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floor. When the animal was hobbled, it couldn't struggle very much, so several men pushed it over, and it lay on the ground, and they cut its throat. It got exhausted, and eventually bled to death. Well that process was very unpleasant, and there were hygienic as well as welfare objections to that. So they invented the casting pen—with the help of animal welfarists, which I find incredible.
"It was a pen into which the animal was driven, and the sides were moved up so that it was squashed in. Then the pen was capsized, so the animal was turned upside down. Those are very unpleasant circumstances, particularly for animals with a big rumen, like bullocks and cows, because the weight of their stomach actually prevents them from breathing.
"Then there begins an appalling time of battering about and screaming and wriggling—as I say, a half-ton bullock, wriggling like a little puppy. Sometimes, it will get a leg out, sometimes both legs. It would be battering its head up and down. I saw these dreadful, blood-covered casting pens where the animals were bleeding from where they'd bashed their heads on the floor, because they were so terrified. I used to time this, and it was always over a minute before the animal's struggles died down. Then they'd put some water onto its neck, which started it struggling again. Then you'd have another bout of this awful struggling. And by that time, it was more or less exhausted, and couldn't do much more. Then, an ordinary slaughterman held the animal's head, and the Jewish slaughterman, a shochet, took the big knife, called a chalof and cut the animal's throat from side to side. In some slaughterhouses, after the cut has been made, an ordinary slaughterman may shove a knife into the chest, through the wound, to make it bleed more plentifully. And then it's hoisted up by a back leg, and left there to bleed for a while, before it's finally butchered— dressed as they say."
"Is halal, the Muslim procedure, significantly different?"
"With halal, quite a number will now accept prior stunning of the animal. And there are moves afoot for both types to accept slaughter in a upright position, so that the cut has to come from below.
"Sheep and goats are the main halal animals. I spoke to one Iman who was slaughtering, and he was complaining that he was really a holy man, a learned man, and he really shouldn't be doing things like
this. The procedures in that place were equally appalling—they were not using any prestunning, and the sheep and goats were twitching about for minutes on a cratch while they bled to death, some of them were actually falling off onto the floor. And the animals were being slaughtered within sight of one another, which shouldn't have been happening. The whole thing was dreadful. The foreman of that particular place told me that he tried to do something about it, but he had trouble with race relations. He told me that he dare not stir things up, and the meat inspector told me the same. All they had succeeded in doing was to try to improve things by severing the spinal cord immediately after the cut had been made. Well that is a very dubious procedure, and that whole process was ghastly.
"Another problem with ritual slaughter taking place in a 'mixed' slaughterhouse is that it tends to corrupt the other system. You have to remember that slaughtermen are often paid on a per-kill basis, so the quicker they can get the animals through, the more it pleases them, the more money they get. If they can cut out a 'nicety'—and I use the word rather cynically—like stunning, then that will speed things up. So the ordinary slaughtermen will look at the ritual slaughterers avoiding it, and they are tempted to do the same."
"Have you come across any slaughtermen who have had qualms of conscience about what they do?"
"Yes. I often ask them, 'Would you want to do this again?' Every foremen I've asked that has said 'No.' They've told me that they're glad their children aren't doing it. Who would want their daughter to marry a slaughterman? One told me he'd never go back to slaughtering horses, and he would never have anything to do with ritual slaughter. Yes, I find that there are men who think about it in more detail. But of course, it attracts a number of people who are, unfortunately, brutal types. Every now and then you see a case of cruelty to animals, and it often involves a butcher or slaughterman. It's not really surprising."
"Yes, I know of several unpleasant cases like that. There was a slaughterman who was recently sentenced to a maximum-security hospital for strangling a woman and then drinking her blood — a real-life vampire. He said he used to do the same thing to the animals in the slaughterhouse."
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"Yes, and I've come across a bunch of slaughtermen who were tormenting a cat. They'd shoved a knife in its mouth—this is an illegal way of slaughtering animals, but it is used for poultry, to stab through the mouth into the back of the throat. It's a horrid, slow death."
"Now, one more question about ritual slaughter. Many people would avoid ritually slaughtered meat if they knew the animal had been killed like that. But there's no way of telling, is there? The meat on your plate could easily come from an animal killed like this?"
"Yes. What happens is that the hindquarters of the animal can't be 'porged'—which means taking out the blood vessels and the sciatic nerve. So butchers find it more profitable to sell just the forequarters to the Jewish trade, and to pass the hindquarters into the ordinary trade. So today, you'll find that those people who criticize ritual slaughter may in reality be sitting down to eat a bit of meat killed by the very method they abhor."
"What keeps you awake at night?"
"What horrifies me most is the thought, 'Will I get hardened to all this?' "
MEAT CENTRAL U.S.A.
What actually happens in today's slaughterhouse? Gail Eisnitz is one of America's leading experts on slaughterhouse practices and has conducted investigations for the Humane Farming Association, an organization that monitors and tries to improve conditions in slaughterhouses. Over the years, she has visited many of the nation's meat packing plants, taking detailed notes, photographs, interviews, and testimonies. She knows as well as anyone what goes on in these unseen places, where living creatures are reduced to burgers, hot dogs, steaks and grills. Her book Slaughterhouse caused an uproar when it was published a few years ago, because it provided such incontrovertible evidence of widespread cruelty. 5 I asked Gail to explain how she first got involved in this area. This is what she told me:
My story began back in 1989 when I received a complaint from a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) employee stationed inside a beef plant in Florida. He said that the cattle at his plant
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were not being properly stunned and they were still alive and fully conscious when they were having their heads skinned. Not only was he concerned for the animals, but he was also worried about the workers who were getting injured by struggling animals that were kicking and thrashing as workers were skinning them. I contacted USDA headquarters to ask about conditions at that plant and was told that the allegations were not true, so I traveled down to Florida and interviewed plant workers who corroborated the allegations. Before contacting me, the whistle-blower had attempted to get corrective action from his USDA supervisors, and when that failed, he had gone to members of Congress, the Veteran's Administration, anyone who would listen. When word leaked through one of his friends that he had contacted me for help, he was fired.
The fact that he was fired was pretty ironic since the U.S. Department of Agriculture is the very agency that is charged with enforcing the Humane Slaughter Act. The Humane Slaughter Act was passed nearly fifty years ago to ensure that animals in federally inspected packing plants are not abused during handling or slaughter. More specifically, the Humane Slaughter Act requires that animals in federally inspected slaughterhouses—those are the slaughterhouses that kill 98 percent of farm animals—be handled humanely from the moment they set foot on slaughterhouse grounds; and that they be rendered unconscious with one application of an effective stunning device prior to being shackled and hoisted up on the line. Once stunned, animals must remain unconscious during shackling, hoisting, bleeding, and butchering.
Stunning is accomplished in a variety of ways. Cattle are rendered unconscious or "knocked" with a captive bolt gun, which is activated by a guy who stands over the animal's head and shoots a metal rod into the head, and then quickly retracts it. After stunning, the cow has a shackle placed around a hind leg, is hoisted up on to a moving rail, has the throat cut—that process is called "sticking" and is performed by the "sticker"—is supposed to bleed out for several minutes, and then is skinned and dismembered. With pigs, it's a little different. They are stunned with electricity applied behind the ears (and sometimes on the back),
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shocked into unconsciousness, shackled, hoisted up on the rail, they have their throats cut, and then, after bleeding out for several minutes, they are dragged through a long tank of scalding water to loosen their bristles for removal.
The Humane Slaughter Act has other provisions also, like requiring that disabled animals be protected from inclement weather conditions; that pipes and sharp objects not be used to prod animals; that animals are not to be dragged; that animals have access to water at all times and feed if held more than 24 hours. Humane Slaughter Act regulations authorize USDA meat inspectors and veterinarians stationed in slaughter plants, whose primary responsibility is to inspect carcasses, body parts, and meat for wholesomeness after animals are slaughtered, to stop the slaughter process when violations occur and are not immediately corrected.
In the last fifteen years, more than 2,000 small to mid-sized packing plants—or one-third of the nation's packing plants—had been forced out of business by a few large, high-speed operations, each with the capacity to kill millions of animals a year. Today eleven plants slaughter nearly half of all cattle in the country, and ten plants slaughter nearly half of all hogs. With fewer slaughterhouses killing a growing number of animals, slaughter "line speeds" have skyrocketed.
Today, as individual workers struggle to kill as many as 1,100 animals per hour—that's one animal every three seconds—a production mentality has emerged in which the slaughter line does not stop for anything: not for injured workers—they're just supposed to be dragged away from the moving line—not for contaminated meat, and least of all, not for slow or uncooperative animals. In an operation, a minute of "down time" can spell a loss of hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, so workers often find themselves resorting to brutality to keep the production line running uninterrupted to keep their jobs. That translates to deliberately strangling, scalding, skinning, and dismembering fully conscious animals, all in an effort to keep up with the pace and keep the line running smoothly.
But back to my story. After I corroborated the violations down
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in Florida, I got a lead on another plant, this one in the Midwest, where pigs were supposedly being immersed into the scalding tank alive. Word had it that at this plant, the stunning equipment was bursting blood vessels and marking the hogs' loins, and as a result, the plant reduced the amount of electricity in the stunning equipment. Stunning the pigs without the necessary electricity was not rendering them unconscious. As a result, thousands of hogs were being shackled alive and since they were struggling, it was difficult to cut their throats properly to get an adequate bleed; then the hogs weren't given enough time to bleed fully, and so they were being immersed in the scalding tank alive, kicking and splashing water all over and squealing. Like many other violations, this is all captured as evidence on video.
After talking to a lot of workers, I also learned that frustrated stunners, shacklers, and stickers were beating pigs with pipes, poking their eyes out, chasing them into the scalding tank alive, crushing their skulls. They stuck electric prods up animals' butts and in their eyes and held them there. They dragged disabled animals with meat hooks in their mouths and anuses until their intestines ripped out. When there was down time, workers half-stunned pigs with electricity to watch them flip up in the air. They also described the routine arrival of hogs frozen solid from transport in subzero temperatures that would have to be pried off the sides of trucks—leaving chunks of skin behind—and then were ultimately tossed onto piles of dead hogs until they died. They allowed disabled animals to freeze to concrete floors, and then stay there for days; they chain-sawed hogs alive into pieces for rendering.
I believe that the people who work in these places are victims, too, of a system that brutalizes both humans and animals. Here are some notes from my records of comments that particularly stick in my mind:
"After a while you become desensitized. And as far as animals go, they're a lower life-form. They're maybe one step above a maggot. When you got a live, conscious hog, you not only kill it, you want to make it hurt. You go in hard, blow the windpipe, make it drown in its own blood. Take out an eyeball, split its nose. A live
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hog would be running around the pit with me. It would be looking up at me and I would just take my knife and—eerk—take its eye out while it was just sitting there. And this hog would just scream."
"If you get a hog in the chute that refuses to move, you take a meat hook and clip it into his anus. You try to do this by clipping the hipbone. Then you drag him backwards. You're dragging these hogs alive, and a lot of times the meat hook rips out of the bunghole. I've seen hams—thighs—completely ripped open. I've also seen intestines come out. If the hog collapses near the front of the chute, you shove a meat hook into his cheek and drag him forward."
"The preferred method of handling a cripple is to beat him to death with a lead pipe before he gets into the chute. It's called 'piping.' All the drivers use pipes to kill hogs that can't go through the chutes. Or if a hog refuses to go into the chutes and is stopping production, you beat him to death."
"Hogs are stubborn. Beating them in the head seems to work about the best. Piece of rebar about an inch across, you force a hog down the alley, have another guy standing there with a piece of rebar in his hand. It's just like playing baseball. Just like somebody pitching something at you."
Sadly, every time I thought I'd encountered the worst violations I could imagine, I'd visit another plant with even more horrendous violations. I criss-crossed the country visiting more pig, horse, and cattle plants. I met slaughter workers through the workers' union, by hanging out in post offices, employment offices, convenience stores, bars, cafes, trailer parks. Sometimes I'd find out their addresses, stake out their homes until they arrived, and then I'd literally follow them into their houses. I got to talk to scores of workers any way I could. And I devised reasonable covers that got me inside many plants as well. The workers I talked with represented 2.5 million hours on the kill floor. They let me audiotape our conversations, and most of them signed sworn affidavits about what they'd seen and done.
They told me that they routinely had to pound away at cows' and horses' heads with ineffective captive bolt guns in order to render the animals unconscious. Workers strangled cattle with
cables when they were dragging them up to the stun area, they listened to bones cracking and necks popping when they dragged horses. They used saws or blow-torches to remove the legs of live cattle that were stuck in trucks in chutes, and in the stun area. They drove over the legs and heads of disabled animals with tractors; they routinely skinned heads, bellies, sides and rumps, removed legs, ears, horns, and tails, and began eviscerating cattle that were alive.
"When a cow arrives at the first hind-legger [who removes the legs], usually the legger tries to make a cut to start skinning out the leg. But it's hard to do that when the cow is kicking violently. A lot of times the leggers'll take their clippers and cut off the cow's leg right below the knee—the skinny part. The cow'll continue to kick, but it don't have that long of a reach."
"I've seen thousands and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive. If I see a live animal, I cannot stop the line. Because the supervisor has told us that you have to work on a cow that's alive."
"One day when I went out to the suspect pen, two employees were using metal pipes to club some hogs to death. There had to be twenty little hogs out there that they were going to give to the rendering company. And these two guys were out there beating them to death with clubs and having a good old time. I went to the USDA vet, my supervisor, to complain. He said, 'They're of no value because they're going to be tanked [rendered] anyway.' So, according to my supervisor, it was all right to club those little hogs to death. They were beating them like they do those little seals in Alaska."
