I was just reading a post in the PEERtrainer community, and the subject was diets that work. The discussion was interesting, with some people talking about success with Atkins, some going on a dairy free and gluten free diet.
And then someone posted this comment, which caught my attention:
"My friend is studying chemistry right now, and explained to me that digesting animal protein puts our body into an acidic state. In order to bring the body back into a neutral state it robs our bones of calcium and potassium. The best way to get protein and calcium is to cut out the middle man (cow) and to eat plants.
Everyone does NOT know what healthy eating is, or we wouldn't be seeing threads on Atkins and cottage cheese diets. Atkins is where I started, and yes, eliminating white foods took away my heartburn and yeast infections. I was thrilled. But ultimately I couldn't live with the restrictions, and my research took me in a different direction."
The poster then provided a link to a video of a presentation by T Colin Campbell, who wrote "The China Study" many years ago. The one thing I know about this man is that he is controversial.
So that was my bias going into watching this video, which has prompted this blog post. Anyway, this whole issue of does animal protein cause cancer, is the main protein in milk the most toxic thing on the planet- those I will leave for another time. (As a meat eater and non vegetarian I definitely am open to those ideas. But mostly I tend to focus on adding high levels of vegetables.)
But the thing that prompted this blog post in the presentation was Campbell's assertion, and this was based on studies with 6000 chinese office workers, was that the average Chinese person consumers 11% more calories than an American but they weigh less.
This struck me because we hear over and over as stated fact that a persons weight is simply calories in and calories out. And I think this is important for a very practical reason when it comes to actually losing weight. Vegetables help you lose weight, and seem particularly good at it. There may not be total proof that animal protein (not just fat) causes cancer, but there is total proof that vegetables help you lose weight.
This is why I keep focusing on really practical ways of buying them, keeping them, making them taste good, making them cheap and finding ways to make them easily. The fact is, we really know all of this, but it still takes a ton of work to actually do this.
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