidney problems, cataracts, autism, pain, retards cancer, alcohol damage, liver problems, longevity, neurodegeneration, olfactory sense, cellular health, wound healing, inflammation, protection from radiation damage, muscle mass, and skin health.
Animal foods are the only sources of this nutrient, and this nutrient is absolutely vital in aging gracefully and avoiding cancer, diabetes, brain deterioration and immunity problems. So once again I must ask why we are always told to avoid or cut down on our meat intake and eat a plant based diet. I must ask why the truth is suppressed, twisted, or outright denied.
Vegetarianism is completely foreign to the human diet. The only vegetarian societies were meat-free for religious reasons. Vegetarianism is, and always has been, about religion, one that must not be imposed on anyone unless they come to it of their own free will, in full knowledge of their true dietary heritage. Religion has often been about denying the body and sacrificing its needs and lusts. It has often been about controlling the sex lives of its followers. Fasting, flagellation, sexual “purity” and ascetic denial are behind many faith practices. They are behind the agenda of early vegetarian proponents like Tolstoy and Kellogg, who were both obsessed with sex.
But the life of a monk is for a contemplative, not for a layman. And packaging idealism as nutritional science is reprehensible. Some of us see a simple spirituality in accepting our full humanity rather than denying it. Certainly spiritual principles call for truth, not lies. Eating meat is no more immoral for me than it is for a cat- since all claims to the contrary, this IS the way I was “designed.”
Life feeds on life.
Incidentally, Lujavic's concluding paragraph is a core tenet of my own beliefs, and precisely why I hunt...why I kill animals, butcher, cook and eat them - it is precisely because I have a profound respect for the cycle of life, for which I consciously choose to participate in.
It is absolutely moral to feed ourselves and our families on the food nature made for us. Far from being vicious and bloodthirsty, it shows a profound respect for nature unencumbered by naïve fantasy. It shows a respect for the circle of life and death, for the sacrifice another makes to nourish me fully and keep me alive. Amen.