"I've seen them put twenty to twenty-five holes in a hog's head trying to knock her and she was still on her feet. Her head looked like Swiss cheese. Tough gal. Sometimes they'll use a twenty-two and shoot the hog through its eye. Or you might have to hit both eyes on the same hog."
"A steer was running up the alley way and got his leg between the boards and he couldn't get it out. They didn't want to lose any time killing cattle and he was blocking their path, so they just used a blow torch to burn his leg off while he was alive."
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Shockingly, it's not just the workers and inspectors making comments such as these. In 1996, the USD A commissioned its own study of humane slaughter to be conducted by an independent consultant in a handful of USDA inspected plants. Despite the fact that the USDA's study was announced—the plants were anticipating the visit from the USDA consultant—the study indicated that 7 out of the 11 beef plants visited had unacceptable stunning.
Yet, despite its clear Congressional mandate, and the fact that it's got badge-carrying law enforcing meat inspectors present inside every plant, the USDA has decided that the solution to the problem is more voluntary programs to be implemented by the meat industry. I believe that the USDA has enjoyed an incestuous relationship with the meat industry for years, and it is actively trying to come up with ways to further deregulate the meat industry .. . with what consequences I shudder to think.
I would like consumers to also be aware of the 8.2 billion chickens who are exempt from the Humane Slaughter Act, yet who are subject to incredible suffering at slaughter. The U.S. poultry industry clings to the myth that a dead bird won't bleed properly—so they want to keep its heart beating—yet they need to immobilize birds to facilitate neck cutting. To do this, U.S. poultry processors, on an average, use only about one-tenth the current necessary to ensure that birds are adequately stunned. The result is that untold numbers of birds are going into the scalding tank alive.
Over the course of my investigations, I have faced many roadblocks: informants were gagged and fired; one was stabbed to death; TV producers repeatedly got my hopes up that they would expose my findings only to drop the story when a top executive worries that the subject is too disgusting and will result in viewers switching channels. And yet, I still do believe that the American public truly cares about this issue, once they are fully informed of the facts. Most people are naturally compassionate, and would not want to give their money to an industry in which such atrocities are routinely perpetrated on our fellow creatures. That's why it is important for people to know the truth."
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RELIGIOUS SLAUGHTER
Religious slaughter was once described to me by an official veterinary surgeon (someone who spent most of his working life watching animals being killed) as "the most revolting sight I have ever seen inside a slaughterhouse." He told me how it would sometimes take up to four slaughtermen to hold one sheep down as it struggled on the slaughtering table. The slaughterer then cuts the animal's neck open, and allows it to bleed to death. "He didn't cut so much as saw," the vet said to me. "It took four attempts by the slaughterman before the animal's arteries were finally severed."
Now there's one huge problem associated with religious slaughter, and that is the ethnic dimension. Extreme right-wing elements have already tried to use this issue as a means of stirring up hatred against both the Jewish and Muslim communities. And both communities have reacted strongly to defend what they perceive as an ethnically motivated attack on their way of life. Because of this, most animal welfare organizations have been very reluctant to confront the problem.
In fact, religious slaughter affects all meat eaters, not just those Muslims and Jews who believe it to be necessary. Because every person who eats meat will, without knowing, have eaten ritually slaughtered food at some time. It is estimated that approximately 70 percent of the meat that comes from animals that have been killed by ritual means actually ends up on the open market, finding its way into school meals, restaurants, and meat products of all descriptions.
Basically, there are two main reasons for the Jewish {scbecbita, or kosher) and Islamic (dhabbih or halal) ways of slaughtering. First, the animal must be "whole" if it is to be consumed by humans. This is taken to mean that it must not be sick or damaged in any way. It is therefore argued that prestunning, even if it occurs only a few seconds before death, is not acceptable, since it results in a damaged animal. The second reason is to exsanguinate (bleed out) the animal, since consuming its blood is not permitted.
"Blood is unhealthy," explained Dr. A. M. Katme, a representative of the Islamic Medical Association. "It is full of toxins, urea, and organisms. The consumption of blood is forbidden for Muslims. ... It
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is arrogant for someone who is not a Muslim to presume that he can teach us the practice of our faith. God protect us from those who think that they know better than He." 6
I have no wish to teach anyone their faith, but I must respectfully point out a fundamental reality of religious slaughter, which is that it is never possible to drain all of the animal's blood from its body—as any vet can testify. So if Muslims are to correctly observe the prohibition against the consumption of blood, it therefore follows that they should not eat meat. This is an often-overlooked reality, and it should be urgently and honestly addressed.
The proponents of religious slaughter claim that the loss of blood the animal suffers is so sudden that it induces rapid unconsciousness. This is how the chairman of the Shechita Committee of the board of Deputies of British Jews explains it:
"The animal's throat is cut, and the whole operation can, if done properly, take less than half a minute. People imagine that because the animal has its throat cut while fully conscious it must be in pain. But what has been found as a result of experiments conducted in the late 1970s at the University of Hanover is that the animal becomes unconscious within two seconds of its throat being cut." 7 Rabbi Berkovits, registrar of the Court of the Chief Rabbi, has defended shechita on much the same grounds, claiming that it is preferable to the conventional stunning and slaughtering process. 8
But here, the supporters of religious slaughter are on very shaky ground. The majority of vets I have spoken to strongly dislike ritual slaughter for the "pain, suffering, and distress" it causes the animals (to use the words of the British government's Farm Animal Welfare Council). Research undertaken by the Institute for Food Research and the Institute for Tierzucht und Tierverhalten in Germany clearly shows that animals killed by ritual slaughter may remain conscious for up to two minutes after their throats are cut. 9 The researchers implanted electrodes in the cerebral cortex of animals to be slaughtered, and found that the animals' brains would respond to a stimulus up to 126 seconds after the cut.
Research carried out at a New Zealand university found that calves were making attempts to get up off the floor five or six minutes after their throats had been cut. One Birmingham vet (Birmingham has sev-
eral major slaughterhouses that are devoted to ritual killing), believes that it can take up to twelve minutes for the animal to lose consciousness. "How would you feel about the same fate for your cat or dog?" he asks. "There's no difference." 10 Another vet explained to me that all animals (including humans) have several arteries supplying the brain, and not just the carotid ones that are slashed in ritual slaughter. He explained that another major artery, the vertebral one, ran close to the spinal column, and it would be quite impossible to sever this (unless the whole head was cut off). Consequently, this artery goes on supplying blood to the brain even after the others have been cut, thus prolonging the animal's agony.
Fortunately, there are compassionate people within both Jewish and Muslim communities who understand the need for immediate reform. Over the past few years, I have been fortunate enough to make a number of friends within the Jewish vegetarian movement. They have struck me, without exception, as being caring, concerned people, whose sincere approach to Judaism may provide others in their community with some serious food for thought, so to speak. An editorial in the Jewish vegetarian magazine is well worth pondering, as it relates to our treatment of food animals today:
The Sabbath day was granted to all, and Rashi comments that even domestic creatures, at least on that day, must not be enclosed but shall be free to graze and enjoy the work of creation. If now they are incarcerated in darkened containers seven days and seven nights in each week for the entire period of their lives; if they neither see the luminaries of the heavens nor experience the sweet smell and the taste of the pastures, has not the most sacred Sabbath Law been flagrantly violated, and can the flesh of their bodies be Kosher?
Would the law that states "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treads the corn" acquiesce in the computerized feeding of chemical fatteners, whilst the poor beast scents the dew and clover in the meadows beyond his darkened cell?
When it is written "Thou shalt not yoke an ox with an ass" does it imply that a calf may spend its entire life standing on slats, never to lie down, and effectively chained to the sides by its neck
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to prevent it doing so? Is this a perversion of the Torah? And when the unfortunate victim is slaughtered, can its remains be considered Kosher?
If the law forbids one to cause distress to a mother bird by removing eggs from the nest in her presence, would it concur that during its lifetime a hen could be shut up in a receptacle of twelve square inches, its beak removed and feathers clipped? And after its throat is cut, would its body be Kosher for food?
If a cruelly treated animal shall be considered unfit for food, and if the measure of the cruelty is determined by its ability to walk, do the authorities inspect the incarcerated animals in the factory farms, and is there any record as to whether they are able to walk to their own slaughter on their own emaciated legs? And if not is their flesh Kosher?
If the law forbids the mixing of species, even of plants, and confusion of sexes, would it condone the injection of female hormones into the male beast, even though it is acknowledged to be cancerous in practice? And when this distortion of blood is covered with earth, even as is human blood, is this respect for the Creator who saw that all he created was very good? Or is this confusion, is it defilement, is it sacrilege, and is the flesh still Kosher?
Shall a certificate of Beth Din convey that Torah min hashamayim has been sincerely observed, or shall it become a license for misinterpretation, evasion, and permission to the beholder to bow down each man to the God of his own stomach?
Let all who are observant and devout remember that the responsibility is their own; no Jew can use an intermediary, whether in this case it be a Beth Din, a Board of Shechita, or just a Kosher butcher with a label on his window. If unaware of the facts, his is a sin of omission; if he is aware and chooses to ignore his personal responsibility, his is a sin of commission; he is eating Trefah. 11
These are good and wise questions, which raise fundamental issues of conscience that all of us, Jewish or not, must urgently consider.
PIG TALES
The problem with pigs is that they are uncomfortably similar to humans in far too many ways.
Pigs, for example, know how to have fun. They will play with each other, and with humans, for hours on end, if they can. "Those who know pigs can't help but be charmed by their intelligent, social, and sensitive nature," write Melanie Adcock, D.V.M, and Mary Finelli of the Humane Society of the United States. "Yet perhaps no other species has been so misrepresented, misunderstood, and, even, betrayed. A glutton is labeled a hog, a messy person is termed a pig. The people caring for both Charlotte's Web's Wilbur and his modern counterpart Babe love them one minute, yet intend to kill them and eat them for dinner the next. How can society be so insensitive—so conflicted—toward a species when it finds the individual members of that species so adorable?" 12
Some Pig Points:
• If they can, pigs form peaceful family groups of ten or fewer members, who sleep in a communal nest.
• Pigs are more intelligent than dogs, naturally very clean animals, and discriminating eaters. Unable to sweat, they bathe in mud to cool off and to protect their skin from sun and insects.
• They enjoy novelty and are extremely active and inquisitive. When free to roam, they spend much of their day enthusiastically smelling, nibbling, and manipulating objects with their snouts. A pig's sense of smell is so keen that the animal is trained in France to unearth truffles, an edible fungus that grows underground.
• Adults in the social group will protect a piglet, leaving food or their own litters to defend the endangered youngster.
• Touch and bodily contact are especially important. Pigs seek out and enjoy close contact and lie close together when resting. They also enjoy close contact with people familiar to them and will roll over to have their bellies rubbed.
• They have an elaborate courtship ritual, including a song between males and females. Newborn piglets learn to run to
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their mother's voice, and the mother pig sings to her young while nursing. After nursing, a piglet will sometimes run to "Mom's" face to rub snouts and grunt.
• Vivisectors call pigs "horizontal man" because the arrangement of their internal organs is so similar to humans.
• According to those who have tasted both, pig flesh tastes very similar to human flesh.
Yes indeed, the problem for the unfortunate pigs is that they are really far too similar to us, far too similar for their own good. Perhaps that is why we disparage and ridicule them so much—it puts some metaphorical distance between the two species, without which, our ruthless exploitation of them would be far more distressing for us.
I'd like you to meet someone who knows about pigs. Andrew Tyler is a friend of mine, a good journalist and a talented writer. He has spent a long time working incognito on pig farms. Here is an extract from the diary he kept while working on one such farm, an establishment raising thousands of animals each year for both slaughter and breeding. Tyler's diary is almost certainly the most accurate account of the secret life of today's pigs that you will ever read.
Woke up tired, burning eyes at 5:30. Got to the farrowing house to find a litter of ten piglets had been born in the night. They were still shuffling clumsily around their mother when Ed, the farm manager, demonstrated the art of teeth and nail clipping—done with a pair of steel pliers. First the teeth—two on top, two on the bottom, both sides. The piglet is seized, his jaws forced open, and the little pointy teeth clipped off, down to the gum. Such squealing! Then an inch of tail is removed and a squirt of purple antiseptic applied to the belly over the umbilical. The operation ends with the young one being chucked back in the pen. Always they are thrown, grabbed—by a back leg or ears, no matter how small. Next I watch ten sows moved from the house where they'd been impregnated to the pens in which they'll wait out their pregnancy—all of them assumed now to be "in pig." After which I check inside the drug cabinet, a battered tin object with its doors
permanently swung open, and see the staggering array of antibiotics, de-wormers, growth boosters, antiseptics used here.
At 8:30 weaning begins—among the crudest of the host of daily cruelties. Twelve sows with 113 piglets on them are removed from their farrowing crates—tight-fitting metal contraptions that allow the mother to stand and flop down but not turn around. She has been sharing it with her young since their birth 21 days earlier. Now the sow is removed with a shout and a slap—backward, down the steep stone step into a central aisle that is slippery with shit and piss; you'd have thought they might have cleaned it out first. They are slapped on the head, pulled by the tail, and kicked out of the joint, most of them struggling to remain with their young, who stare bewilderingly at the tailboard of the crate and the direction in which their mothers are being taken. The men will be back for them soon.
Most of the sows rebel and try to return to their young while being driven across the yard to their next stop: the service house. Here they are penned up and, incredibly, an hour later, checked to see if they are ripe for another servicing. Being a mixed batch, unused to each other, and disturbed through being torn from their young, the sows fight among themselves. Simultaneously, they are howling and screaming for their young. Ed tells me that fighting and complaining go on 'for a day or two.' Another worker, Mac, goes round them, pushing and actually riding on their backs, examining their vulvas and decides one is ready to be served. He leads her out to a boar in a facing pen. When she gets there they discover her milk sac is bleeding and raw, possibly from a fight, possibly from being stood on. Mac applies the remedy—an antiseptic spray and antibiotic injection in the neck— even while she's in the boar's pen. The boar tries to mount. She screams and runs. They try her again but realize she wasn't on heat at all but "stood" for Mac's riding because she'd been trapped by the other sows in the crowded pen and couldn't go anywhere.
