Proteins & Toxins
Image courtesy of Changyoung Koh
What's up with animal-based proteins?
Here’s some important facts about animal-base protein and its toxins and other substances that might harm you.
Having a better understanding of amino acids and proteins allows us to start looking a little bit deeply into meats and animal products and the kind of nutrients we get from these.
Remember… amino acids are like the building blocks that ultimately form protein as we like to call it. And if we get from our food all the amino acids we need (the essential ones), our wise body simply synthesizes all the different proteins we need. So this madness about getting the proteins from animal sources is not quite as wise as it seems. And there’s more to it.
Amazing pic by Paul Hermann
What's In the Meat We Eat?
Let’s explain it as simply as possible. Let’s say you’re a hunter who can just kill a deer to get its fresh meat every time you want to.You would be saving all these antibiotics, undeclared chemicals, anabolic compounds and excessive fat that all industrially produced animals have to consume. You would only get the cholesterol, saturated fats an other toxins.
Antibiotics and chemicals are a must for farm animals due to the crowded conditions they have to endure. This doesn’t even consider the composition of the food they eat, which mainly consists of industrially “by-products and other things”. By the way, international laws don’t force anyone to declare with accuracy what’s inside of a food for an animal. Yeap, you’re starting to get the idea.
Don’t let them fool you. Although you see the ads of sweet cows and cute chickens free in the mountains with their happy faces, most animal farms cannot afford this luxury. It means too much space and time because they will need a lot of years to build great muscles. And also they would be fit, due to the amount of exercise they do; this is not good, money-wise speaking.
In order for a farm to work, individuals need to grow fast, get fat quickly and be as healthy as possible.
Amazing pic by Alison Marras
What else is In the Meat We Eat?
But there’s more… like you didn’t have enough weird stuff getting into your body when consuming animal-base products, you need to know this about meat.
When someone has health problems like high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, renal malfunction, just to name a few, doctors recommend to change the diet. What’s the first thing they take away from the patient? Meat.
But it’s not only because of the reasons we already gave.
By cooking meat, specifically barbecuing, grilling or pan-frying, you’re producing too other unwanted products, like heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The problem with these fellows is that they cause changes in DNA that may be responsible for increasing the risk of cancer.
If you want to get technical you can read the article cited below, which explains it quite easily. But what’s important here is for you to know you can’t avoid these compounds if you’re consuming meat (beef, deer, pork, poultry, duck, you name it.
But let’s say you don’t grill your meat. Fantastic. There’s still one more thing about proteins and the quantities you think you need…
One last surprise
I always laugh at these “detox” infusions and beverages. Pure marketing in action. We have our internal cleaners, and they work either if you drink or not these so-called wonderful detox things. Meet the cleansing team: liver, lungs, intestines, kidneys and skin. They’re more precious than any beverage you’ll get ever. But they need loads of water, that’s true, and a bit of help, if you like!
Our bodies don’t metabolize easily high contents of protein. If fact, renal diseases require a special diet based in low amount and “good” protein. Not meat… Why is this?
Our very loyal troupers, for instance, our kidneys, are the ones mainly responsible for dealing with the amount of Nitrogen compounds that result from the digestion of protein, which are unavoidable. These Nitrogen based substances act like poison to them when they’re too much, being the ones who have to “clean” our blood from its excess. The thing with the kidneys is that they don’t complain and work tirelessly throughout our lives, until they don’t. And, unlikely our liver, which has an impressive capacity of recovering, once the nephritic tissue is affected, there’s no turning back. I’d say we shouldn’t take our chances on this. But it’s just my opinion. The rest, is science-based and you can check it with whatever good doctor you want.
I’ll just leave these two questions for the next post: If doctors know what are the most dangerous foods to us, why only a few dare to claim these risks? Why our Health System doesn’t allocate more resources and efforts to reduce these enemies?
Thank you for reading. See you soon.
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/cooked-meats-fact-sheet
Oh my goodness! Incredible article dude! Many thanks, However I am experiencing issues with your RSS. Dode Georgy Hotze