As well as the boars penned in the service house, there are half a dozen in individual old-fashioned brick styes just across the yard. A sow who was "served" on successive days three weeks
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ago but failed to fall pregnant is taken to one of these. She's mounted and, as the penis is inserted, she howls and begins bleeding, quite a lot of blood. They believe at first it's the male's sheath but continue anyway once they realize it's coming from here— Mac assisting entry with his fingers. It seems the boar has struck her bladder, a common complaint. They persist in cornering the female so the impregnation can continue but the sow eventually breaks loose making it impossible. She gets an antibiotic jab, a splash of purple marker on her shoulders and, I'm told, she'll be served again this afternoon. "Raped" is probably a more suitable word than "served."
Disease problems they have had to cope with include viral pneumonia scours (a diarrhea that in the young is often lethal), meningitis—which the owner describes as "virtually similar to the human kind," salt poisoning (an often lethal and often agonizing condition caused by them not getting enough drinking water), plus there is the memory of Aujeszky's disease outbreak some seven years ago.
I ask the owner what happens to the dead animals. He'd already acknowledged that the smaller ones at the other farm were dumped on the muck heap to be spread on the fields. But here, being bereft of straw, they have no muck heap. He says the corpses all go into a "death pit," but he looks seedy when offering this. Maybe because, as I witnessed, his death pits seem to breach the health and safety rules by not being enfenced; or maybe it's because the small ones are actually tossed straight into the lagoons. The death pit is an incredible sight; a hole about seven feet deep, about ten feet square, and clogged with the decomposing corpses of grown and half-grown animals, some beginning to go green, the skin and flesh bubbling vilely. They are in a variety of twisted positions, rear ends and snouts up but none fully submerged. Perhaps these represent just the top layers of animals, unable to sink for the bodies of their comrades.
So this is how bacon is brought into the world. Later, Andrew witnesses the conclusion of the process:
No sign declares the name or nature of the business, and it is a condition of my entry that I withhold the firm's identity. All the animals start in the lairage—a large stone area divided by bar gates into a system of pens. Before the pigs' throats are opened, they receive what the plant manager calls "electrical stimulation" of the brain. The manager has just such a phrase for every aspect of the killing process.
The "stimulation" is accomplished by a pair of hand-operated tongs, like giant pliers, that are clamped on either side of the pig's head just in front of the ears. This takes place in a stunning box, a walled-in area about fifteen feet square into which about a dozen animals at a time are corralled. The stunner himself is a lank, bony faced man, bearded, with one wayward eye, and forearms tattooed with the Reaper and wreathed skulls.
As the first dozen is driven into the stunning pen, one urinates on the trot and makes a screeching noise I hadn't heard before. Blood and mucus fly from his snout. The eyes close, the front legs stiffen, and when the tongs are opened, he falls, like a log, on his side. He lies there, back legs kicking, as the stunner turns to the next animal. He tells me that the tongs should be held on for a minimum of seven seconds to ensure a proper stun before the throat is cut. But, urged on by his mates further along the slaughter line, he is giving them one and a half or less.
When he has stunned three or four, he shackles each of them with a chain around a back leg. They are then mechanically lifted and carried to an adjoining stone room, where a colleague cuts deep into the neck and the still pumping heart gushes out blood. They are supposed to stun and shackle one animal at a time, since the delay involved in doing them in groups means they could go wide awake to the knife.
Suddenly an electrocuted animal slips her shackle, drops five feet to the stone floor, and crash lands on her head. The stunner continues jolting more creatures while her back legs paddle furiously. Without restunning her, he hooks her up again and sends her through to the knife. This crash-landing routine is to be repeated several more times in the next few minutes.
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One animal slams down twice. One man curses him as he lies paddling, blood seeping from anus and mouth. Another man, meanwhile, is ear-wrestling a would-be escapee that is leaping at a small opening in the metal gate. "You can have it another fucking way then, you idiot," he cries, as he helps slap the animal down.
There is just one more waiting for the tongs, a small quiet creature which, from her position near the gate, looks me directly in the eye, breaking my heart. The stunner chases her a few steps. The tongs first ineptly clasp her neck; the eyes close in a strange blissful agony. The tongs are adjusted, and like a rock she falls.
IN PRAISE OF PITY
The farmers and the butchers say it is wrong to feel moved, to be horrified, or even to shed a tear when you read accounts of everyday atrocities such as these. They say that we are being emotional, sentimental, even hysterical. They say that our hearts rule our heads.
But what I say is this: if you do not shudder when you learn about these dreadful things, then you are missing part of your humanity. Let's examine this.
For a man, the charge of "being emotional" is particularly stinging, because emotion is thought of as a female quality. Evidently, a man who is accused of being "emotional" is also implicitly accused of being something less than male. In a world where testosterone sets the agenda, this is a grave accusation, indeed.
Think how this parallels those appalling words of hatred we uncovered in the first chapter: "The human race ranks highly because it belongs to the class of beasts of prey. . . . We find in man the tactics of life proper to a bold, cunning beast of prey. . . . He lives engaged in aggression, killing, annihilation." This sort of human being does not shudder, does not feel empathy, does not feel joy or love. The emotions of kindness, pity, mercy, and compassion are far beyond his limited experience—mere weaknesses to be eliminated.
And this is the sort of human being the meat industry implies we ought to be.
Hmmm . . .
Their motives are obvious, of course. Writer Brigid Brophy exposes them with great precision:
"Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it. These slogans have a long history. After being used to justify slave traders, ruthless industrialists, and contractors who had found that the most economically 'realistic' method of cleaning a chimney was to force a small child to climb it, they have now been passed on, like an heirloom, to the factory farmers. 'We mustn't be sentimental' tries to persuade us that factory farming isn't, in fact, cruel. It implies that the whole problem had been invented by our sloppy imaginations." 13
Writer Robert Bly well understands the importance of gaining access to these prohibited feelings:
"Children are able to shudder easily, and a child will often break into tears when he or she sees a wounded animal. But later the domination system enters, and some boys begin to torture and kill insects and animals to perfume their own insignificance. . . .
"Gaining the ability to shudder means feeling how frail human beings are. . . . When one is shuddering, the shudder helps to take away the numbness we spoke of. When a man possesses empathy, it does not mean that he has developed the feminine feeling only; of course he has, and it is good to develop the feminine. But when he learns to shudder, he is developing a part of the masculine emotional body as well." 14
I was once on a radio program with a representative of the meat industry.
"What did you feel when you first went into a slaughterhouse?" I asked.
He looked at me as if I had just made a pass at him.
"I didn't feel anything," he said.
"Well," I asked, "what did you think} 9 '
"I thought it was not well organized, and I wanted to make it more efficient."
I don't think I want to live in a world where efficiency has replaced compassion.
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YOUR MOVE
I suspect we are at something of an important turning point in our species' history. A new kind of ethic seems to be emerging—a universally appropriate morality which, in the words of Einstein, will "widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature." A century before Einstein, Abraham Lincoln had predicted the fundamental importance of this emerging ethic, saying "I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being."
By changing your diet to refuse to consume the products of cruelty, you are actively extending Einstein's "circle of compassion." It's not a difficult process; it conveys many health benefits as you'll see in the next chapter, and it is a very powerful way of bringing about positive change.
After all, if you like animals, one of the nicest things you can do for them is not eat them.
THE MANUAL OF VEGETARIAN HEALTH
"Introducing the Everyday Hero. She's your mother, your daughter,
your sister, your grandmother, your wife. If you're a woman, she's you.
She punches a clock, washes the clothes, pays the bills, carts the kids to
soccer practice (and makes every game, too). She packs lunches, picks
up her husband's dry cleaning, changes the baby, checks on her aged
mother, consoles her best friend, and still manages to get dinner on the
table each night. She doesn't cure cancer."
Bizarre advertising material issued by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association,
presumably intended to make beef entirely irresistible to women. The date is the
most surprising thing of all: February 2001'
"If meat really was bad for you we could be sure the Government and
the majority of health and diet professionals (not to mention the leaders
of most religious groups) would have joined together to tell us so."
Meat & Livestock Commission, PR materials for schoolchildren 2
The truth is out there, but it's pretty difficult to find. Organizations such as the National Cattlemen's Beef Association spend significant time and resources denigrating the vegetarian diet. 3 They do this for obviously commercial purposes: clearly, the more vegetarians there are, the fewer consumers there will be for their products of the slaughterhouse. Their material is intended to reach far and wide, and influence consumers, health care professionals, teachers and indeed, schoolchildren.
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Unfortunately, there is little in the way of an equivalent commercial lobbying organization to put forth the vegetarian point of view, so it's often a rather one-sided battle. In this chapter, you will find an enormous amount of information that redresses the balance. I think you'll find it eye-opening.
ANEMIA
Vegetarians don't eat red meat, and since red meat contains iron, vegetarians are at risk of anemia, aren't they? So runs the logic of the meat industry, for whom the risk of iron-deficiency anemia is a major marketing opportunity. This is defensive marketing at its nastiest: if you can't tempt consumers to buy your product, then frighten them into believing that they will die without it. So you may be surprised to know that, despite all the meat industry propaganda, the facts reveal that a healthy vegetarian diet is an excellent way to get all the iron you need.
What Is It?
Anemia literally means "lack of blood." More precisely, the word is used to refer to a reduction in the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood, which can be caused in three main ways:
• Loss of blood (e.g. heavy menstrual periods)
• Excessive red blood cell destruction
• Defective red blood cell formation
Oxygen is held within the red blood cells by the pigment hemoglobin, which transports oxygen from the lungs to body cells and returns waste carbon dioxide from the cells to the lungs. About 20 percent of the total oxygen used each day is used by the human brain. Fatigue and mental dullness occur when the brain doesn't get enough oxygen. If your hemoglobin level drops, your heart rate will speed up, and you will start breathing faster to try to compensate for the lower oxygen delivery. Replacement of hemoglobin requires iron in the diet, as well as vitamin B 12 and folic acid. If any of these are inadequately present,
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or are inadequately absorbed, anemia will result. There are many kinds of anemias, but the most common include
• Iron-deficiency anemia. Caused by either chronic blood loss or insufficient iron absorption or utilization.
• Pernicious anemia. More often found in middle-aged and older people. Generally, it is caused by an inability to produce an enzyme (known as the "intrinsic factor") that is essential for the proper assimilation of vitamin B 12 .
Iron-deficiency anemia is thought to be a common nutritional problem, although precise estimates of its incidence range very widely. Some suggest that up to 65 percent of all women in Western countries may have "low" iron stores in their bodies, and up to 20 percent may suffer from iron-deficiency anemia. 4 In Britain, a survey for the Ministry of Agriculture suggests that young women (ages fifteen to twenty-five) consume, on average, only three-quarters of the recommended daily allowance of iron. 5 Whatever the exact figures, it is clear that this is a widespread health problem, and vegetarians would be wrong to trivialize it. However, the meat industry is equally wrong to imply—as their advertising often seems to—that meat eaters need not worry about iron-deficiency anemia. Clearly, such exaggeration is dangerous rubbish. With up to one in five women suffering from it, the problem of iron-deficiency anemia is a real concern for meat-eating women.
How the Vegetarian Diet Can Help
Since anemia can result from an inadequate intake of three nutrients—iron, vitamin B 12 , and folic acid—it is often alleged that vegetarians are risking their health, and are condemned to become anemic. But is this true? In a word: No! Let's examine each nutrient:
Iron-Deficiency Anemia
Iron-deficiency anemia is uncommon in men, but more widespread in women. Obviously, iron-deficiency anemia can simply be caused by not consuming enough iron in the diet, but it can also occur if the
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body does not properly absorb the iron in food—for example, chronic diarrhea or the prolonged use of antacids may impair absorption.
Iron is a trace element. The adult body contains a total of about 3 to 5 grams. About two-thirds of this is bound up in hemoglobin, and about a fifth is held in storage, much of it in the form called ferritin. This remarkable protein allows animals to survive for considerable periods without dietary iron. Most of these ferritin iron stores are found in the liver, bone marrow, and spleen. However, minute amounts of ferritin are also found in the blood. One test for iron deficiency measures the amount of ferritin present in the blood, because that gives a good idea of the quantity of ferritin present at the body's main storage sites. Plasma ferritin of 12 micrograms per liter or less suggests that iron stores are becoming depleted. 6 Plasma ferritin levels will, however, naturally vary in a normal human. For example, they tend to be higher in the morning, and lower in the evening. Stress, too, can affect the results of ferritin tests, as can recent infection. But carefully conducted tests that reveal a consistent picture of steadily declining ferritin levels indicate the beginnings of iron deficiency, which if unchecked, will eventually result in anemia. Those population groups at particular risk of iron deficiency include
• Infants
• Teenage girls
• Pregnant women
• Women of childbearing years
• The elderly
Blood loss due to menstruation is the most common cause of iron deficiency among women of childbearing years. It is of great importance that people in all these groups obtain enough dietary iron to replace natural losses.
Since some types of meat (principally liver) provide large amounts of iron, and since some of that iron is in a form (heme) that is more easily assimilated than the iron found in plants (nonheme), conventional wisdom recommends the consumption of meat as the main source of dietary iron. However, there are several logical objections to this point of view:
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• As already mentioned, iron-deficiency anemia is a problem that affects a large section of the population, who are mostly meat eaters. Meat consumption, therefore, does not appear to be an effective means of preventing widespread iron deficiency.
• Other primates eat a naturally vegetarian diet (a chimpanzee does not, as a rule, breakfast on sausages!) and do not suffer from iron-deficiency anemia.
• A vegetarian or vegan diet is well capable of providing normal dietary iron requirements, generally obtained from dark green, leafy vegetables, iron-fortified cereals, and whole grains.
• New evidence (see below) suggests that the overconsumption of iron-rich foods may in fact be a health hazard.
In addition, scientific fieldwork in this area paints an extremely revealing picture, which flatly contradicts the notion that vegetarians are at particular risk of iron deficiency. For example:
• A study of British vegans concludes that their iron level is "normal in all the vegans and no subject had a hemoglobin concentration below the lower limit of normality." 7
• In their 1988 position paper concerning the vegetarian diet, the American Dietetic Association concluded, "With both vegetarian and nonvegetarian diets, iron and folate supplements are usually necessary during pregnancy, although vegetarians frequently have greater intakes of those nutrients than do non-vegetarians." 8
• Further field studies conducted among British vegans report dietary iron intakes of 22.4 mg 9 , 31 mg, 10 and 20.5 mg 11 per day. The mean figure of these studies (24.6 mg) is more than double the official estimated average requirement (EAR) of 11.4 mg a day!
• In Israel, a study compared the iron intakes of meat eaters and vegetarians, summarizing: "The intake of iron was significantly higher in the vegetarians ... it is concluded that a long-term ovo-lacto vegetarian diet does not lead to mineral deficiencies." 12
• In Holland, another study compared meat-eating and vegetar-
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ian preschool children. While the vegetarian children had a good intake of dietary iron, the meat eaters "had intakes of iron below the Dutch RDAs [recommended daily requirements]." 13
• In Sweden, yet another study compared the diet eaten by vegans to that of meat eaters, and found that the vegans' iron consumption was "nearly double." 14
• A Canadian study looked at the iron levels of long-term vegetarian Seven-Day Adventist women and concluded, "The iron and zinc status of these . . . women appeared adequate despite their low intake of readily absorbed iron and zinc from flesh foods and their high intake of total dietary fiber and phy-tate." 15 (See pages 212-13 for more information about the influence of fiber and phytate on zinc levels.)
• Further—and highly significant—evidence comes from the "China Study"—the most comprehensive, large-scale study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease. The study was truly massive, involving the collection of 367 detailed facts about the diet and lifestyle of 6,500 participants across China, from 1983 onward. It reveals that meat eating is by no means necessary to prevent iron-deficiency anemia. The average Chinese adult—who shows no evidence of anemia—consumes twice the iron Americans do, but the vast majority of it comes from the iron in plants.
• In a very carefully controlled study of the impact of high and low meat diets on iron levels, scientists from the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center found, to their surprise, that subjects (in this case, postmenopausal women) given a high-meat diet had, after seven weeks, a worse iron level than people eating a low-meat diet! "The negative effect of meat consumption on iron status was unexpected," they concluded, "the results emphasize the need ... for identifying additional dietary components that influence iron nutriture." 16 This is a point we'll return to in a moment.
This research, and more besides, disproves the fallacy that a meat-free diet can't provide enough iron. It certainly can—you've just seen some of the evidence.
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But what about the other side of the coin? Although the research you've just seen demonstrates that vegetarians can get enough iron, does this mean that they always do} Aren't they, after all, more likely to develop anemia? This is certainly the implication of many medical and nutritional textbooks. Their reasoning is usually as follows:
1. Meat provides heme iron, which is more easily absorbed than nonheme (plant sources).
2. Vegetarians don't eat meat.
3. Therefore, vegetarians are likely to be anemic.
The science of nutrition, just like any other branch of human knowledge, is full of its own folklore. Opinions such as these are often passed down from one generation of practitioners to another, because they sound plausible, and because no one bothers to check or question the original research in the field. If they did, they'd be in for quite a shock.
A computer search reveals that in the period from 1966 to the beginning of 1994, a total of 7,618,328 articles were published in the world's major medical journals. 17 Of these, just 62 mentioned the word "anemia" in connection with the words "vegetarians" or "vegans." That's just under 0.000814 percent of the medical literature in 28 years. Not very much, is it?
But when these sixty-two reports are themselves analyzed, the picture becomes even more unequivocal:
• The majority (twenty-two reports) dealt not with iron-deficiency anemia, but with individual case histories of people on very restricted diets with vitamin B p deficiency (see below).
• Most of the reports of iron-deficiency anemia among vegetarians (seven) dealt with the iron status of impoverished Indians, either in India itself or as immigrants to the West. Is it their vegetarianism causing them to be anemic—or more likely, their poverty?
• One report described iron-deficiency anemia among macrobiotic subjects. Most vegetarians do not eat a macrobiotic regime (which, by the way, may include flesh).
• Another report described the "marginal" iron status of a
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group of elderly Dutch vegetarians, sixty-five to ninety-seven years old. Despite the researchers' judgment about their "marginal" status, their subjects were described as "apparently healthy." • Another report described the improvement obtained by supplementing the diets of a group of anemic preschool children, not with meat, but with vitamin C. "The children who received vitamin C supplements showed a significant improvement in hemoglobin level as well as in red cell morphology," wrote the researchers. 18 Vitamin C is normally well supplied in a vegetarian diet (there is no vitamin C in meat).
The allegation that the vegetarian diet causes iron-deficiency anemia can now be firmly rejected. Nearly thirty years of published research has failed to substantiate it.
Now we come to a particularly interesting aspect of this controversy. Studies comparing the plasma ferritin levels of vegetarians to meat eaters sometimes show that although the vegetarians' levels are within the normal range, they are rather lower than meat eaters, suggesting that meat eaters store more iron in their bodies than vegetarians. Is this good, or bad?
Consider the following warning by a noted researcher on dietary iron: "Possibly, as discussed in the previous chapters, while decreasing the risk of classical iron-deficiency symptoms, the current RDA for iron is increasing the risk of infection. In this respect, nutritionists have lowered their RDAs for iron over the past decade—40 percent lower in newborn infants and 17 percent lower in adult females in 1989 as compared to 1980. Certainly, the physiology of these groups has not changed, which leads one to wonder about the accuracy of these values. ... I foresee a continuing downward trend of RDAs for iron and an upward trend for Vitamin C as more hard data become available." 19
It has been known for some time that very low levels of iron in the human body increase the risk of infection. It is not so well known, however, that high levels of iron do precisely the same. Invading bacteria require iron to grow—and the more iron made available to them, the faster they'll multiply.
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But that's not all. Over the past few years, Dr. Randall B. Lauffer has proposed a theory that has been greeted in some quarters as medical heresy. Dr. Lauffer has an impressive pedigree: he's an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, an expert on mineral biochemistry and the use of minerals in medical diagnosis and therapy, and also the director of a research laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital. According to Dr. Lauffer:
"Scientific discoveries are coming out every day showing new roles that iron plays in many common diseases. We are coming to recognize that there has perhaps been an overemphasis on iron deficiency in the past. Worldwide, iron deficiency is a major problem, especially in populations that are malnourished. However, in the well-fed populations of the Western world iron deficiency is increasingly rare, and is mainly observed in certain sub-groups such as pregnant women and children."
Dr. Lauffer clearly and carefully explains the danger of having too much iron in the body:
"Iron is a key component of the free radical theory of disease. This was discovered some time ago, and more and more evidence is being laid down in support of it. Basically, the theory is this: Oxygen—which of course is good for you—is used in burning the body's fuel, that is, the foods that we eat. But oxygen also can be converted into toxic by-products. Now, most of these toxic byproducts are pretty mild. However, in the presence of iron, and also, in some cases, copper, these mildly toxic forms of oxygen are converted into much more toxic forms. And wherever they are produced, they can damage the tissue that surrounds them. This is true in heart disease. The leading theory of atherosclerosis involves free radical damage to the 'bad' form of cholesterol . . . LDL, or low density lipoprotein. Then certain cells in the artery itself and the artery wall begin sucking up this damaged LDL. And this begins what we call atherosclerotic plaque development. But the most important role for iron is that excess iron in the heart creates more damage when a heart attack actually occurs.
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The same type of chemical reaction that oxidizes LDL can also damage the heart cells directly. For example, when you have a heart attack, you have diminished oxygen supply to the heart. Then, when you have either coronary bypass surgery, or a procedure, such as angioplasty, where the artery is opened up and blood flow resumes, more oxygen is quickly perfused into the heart, and this generates more damaging oxygen free radicals. And the more iron present, the more damage occurs in the process."
There is a simplicity in Dr. Lauffer's exposition that indicates a thorough knowledge and understanding of his subject.
"We are now following a Finnish study . . . which shows that men who have higher iron levels are predisposed to heart attacks. We don't have enormous evidence that excess iron will cause atherosclerosis directly. We do believe, however, that the combination of high cholesterol levels—which are common in Western cultures—and high iron and/or copper levels can contribute to this process. People have wondered for years why men are predisposed to certain diseases from which women seem to be protected. For heart disease, it is not that women are totally protected; they seem to be protected only prior to menopause. The conventional medical view is that it is all hormonal, that in some mysterious way, women's hormones protect them during the childbearing years. And there's been no clear mechanism proposed as to how that would actually work. For example, the effects of estrogen on cholesterol levels are really quite ridiculously small to ever be a mechanism for this. The changes in iron metabolism, however, are dramatic, and appear to be a much more sensible explanation for the difference in incidence of heart disease in men and women. The iron levels match exactly the mortality rates of heart disease in men and women. Men get very high iron levels early in life, say twenty years old, whereas women's iron levels are held down by the natural loss of iron through menstruation. As soon as that ceases, however, their iron levels bound up quickly to that of men, and, at the same time, the incidence of heart disease increases." 20
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Luckily, the same kind of meat-free, dairy-free diet (i.e. vegan) that lowers cholesterol levels also lowers iron. Says Dr. Lauffer:
"It makes sense to look to many of the Asian cultures, where heart attacks are of much lower prevalence, and at the type of diet they eat, and try to mimic that. It's very simple. In fact, the biggest contributor to both high iron and high cholesterol levels is meat consumption. Meat is a one-two punch: it contains a certain form of iron [known as heme] that is very rapidly and easily absorbed. And it contains saturated fat and cholesterol. So every bite of meat is contributing to two problems in the body—both of which lead to heart disease and possibly other chronic diseases that are common in Western meat-eating cultures."
Dr. Lauffer also suggests that iron may play an important role in the causation of cancer:
"We have had evidence for a long time that high iron levels do increase the risk of cancer," he says, "and there are two reasons: first of all, iron's role in free radical damage is important in cancer. Cancer arises when the blueprint for the cell, the DNA, is damaged. Second, iron is known to be a key catalyst for this process. . . . The body tries to safely sequester iron away in the cell and keep it away from the DNA. However, free radical damage still occurs. The body repairs the damage as best it can, but it can't sometimes repair every little nick that occurs. And so, the more of these nicks you get, the greater chance you have of getting cancer. Iron has another role in cancer: iron is a key ingredient for cell division. If the cell doesn't have iron around, it simply does not divide. So if you can restrict the amount of iron to a cancer cell, it actually slows down cancer growth."
The possible connection between iron levels and heart disease was first proposed in 1981, when Dr. Jerome Sullivan, a pathologist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina, suggested that menstrual bleeding might protect women from heart disease by reducing the amount of iron in their bodies. Although
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experts have traditionally blamed hormonal changes for the sudden surge in cardiovascular illness in women after the age of menopause, Sullivan pointed out that women's cholesterol levels change little after menopause, although their iron levels do rise sharply. Further evidence to support Sullivan's theory comes from studies that show that surgical removal of the uterus (the site of menstrual bleeding) causes an increase in heart-attack risk—even if the ovaries are left to produce estrogen.
Then, in 1992, the first major piece of practical research in support of the iron-heart disease connection was published. 21 Researchers at the University of Kuopio in Finland tracked the health of 1,931 men from 1984 until 1989, and found that men with higher iron levels in their bodies had twice the risk of heart attack compared to men with lower levels of stored iron. Men with both high iron and high cholesterol were four times as likely to be stricken.
Since then, the debate in medical and scientific circles has been raging. Iron—just like protein before it—has been a sacred cow of conventional nutrition for decades; the idea that it might be a doubled-edged sword is still anathema to many. Nevertheless, the evidence against excessive iron consumption—primarily from flesh foods—is increasing, and cannot be lightly dismissed.
In Conclusion
• Eating a meat-free diet does not increase the risk of iron-deficiency anemia.
• The body naturally regulates its absorption of dietary iron according to its needs.
• A healthy meat-free diet will include several good sources of iron (see below).
• Eating foods—or supplements—rich in vitamin C will considerably enhance iron bioavailability. Iron must be delivered in a soluble form to the small intestine if it is to be absorbed, and vitamin C can make sure that nonheme iron remains soluble in the acidic environment normally found there. Other organic acids found in fruit and vegetables, such as malic acid and citric acid, are also thought to possess this iron-enhancing attribute. This effect is substantial: adding 60 mg of vitamin C to a meal of rice has been shown to more than triple the absorption
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of iron; adding the same amount to a meal of corn enhances absorption fivefold. 22 Vegetarians and vegans are fortunate inasmuch as many excellent sources of iron are also naturally good sources of vitamin C.
• Several factors can significantly reduce the absorption of iron, among them tea (the tannin forms insoluble iron compounds) and the food preservative EDTA. Both of these can reduce assimilation by as much as 50 percent.
• Use iron supplements only on medical advice. And keep them away from children—in America, iron pills are the most common cause of childhood poisoning deaths. 23
• Too much iron may be as dangerous as too little. A vegetarian diet that allows our bodies to absorb the right amount of iron from several natural sources is the healthiest option. After all, it works pretty well for our primate relatives!
• Milk and milk products are practically devoid of iron. Worse, milk may reduce the absorption of iron from other foods 24 , thereby compounding iron-deficiency problems. 25 One study has shown that 44 out of 100 infants receiving whole cow's milk had blood in their feces. This would also contribute to an iron-deficiency problem. 26 Egg yolks do contain iron, but this is poorly absorbed due to the presence of an inhibitor, phosvitin.
GOOD SOURCES OF IRON
An extensive analysis of several thousand vegetarian foodstuffs reveals that the following are good sources of this nutrient:
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Other Dietary Anemias
Apart from iron deficiency, anemia will also result if the diet does not contain sufficient vitamin B 12 or folic acid (which is sometimes referred to as vitamin B 9 ). Both of these vitamins play an essential part in the regular replacement of hemoglobin in the body.
Folic acid deficiency is a widespread problem globally. Unlike vitamin B 12 , the body does not store appreciable amounts of it, so it is essential that the diet regularly contains goods sources. Apart from the risk of anemia, it has been shown that pregnant women whose diets are low in this vitamin are more likely to bear children with serious neural tube defects, such as hydrocephalus and spina bifida (birth defects characterized by a spinal column that does not form properly). Research shows that the simple precaution of taking folic acid supplements, especially during early pregnancy, can dramatically reduce the incidence of these afflictions. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is so convinced of the importance of this vitamin for preventing birth defects that it wants it to be added to bread, flour, and other enriched grain products. 27
The good news for vegetarians is that folic acid (the word comes from the Latin for "leaf") is present in many common green leafy vegetable foods (note, however, that it can be destroyed by excessive cooking). It is not present in most meat, milk, eggs, and root vegetables.
Of far more concern, particularly to vegans, is the question of vitamin B 12 deficiency anemia. Those who are commercially opposed to the vegan diet cite the relative lack of vitamin B 12 as conclusive proof that veganism is a perverse practice. On the other side, ardent vegans have been known to declare that vitamin B 12 "simply isn't an issue." As with iron deficiency, the truth is far more complex than either of these extremes, and a little basic knowledge about the role of this vitamin in the diet, and its best sources, would calm a debate in which there has frequently been more heat than light.
There is no question that lack of vitamin B 12 will eventually cause serious health problems, described here by two medical experts in the field (both, incidentally, practicing vegetarians):
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The pernicious anemia patient was first described in the medical literature in 1849 as one who appeared pale and sallow with a shiny tongue and complained of weakness and fatigue that progressed gradually to the point of paralysis. Blood tests done on such patients today would reveal low hemoglobin levels and large, pale red blood cells. In the early stages of the illness there are numbness and tingling in the hands and feet with a loss of sensation. Gradually a lack of motor coordination develops. These symptoms are now known to be due to an inability to synthesize myelin, the fatty sheath that insulates nerve fibers. As a result, the nerves to the limbs degenerate. If allowed to proceed unchecked, the deterioration progresses into the spinal cord and ultimately to the brain. Moodiness, poor memory, and confusion give way gradually to delusions, hallucinations, and overt psychosis. 28
Clearly, we're dealing with a very serious set of symptoms, which it would be dishonest—and dangerous—to ignore or to trivialize. However, this is only the beginning of the story. The fact is that the vast majority of cases of vitamin B 12 deficiency occur not in vegans, but in the general meat-eating population. Comments Dr. John Linden-baum, a vitamin B 12 researcher and director of the department of medicine at Columbia University, "We see less than one case a year due to insufficient intake of vitamin B 12 alone." 29 Compare that number to the fifty cases of pernicious anemia that Dr. Lindenbaum sees in nonvegetarians in the same period of time.
So if meat eaters can experience vitamin B 12 deficiency—and meat itself contains large amounts of vitamin B 12 — what is going wrong?
The answer is that although these people consume large amounts of B 12 in their diets, they cannot absorb it due to low acidity in the stomach, disease, or the absence of an enzyme called the "intrinsic factor." In any of these cases, vitamin B 12 is blocked from entering the body's normal biochemical pathways, and will therefore never do its work in the body. The fact is that cases of vitamin B 12 deficiency are most often due to a defect in absorption, and not to a dietary lack of the vitamin.
Many vegans feel, quite justifiably, persecuted over the matter of
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vitamin B 12 . The number of cases on record of vegans exhibiting health problems due to B p deficiency is very small—certainly when compared to the millions of people who die every year of diseases linked to meat consumption. But there are, indeed, a few clinical cases on record of vegans, and their babies, developing anemia because of low B 12 dietary intake. Such cases are rare, but because the implications are serious—particularly for babies, whose intellectual development may be impaired—they must not be ignored.
Vitamin B 12 is itself the subject of much continuing research. The amount needed in the diet is absolutely tiny; the smallest of all the suggested daily intakes of vitamins. 30 Measuring the B 12 content of food is difficult, partly because the quantities are so small, and partly because foods sometimes contain substances that are chemically very similar to B 12 , but do not possess the same biological activity (non-cobalamin analogues). Vitamin B 12 is almost always manufactured by bacteria (although, even here, the possibility exists that that some peas and beans actually produce their own vitamin B 12 ). The vitamin B 12 in meat itself is produced by bacterial action within the gut of the animal in question; it is also likely that bacteria on the surface and around the roots of plants eaten by that animal will also contribute toward the total B 12 content of the animal's flesh.
The obvious question has been posed that if farm animals can produce vitamin B 12 from their internal bacteria, why can't humans, too? In all probability, we can. Bacteria in our gut, in our mouth, around the teeth and gums, in the nasopharynx, around the tonsils, in the folds at the base of the tongue, and even in the upper bronchial tree may all produce vitamin B 12 . And if we eat foods grown in soils where the bacterial flora is rich, such as organic produce, then we will probably take in a useful dose of B 12 from this source, too.
All these aspects of vitamin B 12 are intriguing, and all are grounds for much additional research work and speculation. But none of these points should be used to obscure the fact that healthy vegans need to make sure they periodically eat foods that they know to contain good sources of B 12 . Indeed, there are many, because B 12 is often added to many of the most common foodstuffs, such as soy milk, yeast extract, textured vegetable protein foods, and most breakfast cereals. Because of this, B 12 is one of the easiest of all nutrients for vegans to obtain: all
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you have to do is to check the product's label for information on its B 12 content.
In Conclusion
• Inadequate folic acid intake is a substantial hazard for many meat eaters—it is not found in most meats, milk, or eggs. Because of their high intake of green leafy vegetables, wheat, beans, lentils, and other good dietary sources, vegetarians are well-placed to avoid the health problems associated with folic acid deficiency.
• Pernicious anemia is usually caused by an inability to absorb vitamin B 12 —whether or not you eat meat has nothing to do with it.
• Dietary vitamin B 12 deficiency is never a problem for vegans who periodically eat foods that contain this vitamin.
ANGINA
What is it?
In medical language, angina properly means a spasmodic, choking, or suffocating pain. For example, the complaint angina acuta, which sounds very alarming, merely signifies a simple sore throat. However, "angina" is now used almost exclusively to describe angina pectoris, a chronic condition of pain in the chest. The word "angina" comes from the Greek for "strangling," which sums up both the cause and effect of this serious and threatening condition. It is almost always caused by an insufficient supply of oxygen to the heart muscle, which is itself usually the result of progressive blockage of the coronary arteries. It is closely linked to both coronary heart disease and high blood pressure. Angina is most likely to strike during physical exertion or emotion, and will disappear when the excess work load or emotion is relieved.
How the Vegetarian Diet Can Help
As explained in the section related to heart disease (pages 226-42), Dr. Dean Ornish's work treating patients with a low-fat vegan diet clearly demonstrates that the plaques that build up and eventually block coronary arteries can be diminished by appropriate diet ther-
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apy. This results in increased flow of blood and a corresponding decline in the severity or frequency of angina, which has now been verified by several detailed scientific papers. 31 Rather than repeat the evidence here, I will refer you to the sections relating to heart disease and hypertension (pages 226-50), where the science is covered in some detail. It is, however, worth emphasizing that it is the vegan, not the semivegetarian, diet that can reverse atherosclerosis. "Many doctors still recommend 'lean meat' diets," comments Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, "even though such diets do not reverse heart disease for most patients and, in fact, are too weak even to stop the progression of the disease." 32 Confirms Dr. Ornish, "Our study and now four other studies have shown that, on average, people with heart disease who only make moderate changes—less red meat, more fish and chicken, fewer eggs, and so on—overall they tend to get worse over time. The arteries become more blocked."
ARTHRITIS AND RHEUMATISM
What Is It?
"Arthritis" is a specific term describing inflammation of the joints; "rheumatism" is used more broadly and describes all aches and pains in the muscles, bones, and joints. In this sense, we have all suffered from rheumatism at some time. Rheumatoid arthritis is therefore inflammation and pain of the joints and the surrounding tissues. There are, in fact, some 100 different types of arthritis, including
• Reiter's syndrome, an acute form often accompanied by eye inflammation and more frequently found in young men
• Ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic complaint, affecting the spine, pelvic joints, and sometimes the heart and eyes. It causes pain, fatigue, and depression, which can last for years.
• Systemic lupus erythematosus, more common in women and characterized by skin rashes and joint inflammation
• Gout, which involves swelling and severe pain, normally in the big toe. It has long been known to be aggravated by diet, especially foods rich in purine, which produces uric acid.
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Why Do People Get Arthritis?
Many different causes have been suggested including stress, allergies, food and environmental pollution, malnutrition, hormonal imbalance, and digestive inadequacy. In addition, our body can mistakenly attack itself in trying to fight off foreign bacteria that closely resemble our own tissue. This is called an "autoimmune response." Relevant to all of these causes is the ever-increasing evidence that diet has a very important role to play in the onset and control of these degenerative disorders.
How the Vegetarian Diet Can Help
Medicine has conventionally treated the notion that arthritis might be responsive to the meat-free diet as unsubstantiated folklore. As recently as 1990, for example, the University of California's own health publication advised its readers that "though scores of clinical studies have been conducted, no dietary regimen or nutritional supplement has been shown to alleviate or prevent arthritis." 33 Nevertheless, the evidence has steadily accumulated over the years, and at last it seems as if the testimony of countless sufferers is being given a sympathetic hearing by many doctors. There is, indeed, a good scientific explanation. Meat and dairy foods contain arachidonic acid, and it has been demonstrated that levels of arachidonic acid in the blood fluctuate according to the consumption of these products, and can indeed promote joint inflammation. 34 Adopting a vegan diet can significantly reduce arachidonic acid, and the subsequent pain of arthritis, as several studies prove:
In one early study of rheumatoid arthritis, published in 1986, patients were asked to fast for a week, and then for three weeks eat a vegan diet. At the end of this time, 60 percent said they felt better, with "less pain and increased functional ability." 35 Studies such as this, however, do not always make the medical headlines, and it was several more years before most specialists began to appreciate just how important the role of diet might be in diminishing the pain of arthritis.
Some people may be particularly sensitive to dairy products. In this well-constructed experiment, a fifty-two-year-old white woman with
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eleven years of arthritic suffering was tested to see which foods—if any—provoked her arthritis the most. 36 Eating her "normal" diet, she would average about 30 minutes of morning stiffness, with 9 tender joints and 3 swollen joints. After a 3-day fast, there was no morning stiffness, just 1 tender joint, and no swollen joints. However, when she was given milk (the study was "blinded"—the foodstuff she was swallowing was disguised), the arthritis returned with a vengeance, with 30 minutes of morning stiffness, 14 tender joints, and 4 swollen joints.
Perhaps the most widely publicized study appeared in the medical journal The Lancet in 1991. 37 Twenty-seven patients were asked to follow a modified fast for 7 to 10 days (herbal teas, garlic, vegetable broths, and juices), and were then put on a gluten-free vegan diet for 3V2 months. The authors of the study had already accepted that "fasting is an effective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, but most patients relapse on reintroduction of food." Their aim, therefore, was to see whether the achievements attained during fasting could be maintained. Gradually, the subjects' diet was altered by adding a new food item every other day, eventually arriving at a lacto-vegetarian diet for the remainder of the study. If the introduction of one food produced symptoms, then it would be eliminated again. A control group ate an ordinary diet throughout the whole study period. After four weeks the vegetarian group showed a significant improvement in number of tender joints, number of swollen joints, pain, duration of morning stiffness, grip strength, white blood cell count, and many other measurements of health. Best of all, wrote the scientists, "the benefits in the diet group were still present after one year."
Today, it seems that the dietary treatment of the excruciating pain of arthritis is at last finding widespread acceptance by medical specialists. Speaking at the launch of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Council's booklet "Diet and Arthritis," consultant rheumatologist Dr. John Kir-wan commented, "As far as we can tell at present, low-fat diets, cutting out red meat, full-fat milk, butter and confectionery made with butter—together with an increased intake of coldwater fish or vegetable oil—may enable people to take fewer pain killers and antiinflammatory drugs." 38 And that's no bad thing. In an earlier report from 1986, British doctors estimated that nonsteroidal antiinflamma-
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tory drugs (NSAIDs) used in the treatment of arthritic pain may be causing 200 deaths and 2,000 cases of intestinal bleeding each year. 39 Almost all the victims are elderly, and most are women.
What Else Can You Do?
There are a number of other dietary measures you can consider when making appropriate lifestyle changes to reduce the pain of arthritis.
A New England horticulturist has developed a theory that solanum alkaloids, found in members of the nightshade family of plants, could cause arthritis in some people. The nightshade family includes deadly nightshade, eggplant, red and green pepper, potatoes, tomatoes and tobacco. A group of 3,000 sufferers cut this family of foods from their diet and experienced reduced aches, pains, and disfigurement. 40
Dava Sorbel, a former New York Times science writer, and market researcher Arthur Klein surveyed over 1,000 arthritis sufferers aged 10 to 90 in an attempt to find out what the sufferers themselves found to be effective. 41 Forty-seven percent changed the way they ate because of their arthritis. Of these, 20 percent said the dietary changes helped their condition—in some cases, dramatically. The researchers found that the most-avoided foods were red meats (155 patients), sugar (148), fats (135), salt (98), caffeine (56), plants in the nightshade family, such as tomatoes and eggplant, (48). Most-favored foods were vegetables (204 patients), fruit (174), fish (89).
People who alter the bacterial content of their gut often experience relief from rheumatic symptoms. 42 A change of diet combined with a course of colonic irrigation and the use of acidophilus supplements is certainly worth trying.
A calorie-controlled diet is of benefit to those who suffer rheumatism or arthritis and are overweight. Excess weight only adds to the strain placed on already overstressed joints. A healthy way to lose weight is to eat a vegan diet and, at the same time, cut out all refined sugar. This diet lets you drop the pounds quickly while significantly reducing joint discomfort.
Fish oils have been shown to have some benefit for arthritis sufferers, probably because of the omega-3 fatty acids they contain. For ethical reasons (and indeed, for reasons of health—the many fishing areas
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are known to be extremely polluted), you should consider instead flaxseed oil supplements. Also, the linolenic acid in soy bean oil (soy lecithin) is believed to get rapidly converted in the body to the same omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oils.
Vitamin A is necessary for the body to fight infection, a key in many rheumatoid arthritis cases. To make sure you get enough of this vitamin, eat plenty of yellow, orange, and green fruits and vegetables such as spinach, carrot, papaya, pumpkin, sweet potato, watercress, and parsley.
If you are taking drugs for a rheumatic disease, it is possible that you are lacking in vitamin B complex. This is found in whole grains and brewer's yeast.
Vitamin C helps to thin the synovial fluid in your joints which leads to improved mobility. Arthritics particularly benefit from taking vitamin C because the aspirin they take to reduce pain and inflammation depletes the body of vitamin C. Fresh citrus fruit, blackcurrants, green peppers and cauliflower are all excellent sources.
Vitamins C and E and the mineral selenium are all antioxidants; oxidation is a process in which nutrients in the body are broken down before the body can use them. Selenium also reduces the production of prostaglandins and leukotrienes, both of which cause inflammation. Whole grains, vegetable oils and nuts are rich in vitamin E. Selenium is a trace mineral available from most plant foods or from supplementation.
People with arthritis sometimes have an enzyme deficiency in their small intestine, which means they are unable to absorb gluten, a protein found in wheat flour. In fact, maps of areas in the world where gluten-high cereals are eaten correspond to those areas with the highest incidence of rheumatoid arthritis. 43 And countries where rice or corn is the staple grain show a much lower rate of the rheumatic diseases than those whose staple grain is wheat. Reduce your consumption of gluten by substituting rice cakes and oatmeal or corn bread for wheat bread and cake.
Yucca is a folk medicine that has been used for more than 1,000 years in America. A study into its effects found that 60 percent of rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis patients experienced an improvement in their symptoms of swelling, pain, and stiffness. 44 Yucca is available in supplement form.
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An alfalfa supplement may be of particular help to you. It is rich in protein, minerals and vitamins and contains chlorophyll, an excellent detoxifier of your system that helps reduce pain and swelling. Consider taking it in tablet or powder form, or as a tea. Also, you may like to add alfalfa sprouts to your salad or sandwich.
As a last resort (and this is not meant altogether seriously), you might consider getting pregnant. Scientists have long noted that women suffering from rheumatoid arthritis often get better during pregnancy. Why this should be so is open to question, but it is possible that the body's natural defenses jump into action against what seems to be a foreign invader—the baby—which somehow relieves the arthritis at the same time. 45
ASTHMA
What Is It?
"Asthma" literally means "panting," which rather understates the possible severity of an asthmatic attack. "Gasping" would perhaps be a better description of this acute condition, which is caused by a temporary narrowing of the bronchi (the airways branching from the trachea to the lungs). Asthma attacks can be precipitated by a sensitivity reaction to food, pollens, mold, and fungi, but may also be caused by airborne pollution or by infections of the respiratory tract. Most asthma attacks can be controlled by the administration of drug therapy, although this is in no sense a cure. Childhood asthma very often is associated with eczema or similar hypersensitivity reactions, and in many cases it disappears with age.
In the last decade, the death rate from asthma climbed by 46 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control. 46 The greatest increases were seen among women and African-Americans. "It's generally thought that asthma is a treatable disease with no fatal outcomes," commented Dr. Jessie Wing of the CDC. "Unfortunately, we're seeing severe disease with fatal outcomes." A shocking British television documentary recently found that nearly half of the boys under the age of five in one London borough suffered from asthma. 47
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How the Vegetarian Diet Can Help
In this case, we're definitely talking about the "vegan" diet—as opposed to the vegetarian one, which may, of course, include dairy products. Food sensitivity was a subject that excited an enormous amount of publicity in the last decade, and stormy passions were aroused on both sides of the fence. Today, there seems little doubt that food sensitivity can be involved in the development of a range of problems—urticaria, angioedema, anaphylaxis, eczema, asthma, rhinitis, infantile colitis, inflammatory bowel disease, migraine, and hyperactivity, to name but a few, although it is by no means certain to what extent diet is a major causative factor. People are, of course, very different creatures, and what provokes a reaction in one person may well not do so in another. It does seem, however, that among those who experience diet-induced asthma, the most likely foods to produce this effect are cow's milk and eggs. 48 Therefore, the vegan diet seems to be a good starting point to test the diet-asthma theory.
This is precisely what some researchers did in 1985. 49 Taking 35 patients who had suffered from bronchial asthma for an average of 12 years (all of them on long-term medication, some on cortisone), the scientists prescribed a vegan diet—which also excluded chlorinated tap water, coffee, tea, chocolate, and sugar—for 12 months. Most fruit, vegetables, beans, lentils, and peas were freely allowed, although apples and citrus fruits were not, and grains were restricted or eliminated. The results were quite amazing—in nearly all cases, medication for asthma was either totally withdrawn or drastically reduced. Naturally, there was a significant decrease in asthma symptoms. Twenty-four patients fulfilled the treatment. Of these, 71 percent reported improvement at 4 months and 92 percent after the full year. The scientists concluded, "Selected patients, with a fear of side-effects of medication, who are interested in alternative health care, might get well and replace conventional medication with this regimen."
It is important to emphasize the long-term nature of this experiment—some patients needed the full 12 months before achieving maximum effect and freedom from medication. Speculation as to why the vegan diet should have this very profound effect probably centers around the removal of the more likely food allergens (such as eggs and
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milk), and also the absence of dietary arachidonic acid, found exclusively in animal products. Arachidonic acid is metabolized in the body to produce prostaglandins (which perform a wide range of hormonelike actions in the body) and leukotrienes (which are potent stimulators of bronchial constriction). It has been observed that people with asthma may have an excess of leukotriene activity, 50 and for this reason various experiments have been designed to see whether the consumption of fish oil, which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, might somehow equalize the production of leukotrienes from arachidonic acid. However, there are conflicting studies about the effect of fish oil on asthma sufferers. Some studies suggest that it may have a useful effect, 51 others do not. 52 One investigation required 10 patients with asthma to consume a fish-oil enriched diet. 53 After 5 weeks, it was clear that the patients were doing rather badly—bronchodilator usage was up (13 puffs a day using fish oil, compared to 7 puffs a day without it). Also, their breathing was less efficient, with the maximum rate of air flow during expiration down by 15 percent—a significant amount. This hardly amounts to convincing evidence in favor of fish oil consumption and, as already mentioned, whatever beneficial effects are present in fish oil can also be obtained from plants oils such as flaxseed. On the other hand, the vegan study described above does suggest that a diet that eliminates meat products will reduce arachidonic acid and its asthma-provoking metabolites.
What Else Can You Do?
Asthma has many possible causes, and it is therefore worth trying a number of different approaches in its treatment. Some that have proven successful are described below:
Vitamin B 6 (pyridoxine) levels have been found to be lower in adult patients with asthma than in nonsufferers. 54 The same study has reported finding a significant decrease in frequency and severity of wheezing and asthmatic attacks in patients taking B 6 supplements.
"Reports of the value of Vitamin C for the control of asthma began around 1940," said Linus Pauling, twice Nobel prize winner and distinguished champion of vitamin C therapy for many modern diseases. 55 "There is now good evidence," he continued, "that vitamin C has such value as an adjunct to conventional therapy. Some of the
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older studies gave negative results, perhaps because of the use of too small an amount of the vitamin for too short a time. Most of the recent studies have shown that the vitamin has had an effect."
Pauling pointed to several such studies. When 6 healthy young men were given a drug (methacholine) that simulates the effect of asthma, it restricted their airflow by 40 percent. 56 Yet when they were given 100 mg of vitamin C (about the amount in two oranges) 1 hour before exposure to the chemical, it only restricted their airways by 9 percent. A double-blind test (one in which both subject and experimenter don't know who's taking the vitamin C and who's taking the dummy pill) was performed on 41 asthma patients in Nigeria. 3 In the rainy season, respiratory infections are common, and they exacerbate the condition of asthmatics. For 14 weeks, half the group (22 people) were given 1,000 mg of vitamin C a day; the other half was given a placebo (dummy pill). When the experiment was over, it was found that those who had been taking the vitamin C had suffered less than a quarter as many asthma attacks during the rainy season as those who hadn't taken the vitamin. Some of those taking vitamin C had no attacks at all for this period. However, the attacks returned after the experiment finished.
Another study looked at the effects of taking vitamin C before exercise. The bane of many asthmatics' lives are the paroxysms they suffer after exertion. "Characteristically, what happens is that an asthmatic will engage in a sport," says Dr. E. Neil Schachter, one of the researchers involved, "or some kind of exercise, and feel fine throughout the activity. But then 3 to 5 minutes after the exercise, he'll feel a tightness in his chest and will start wheezing. The attack tends to get progressively worse over the next 30 minutes." Patients in this study took just 500 mg of vitamin C before exercising and found that the severity of any subsequent attack was significantly reduced.^ 8
These and other studies indicate that taking vitamin C, usually in quantities far higher than a normal diet can provide, may be beneficial for some people.
Other nutritional factors that, research suggests, help reduce the severity of asthma are carotenes (vitamin A), vitamin E, and selenium. All these substances have been experimentally shown to decrease leukotriene formation.
Certain chemicals and food additives may sometimes induce sensi-
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tivity reactions in susceptible indiduals. The most common include aspirin and other nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), sodium benzoate, sulfur dioxide, potassium sorbate, and tartrazine.
The food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG) can provoke asthma in certain people, although the attack itself may not take place for up to 12 hours after food containing MSG is eaten, which can present a real problem in identifying the cause of the attack for both the sufferer and doctor. 59
Babies who are not fed allergy-triggering foods such as milk and eggs are less likely to suffer from asthma and allergies during the first year of life, according to a British study conducted on 120 families with histories of allergies. 60 Scientists restricted the diet of both babies and mothers, and found that "what the mother eats while breastfeeding can be sufficient to sensitize the baby," according to Dr. David Hide, of St. Mary's Hospital in Newport, Isle of Wight. It seems that proteins from the mother's food transfer into her breast milk and may cause babies to get allergies, even if the mother does not suffer from them. The mothers and their babies were divided into two groups: one ate "normally," but the other did not consume dairy products, eggs, fish, nuts, wheat, or soy. After 1 year, 14 percent of infants in the diet group showed signs of one or more allergies, whereas 40 percent of babies in the "normal" group became allergic. Over twice as many babies in the "normal" group showed asthma symptoms compared to those on the special diet. The diet is recommended only for those with a family history of allergies.
People who develop asthma as a sensitivity reaction to birds' feathers may also become hypersensitive to chickens' eggs, and possibly chicken flesh. One study found that 32 percent of people who developed bronchial asthma and rhinoconjunctivitis when exposed to bird feathers also developed a sensitivity reaction to egg proteins. 61
Relaxation and stress reduction can be important parts of treating the underlying cause of asthma in some people. There is evidence to show that learning yoga, a Hindu discipline that is learned in eight steps, may have a beneficial effect—especially that part of yoga that deals with the art of breathing, pranayama. 62 Usually, the best scientific studies are performed on a "double blind" basis, in which both subject and experimenter are not told whether the treatment is actu-
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ally being performed. To assess the effect of yogic breathing with a double blind method seems, at first glance, impossible. Yet that is just what some ingenious scientists have done. They achieved this using a device called the Pink City lung exerciser, which is a device used to teach students of pranayama the 1:2 ratio between breathing in and breathing out (short breath in, long breath out). The scientists used this machine, and also a look-alike device, which appeared to, but in fact did not, enforce this method of breathing on the students. Both devices were used by 18 patients with mild asthma, who spent a couple of weeks on each machine. Each patient recorded his symptoms, how much medication he had to use, and his best "deep breaths," both morning and evening. The results were encouraging, suggesting that pranayama exercises may indeed help to control mild asthma.
Finally, in the interest of reducing the incidence of asthma, we can all press for tighter controls on pollution and acid rain. There is a clear relationship between bronchial disease and air pollution, and children are more vulnerable than any other group to this insidious side-effect of industrialization.
CANCER
It cannot be concluded that a clear and consistent relationship exists between red meat and cancer. While some cancer prevention guidelines suggest limiting red meat intake, this implied association is not based on firm scientific evidence.
—National Cattlemen's Beef Association, Food & Nutrition News, Winter 1998
A Preventable Scourge
Did you know . . .
• Half of all the cases of cancer are suffered by just one-fifth of the world's population—those who live in industrialized countries. 63
• As a leading cause of death in the United States, cancer is second only to heart disease. Colorectal, breast, lung, and prostate
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cancer accounted for over half (60 percent) of all cancer deaths in 1996. • One in eight American women will get breast cancer, and one in three people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer at some point in their lives. 64
This is shocking. It means that, far from "winning the war" against cancer, we're actually losing it. Writers and journalists don't usually make that kind of statement. When you read about cancer, it's always the "good news" you see. We're supposed to concentrate on the fact that many cancer patients survive longer than they used to a few decades ago, and that the the new genetic technologies promise cures undreamed of just a few years ago. Let's hope they do.
But for anyone who's lost a friend or loved one to this ravaging disease, no amount of cheery optimism will convince us that the "battle" is being won. We've seen the casualties. We know the pain.
Cancer can be prevented. That's not a message that is often heard. But it's true. We already know—and have known for decades—a great deal about the factors responsible for causing cancer. Most of the cancer charities and organizations remain more interested in treating cancer than in preventing it, and so relatively few of us truly understand that many of the factors giving rise to cancer are actually within our control.
For example, it is estimated that 60 percent or more of all cancers in the Western world today are related to environmental causes. 6 ^ This is by no means a radically new proposition. As long ago as 1775, the eminent surgeon Sir Percival Pott, one of the great names in the history of medicine, suggested that there might be a link. He was the first to notice that chimney sweeps often developed a particular form of cancer, and put forward the theory that their atrocious working conditions were responsible.
So if we have reason to suspect that our environment might be a factor in the causation of cancer, shouldn't we try to do something to control it, or at least to reduce the risk? After all, we spend huge amounts of money trying to find cures or more effective treatments for cancer. Surely we should be trying to prevent the disease from appearing in the first place?
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Of course we should. But that's not what usually happens. In 1991, one of the major British cancer charities spent over $60 million on research, and barely $850,000 advising the public of how they might reduce their risks. The same charity commented in its annual report, "Although circumstantial evidence suggest that diet is linked to the cause of many human cancers, the evidence is extremely controversial." 66 Commented the director of another major cancer charity, "The basis for dietary effects on cancer is not understood." 67 What dismal, discouraging words.
Well, at least one form of preventive medicine is on the agenda. "Women worried about breast cancer should consider having healthy breasts removed before the disease has a chance to develop," one newspaper recently reported a professor of obstetrics and gynecology as stating. 68 It's rather like removing "a redundant gland and pad of fat," he said. Another proposal is to give healthy women Tamoxifen—a powerful anticancer drug— before they develop the disease. 69
But let's get back to reality. In 1981, an epoch-making report was produced by the eminent epidemiologists Richard Doll and Richard Peto. 70 It assembled all the evidence they could find linking the occurrence of human cancers to specific identifiable factors. Although the authors of the 1,308-page report warn that not all causes of cancer can be identified or avoided, it does seem from the evidence collected that some of the causes of cancer they identify are well within our own control. This is what they estimate the main risk factors to be, with their best estimates of the percentage of total cancer-caused deaths that are attributable to them:
FACTORS THAT CAUSE CANCER
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You can see that "diet" comes right at the top of the list. "Diet" means what we choose to eat, doesn't it? So, by informing ourselves of the evidence, and by taking steps to change our diets accordingly, we ought to be able to significantly reduce our chances of suffering from a diet-related cancer.
Now let's be quite clear. As long as there's been cancer, there have been quacks, charlatans, and swindlers who have preyed upon victims and their loved ones, selling them fraudulent "cures," or exploiting their distress to obtain some kind of advantage. So let's state here that vegetarians aren't immune to cancer. If you were the healthiest-living vegetarian in the world, who just happened to live downwind from Chernobyl, then the odds would be stacked heavily against you, regardless of your diet. There are a host of factors that can predispose us toward this ghastly affliction, and only some of them are controllable. Avoiding cancer is fundamentally about reducing your risk. The evidence you're about to see shows the vegetarian diet can do this for you.
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What Is It?
Cancer is the term used to describe malignant forms of a larger class of diseases known as neoplasms (literally, "new formations"). It is initiated by exposure to a carcinogen (cancer-causing substance), which can be a chemical, a virus, or something physical such as radiation. Certain cancers can also arise as a result of hereditary factors.
A general characteristic of the development of cancer is the time lag between the first exposure to a carcinogen, and the subsequent development of cancer (scientists call this period the "tumor induction time"). Whether cancer eventually develops, and how quickly, is partly the result of the degree of exposure to a second class of substances called "promoting agents." Although tumor promoters do not themselves initiate cancer, they can have a great bearing on its outcome. This two-stage process of initiation followed by promotion is a central characteristic of the cancerous process. It introduces a wildly uncertain element into the equation, and explains why not everyone who is exposed to a carcinogen will contract cancer. It also offers us a great deal of hope, because the activity of tumor promoters can be greatly affected by a wide variety of factors—including, of course, what we eat.
Cancer begins as a single abnormal cell, which starts to multiply uncontrollably. This is the essential feature of cancer—an uncontrolled growth of cells. Malignant groups of such cells form tumors and invade healthy tissue, often spreading to other parts of the body in a process called "metastasis." Because of this fundamental ability to invade and destroy other parts of the body, the Greek doctor Hippocrates called this disorder karkinos, which literally means "crab," the origin of the modern word "cancer."
Neoplasms are divided into two fundamental types—benign and malignant. A benign neoplasm does not metastasize—in other words, it only grows at its point of origin—and it is usually named by tagging the suffix "oma" onto the word for the tissue concerned. For example, the Greek for "fat" is lipos, so a benign tumor of fat cells would be called a lipoma (there are, however, several exceptions to this general rule).
Malignant neoplasms (cancers) grow more rapidly than benign forms and invade adjacent, normal tissue. They are described by
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adding either "carcinoma" or "sarcoma" to the word for the site of the cancer (a malignancy of the fat cells would, therefore, be termed a liposarcoma). These two general classes of malignant neoplasms are defined thus:
• Carcinomas affect the skin and tissues that covers both the external and internal body, for example, breast cancer, prostate cancer, or cancer of the uterus.
• Sarcomas affect the body's supportive and connective tissue, such as muscles, blood vessels, bone, and fat.
It may take years for a noticeable tumor to develop, and it is undoubtedly true that speed of diagnosis can be a lifesaving factor. The American Cancer Society suggests there are seven warning signs which, even if only one is present, should provoke a prompt investigation. They are
• A change in bowel or bladder function
• A sore that does not heal
• Unusual bleeding or discharge
• A thickening or lump in the breast or elsewhere
• Indigestion or difficulty in swallowing
• An obvious change in a wart or a mole
• A nagging cough or hoarseness.
The prospects for survival depend, among other things, on the site in the body affected, the speed of diagnosis, the treatment given, and, to a considerable extent, on the attitude of the patient toward the disease.
Now, it's been suspected for a very long time—certainly over a century—that a meat-based diet is more likely to produce more cancers in a population than a plant-based one. Consider this extract from Scientific American magazine: "Inhabitants of cities indulge far too freely in meat, often badly cooked and kept too long; the poor and country population do not often get their meat fresh. Professor Verneuil considers something should be done to remedy this state of things. He points out that Reclus, the French geographer, has proved that cancer
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is most frequent among those branches of the human race where carnivorous habits prevail." 71
Even earlier than this, we find evidence of the vegan diet being used by dietetic reformer Dr. William Lambe (1765-1846) to treat patients with cancer. In 1804 John Abernethy, a renowned surgeon of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London (who, incidentally, gave his name to a biscuit flavored with caraway seeds), wrote the following account of Lambe's diet and its effects. Abernethy's clear-sighted description and interpretation of results would surely put many of our modern-day scientists to shame:
Very recently Dr. Lambe has proposed a method of treating cancerous diseases, which is wholly dietetic. He recommends the adoption of a strict vegetable regimen, to avoid the use of fermented liquors, and to substitute water purified by distillation in the place of common water. ... I think it right to observe that, in one case of cancerous ulceration in which it was used, the symptoms of the disease were, in my opinion, rendered more mild, the erysipelatous inflammation surrounding the ulcer was removed, and the life of the patient was, in my judgment, considerably prolonged. ... It seems to me very proper and desirable that the powers of the regimen recommended by Dr. Lambe should be fairly tried, for the following reasons:
• Because I know some persons who, while confined to such diet, have enjoyed very good health; and further, I have known several persons who did try the effects of such regimen, and declare that it was productive of considerable benefit. . . . They were not, indeed, afflicted with cancer, but they were induced to adopt a change of diet to allay a state of nervous irritation and correct disorder of the digestive organs, upon which medicine had but little influence.
• Because it appears certain, in general, that the body can be perfectly nourished by vegetables.
• Because all great changes of the constitution are more likely to be affected by alterations of diet and modes of life than by medicine.
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• Because it holds out a source of hope and consolation to the patient in a disease in which medicine is known to be unavailing and in surgery affords no more than a temporary relief. 72
Reading those perceptive and open-minded words in our profoundly arrogant twentieth-first century, one cannot help but be depressed by our lack of progress. Most of Abernethy's comments concerning the impotence of medicine when confronted with cancer are still true. To Abernethy, it made sense to experiment with diet, just to see what might be achieved. Yet the majority of Abernethy's medical successors refused to even contemplate this route, retreating instead to the paraphernalia of the exclusive medical freemasonry— the scalpel, the nostrum, and their ensuing high-tech offspring.
What damns us even more is the hard-won knowledge we now have about diet and health. In Abernethy's day, two hundred years ago, there were no epidemiological studies, no vast pools of accumulated data upon which to base decisions. Today we have that information, but for the most part choose to ignore it. I wonder what Dr. John Abernethy would have thought of us.
The Evidence
As researchers studied facts and figures about mortality from cancer in different countries, they were struck by an odd fact: It seemed that certain countries had a much higher mortality rate than others. What was the factor that made the United States, for example, so much worse than Japan? The researchers looked for a clue. Then, they tried comparing the amount of animal protein that different nations ate and their cancer mortality. 73 The results of their study are reflected in Figure 4.1 on the next page.
There is a clear relationship between the amount of animal protein in the national diet and the incidence of certain types of cancer mortality. But this wasn't the only dietary connection. The same correlation seemed to exist between total fat consumption and cancer, animal fat consumption and cancer, and various other associated factors, as well.
But perhaps certain nations were genetically more likely to contract cancers, no matter what they ate? To examine this possibility, studies
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0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Intestinal cancer mortality rate
Figure 4.1. Animal protein consumption and intestinal cancer mortality.
were undertaken among immigrant populations. If the root cause of cancer was genetic, rather than environmental, the same races should have the same incidence of cancers, wherever they lived. The Japanese seemed to be a good subject, because they traditionally had low incidences of most forms of cancer. So three groups of Japanese were chosen, together with a "control" group of Caucasians.
The first group of Japanese lived in Japan, and followed a largely traditional diet. The second group was born in Japan but lived in the United States. The third group consisted of Japanese Americans—men and women born in the United States to Japanese parents. This is what they found. 74
The results in Figure 4.2 speak for themselves. A comparison between the extreme left and right columns shows that the Japanese living in Japan (left column) have only one-quarter of the risk of contracting cancer of the colon compared with Caucasian Americans living in the States. But even more significantly, when the Japanese move to the States, their chance of contracting colon cancer increases by three—almost the same risk as a Caucasian. The place of birth didn't
THE MANUAL OF VEGETARIAN HEALTH 187
Japanese Japanese Japanese Caucasians (in Japan) in U.S. Americans in U.S.
(born in
Japan)
Figure 4.2. Deaths from colon cancer — East versus West.
seem to matter. This was good proof that environmental, and not genetic, factors were indeed very significant.
And now the scientific detective work really began. Because if the diet really was so important, then it should be possible to track down which specific factors related most strongly to increased cancer risk, and, hopefully, try to control them. So the focus began to shift from international comparisons, which had pointed the way, to very specific studies among very similar groups. Similar, that is, except for one or two key factors, which could be isolated, studied, and perhaps even controlled.
A group that was quickly identified as being a particular interest was the American Seventh-Day Adventist population. This group was subject to repeated studies, because the feature that distinguished them from the general American population was their differing diet. One key area of difference is dramatically demonstrated by Figure 4.3." 5
The figure shows that Seventh-Day Adventists eat a radically differ-
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Figure 4.3. Why Seventh-Day Adventists are ideal to study.
ent diet than the average American. The vast majority of the general population consume meat or poultry products seven or more times each week, but the picture is quite the reverse for the Seventh-Day Adventist group. About half of them don't consume meat or meat products. They do not smoke or drink (although in the survey one-third of the men were previous smokers), and they tend to practice a "healthy" lifestyle that emphasizes fresh fruits, whole grains, vegetables, and nuts. So now the scientists had found a good group of people to study. A seven-year scientific study tabulated the cause of death of 35,460 Adventists. Figure 4.4 shows what they found: 76
The death-rate from all cancers among Adventists was, amazingly, half that of the general population. The top bar on the chart shows Adventists having only 53 percent as many deaths from cancer when compared to the norm. Some of this could probably be attributed to their abstinence from smoking. Cancer of the respiratory system, for example (the bottom bar on the chart), was only 10 percent of the general population's. But other cancers, such as gastrointestinal and reproductive ones, are not causatively related to smoking. The scien-
THE MANUAL OF VEGETARIAN HEALTH 189
tists concluded, "It is quite clear that these results are supportive of the hypothesis that beef, meat, and saturated fat or fat in general are etiologically related to colon cancer."
Another study set out to check these remarkable findings, this time studying cancers of the large bowel, breast, and prostate—the three most common ones that are unrelated to smoking. 77 Twenty thousand Seventh-Day Adventists were studied, and this time, they were compared to two other population groups. First, they were checked against cancer mortality figures for all Caucasians in the U.S., and then they were compared to a special group of 113,000 people who were chosen because their lifestyles closely matched the Adventists—except, that is, for their diet. In other respects, such as place of residence, income, and socioeconomic status, the third group was very closely matched to the Adventists. Figure 4.5 on the next page shows the results.
Once again, the picture is pretty dramatic. The Adventists are compared with the general population as well as a special group whose lifestyle closely matched the Adventists—apart from the food they ate. You can see that for all three cancers, deaths among the Adventists
All cancers
Lymphoma
Reproductive
Leukemia
Gastro
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Respiratory
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Standardized mortality ratio
Figure 4.4. Deaths among Seventh-Day Adventists from cancer.
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U.S.
Caucasians
Comparable non-SDAs
Seventh Day Adventists
25 35 45 55 65
Mortality per 100,000
75
D Large bowel cancer n Breast cancer n Prostate cancer
Figure 4.5. Comparison of deaths from cancer.
were lower than for the other groups. It is interesting that there does not appear to be a very great reduction in the risk of breast cancer among Adventists—until, that is, you compare the Adventists results with those of the comparable group. The comparable group has a higher risk of contracting breast cancer than the national average (probably due to local environmental factors in California, where the study was undertaken). However, the Adventists have succeeded in reducing their own risk down to below the national average—even though only half of them never consume meat.
A major correlation study analyzed the diets of thirty-seven nations, and then correlated the components of the diets to mortality from cancer of the intestines. 78 Before looking at the results, let me briefly explain what a correlation study is. It's really quite simple. A correlation ends up as a number somewhere between -1 and +1. The higher the figure, the closer the connection between the two factors. For example, if someone is paid on a hourly basis, then the more they work, the more money they earn. This is an example of a perfect correlation, and would have a figure of +1.
THE MANUAL OF VEGETARIAN HEALTH 191
On the other hand, the more money you spend, the less you have in your bank account. This is a perfect negative correlation, since the connection between more expenditure and a decreasing bank balance is an inverse one: in this case, the correlation would be -1. And if any two factors, such as today's temperature and your bank balance, are not related at all, then the correlation would have a figure of zero. So the closer the figure gets to either +1 or -1, the stronger the connection, positive or negative. You can see from Figure 4.6 that all the meat factors correlate very strongly with cancer. Total calories, total protein, and total fat also correlate strongly, which is not surprising, since meat is heavy in all three. But calories and protein from vegetable sources have a negative correlation—in other words, they confer protection. The study concluded, "Animal sources of food were clearly associated with the cancer rates."
Correlation studies like this are very important, because although we may not know precisely why and how meat in the diet contributes to various cancers (this may take many years to finally prove), we can see that there is a clear relationship, and this enables us to take the necessary precautions for our own well-being.
More data, this time from an Israeli study, revealed a connection
Meat calories
Meat protein
Meat fat
All calories
All protein All fat
Vegetable calories
Vegetable protein
Vegetable fat
-0.5 0 0.5 1
Correlation with intestinal cancer
Figure 4.6. Intestinal cancer: riskier and safer diets.
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between both fats from animal sources and fats from plant sources, suggesting that saturated and even unsaturated fats may be connected with increased mortality. 79 The study followed the Jewish population as it grew from 1.17 million in 1949 to 3.5 million in 1975, over which period meat consumption increased by 454 percent, and the death rate from malignant cancers doubled.
Meat and Breast Cancer
More and more evidence was starting to accumulate. In Alberta, Canada, researchers set about analyzing the diets of 577 women with breast cancer, and compared them to a similar group of women without the disease. 80 Was there any food, or type of foods, that might be linked to the development of breast cancer? Indeed there was. The results were, in the scientists' own words, "consistent with the notion that breast cancer risk is affected by certain dietary patterns, especially those related to the consumption of beef and pork." In fact, the
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Figure 4.7. The connection between pork consumption and breast cancer.
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strongest association of all was with pork consumption. Figure 4.7 illustrates how the relative risk of breast cancer rose with the frequency of eating pork. As for beef, consuming it more than once a week was also associated with an increase in relative risk of breast cancer. Yet more disturbing evidence that a meat-dominated diet might indeed be a real health risk.
In Hawaii another study showed the same pattern. 81 It concentrated on a representative sample of Hawaii's residents—Caucasians, Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, and, of course, Hawaiians. The great variety of ethnic groups was useful, since they had a particularly wide range of food habits. Significant associations were established between
• Breast cancer and all forms of fat and animal protein
• Cancer of the uterus and all forms of fat and animal protein
• Prostate cancer and all forms of fat and animal protein.
The positive correlations between various forms of food and breast cancer are shown in Figure 4.8. The only negative correlation is between breast cancer and complex carbohydrates—which are, of course, found exclusively in plant food. Almost exactly the same relationship emerged when the same study examined cancer of the uterus.
Total fat
Animal fat
Saturated fat
Unsaturated fat
Animal protein
Complex carbohydrate
Y-
-1 -0.5
Figure 4.8. Breast cancer and diet.
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More Meat Equals More Risk
In 1981 yet another massive statistical world survey of 41 countries, including the U.S. and the U.K., was completed. 82 The results confirm the connection between eating meat and the risk of certain types of cancer. And yet again, they also show that plant foods seem to confer protection. Here are two charts drawn from data that the survey produced, Figures 4.9 and 4.10.
"Less Is Better"
One of the largest studies ever undertaken on the effect of meat eating and cancer was published in 1990. 83 Over 88,000 women between the ages of 34 and 59 were recruited for the study (none of them had a history of cancer or bowel disease). Their health was tracked for six years, and it was found that women who ate beef, pork, or lamb as a main dish every day were 2Vi times more likely to contract colon cancer when compared to those who ate meat less than once a month. The study clearly demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that meat in itself was a major risk factor. It wasn't that the meat eaters were defi-
Rice
Maize
Beans
Meat
-1 -0.5 0
Figure 4.9. Correlation with breast cancer
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Rice
Maize
Beans
Meat
-1 -0.5 0
Figure 4.10. Correlation with colon cancer.
cient in other nutrients—fiber, for example. The more meat they ate, the greater the risk.
The leader of the team of scientists commented, "Reducing red meat consumption is likely to reduce the risk. There is no cut-off point so, really, less is better." 84 All by itself, this study truly puts an end to the myth that "meat is part of a healthy diet."
How the Vegetarian Diet Can Help
So what actually happens when you start to change your diet? A clue comes from an intriguing study, carried out in Greece, that set out to establish whether consuming certain types of food might be linked to the development—or prevention—of cancer. 85 The results show that eating spinach, beets, cabbage, and lettuce is associated with a reduction in the risk of colorectal cancer. However, eating beef or lamb was strongly associated with an increase in cancer risk. Figure 4.11 shows what it looks like graphically.
The study concluded the following: "The results of most of these studies appear to fall into two broad categories: those indicating
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that animal protein (mainly beef meat) and/or animal fat are conducive to the development of colorectal cancer—and those indicating that vegetables (particularly cruciferous vegetables) or, more generally, fiber-containing foods, protect against the development of this disease."
Pieces from the Jigsaw
We don't know every last detail of the way in which a meat-centered diet predisposes one toward cancer. But we do know quite a lot. Consider the following:
• In just 2.2 pounds of charcoal-broiled steak there may be as much benzopyrene (a powerful carcinogen) as in the smoke from 600 cigarettes. 86
• Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have been engaged in a five-year project cooking "thousands of pounds of hamburgers" to see what toxic substances are
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produced in overcooked meat. 87 They have identified at least eight chemicals that are linked to cancer and chromosome damage. "You don't get these structures if you cook tofu or cheese," commented the senior investigator. Nitrites may be present in meat products, which can combine with other substances in the human body to form nitrosamines— extremely powerful carcinogens. 88
A high-meat diet lowers the age of puberty, and early puberty is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. 89 Certain drugs given to farm animals can cause cancer. One drug which had been given to young pigs for the prevention of respiratory diseases, and was used to treat pneumonia in older animals, has been shown to be carcinogenic. 90 Vegetarians are known to have a different composition of bile acids when compared to meat eaters, and it is thought that this may profoundly affect the development of cancer. 91 The immune system of vegetarians is stronger than that of meat eaters. One study has shown that although vegetarians have the same overall number of natural killer cells (the kind that are responsible for nipping cancer in the bud), they are twice as cytotoxic (potent) as those of meat eaters. 92 Vegetarians consume fewer environmental pollutants than do meat eaters. At least one study has indicated that breast milk of vegetarian women is lower in PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls—widely dispersed industrial compounds that are highly toxic and thought to be carcinogenic) than meat eaters. 93 Organochlorines, such as DDT and the dioxin family, include some of the most poisonous and environmentally persistent chemicals known. One published scientific paper cautions that 80 percent of the organochlorines absorbed by humans comes from our food. 94 The same paper also states that the main dietary sources of organochlorines are meat, fish, dairy products, and commercial fruit. "The vegetarian diet including unsprayed fruit minimizes contamination," concludes the report. Vegetarians take in a large amount of vitamin A in the form of
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beta-carotene in plant foods. Beta-carotene is believed to protect people from cancers of the lungs, bladder, larynx and colon. 95 • Vegetarians also eat diets that are rich in substances that suppress free-radical formation. Molecules of oxygen are turned into free radicals inside your body by the continual process of metabolism. During this process, more molecules are generated that have an electron missing—called "free radicals." These free radical molecules immediately start to scavenge for electrons to kidnap from other molecules, and this sets in motion a continuing chain reaction, which produces even more free radicals, in the process damaging cell membranes, proteins, carbohydrates, and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Up to now, some sixty diseases have been associated with free radical activity, including Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and, of course, cancer. The vegetarian diet naturally contains substances (such as vitamin A, retinoids, and protease inhibitors) that have been shown to be capable of blocking this process and halting the development of cancer. 96
Leukemia
There is another way in which contact with animal flesh might give rise to leukemia, the name used to describe a number of cancerous diseases of the blood-forming organs. The acute and chronic leukemias, together with the other types of tumors of the blood, bone cells, and lymphatic tissue, cause about 10 percent of all cancer deaths and about 50 percent of all cancer deaths in children and adults less than 30 years old. 97
Is leukemia infectious? Such a notion is commonly dismissed as being absurd. When a cancer charity recently released a report about public myths and misconceptions surrounding cancer, they cited a survey showing that "one in ten teenagers believes that cancer is infectious," presumably with the intention of proving how bizarre our beliefs about cancer can be.
What it really revealed, however, was how out of touch that particular charity was itself. Because there is incontrovertible scientific evi-
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dence to show that cancers are, indeed, transmissible—both within species and across them.
It has taken a long time for much of the scientific community to accept that cancers could be caused and transmitted by a virus. In experiments conducted as far back as 1911, it was demonstrated that tumors taken from one chicken and implanted in another would infect the second chicken with a cancerous growth. In 1936, it was demonstrated that breast cancer could be transmitted between mice via a virus present in the milk of lactating mice. More recently, scientists at the University of Glasgow discovered feline leukemia virus in cats. Today, cancer-causing viruses (oncoviruses) are now scientifically categorized as a part of the retrovirus family. Despite this, the belief still persists that cancer somehow "ought not" to be capable of being virally induced. One pathologist commented:
"Indefinite statements are often expressed concerning identifying a certain cancer virus in humans by the antibodies produced in an animal. We show no such insecurity with other viruses: why should we do so with cancer viruses? If we find antibodies to smallpox virus or measles virus in an animal, we confidently say the animal has had the infection of smallpox or measles. But when a cancer virus stimulates an antibody response in an animal, we do not confidently state that the animal was infected by that particular virus. It is as if we are afraid to say that the virus that caused cancer in the cow or dog is the same virus that produces an identical antibody in humans." 98
Just like human beings, the animals that we eat suffer from various forms of cancer, sometimes caused by a virus. For example:
• Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) causes cancer of the lymph tissue in cows.
• The avian leucosis viruses (ALV) cause leukemias in chickens.
• Marek's disease virus (MDV) causes a cancer of the lymph and nervous systems in chickens.
"Virtually all commercial chickens are heavily infected with leucosis virus [ALV]," one American report found. "Since the tumors induced are not grossly apparent until about 20 weeks of age, this virus is not economically as important as is the Marek's disease virus,
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which induces tumors by 6-8 weeks of age. Bovine leukemia virus is widespread in commercial dairy herds; more than 20 percent of dairy cows and 60 percent of herds surveyed in the USA are infected." 99
Now the key question is this: Can eating meat, or being exposed to food animals or their produce, result in a greater likelihood of contracting leukemia or another cancer? To investigate whether these viruses can cross the species barrier and infect humans, a study was established, paid for by the U.S. National Cancer Institute. 100 "The viruses are widely distributed naturally in their respective hosts," wrote the scientists conducting the study, "and are present not only in diseased but also in healthy cattle and chickens destined for human consumption." Therefore, it seemed logical to examine the health of the people who would have maximum exposure to these animals— slaughtermen.
Accordingly, the health of 13,844 members of a meat cutters unions was checked during the period 1949 to 1980. After statistical analysis, it was found that abattoir workers were nearly three times more likely to die from Hodgkin's disease (a cancer of the lymphatic system) than the general population. The scientists concluded, "The excess risk was observed only in abattoir workers and seems to be associated with the slaughtering of cattle, pigs, and sheep. . . . Thus, the excess risk seems to be in keeping with a postulate of an infectious origin for these cases, as no other occupational exposure could adequately explain this occurrence."
By itself, this report is very significant. But now, consider the following additional evidence:
• It has been shown in laboratory experiments that bovine leukemia virus can survive and replicate itself when placed in a human cell culture. 101
• Scientists have found a close similarity between bovine leukemia virus and HTLV-1, the first human retrovirus ever shown to cause cancer. 102