Animal Fat and Fat Animals

Since Skyguy's cancer diagnosis in late 2007, I've been trying to
improve our diet by adding more vegetables and fiber, and I've tried to cut back on high fat meat dishes by substituting more lean meats like venison and oily fish. We eat fish at least once a week, usually tuna or salmon, and I eat a can of sardines or mussels once every few days or so, but more is better. With Skyguy's father's recent colon cancer diagnosis, it is more important than ever that we continue making healthy dietary and lifestyle changes. I want this post to be about diet, not smoking, but I can't write this without saying that Skyguy smoked from the age of 12 to the age of 48 (36 years), and I smoked from the age of 19 to the age of 47(26 years). We were both heavy smokers and we both were able to quit smoking using Chantix in January of 2008. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to quit but who has been unable to do so using herbs or gum or patches or willpower alone. The Chantix did have some side effects, but it was worth it to not be driven insane by cravings. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

Americans eat a diet high in fat, mostly fatty meat and dairy products. Of course, some fat in the diet is good, but we generally overdo it. When a high fat meal is consumed, hormones are released which slow down the digestive process and increase the output of bile and enzymes to help breakdown the complex molecules. Very often the bloated feeling we get after eating is due to this slowdown. When early hominids began to increase the fat in their diet, this digestive slow down allowed them to feel fuller, and because they spent less time looking for food, they were able to sleep more. When they slept more, the brain evolved and grew larger, and humans became smarter. Today, we have gone overboard with the fat, and with a sedentary lifestyle where most work is done behind a desk-no more foraging-no more hunting-no more farming, our brain size isn't increasing, but our clothing size is! If we ate more fiber to flush out the fat and harmful substances in food, it might not be so unhealthy, but most Americans don't eat a diet high in fiber, only a diet high in fat.

I've been increasingly interested in the human diet as it correlates to human evolution. Mankind has always pulled a harvest from the sea, so it is not surprising that fish and seafood are generally easy to digest. Early man would have easily been able to gather food in the tidal pools along a shoreline. I'd say poultry, reptiles, and small mammals like rabbits would be next on a list of relatively easily digestible animals. I can envision early man capturing these 'white meat' animals with few or no tools, meaning that our bodies have processed these types of protein and fat for eons and should quickly digest them today. Something like venison or antelope or similar cervid types would be next on the digestibility scale, if my theory about exposure and adaption would hold true. Today's version of beef would be probably the newest 'meat' addition to the human diet, and while I am sure that ancient man ate yak or buffalo or some type of bovine, I'd wager that it was not a regular part of diet and that these animals were eaten only under special circumstances. For one, they were too large to be practical unless one was killed for a tribal feast or something. Secondly, today's slaughterhouse steer is a far different animal than it's bovine cousins that have been eaten in the past. I would actually guess that pork has been a part of our diet longer than beef. Swine have such poor eyesight that they would seemingly be easier to trap or kill in a pit even, and they are more the right size for a family group or tribe.

I was discussing some of this with my friend Sage who is a vegetarian, and she brought up a very good point as well, that animals like cattle were historically grass fed, free ranged, and field corn isn't part of their natural diet. Pork is like beef in that today, we feed these animals a corn based diet and that changes the health of animal as well as the health of the consumer who eats them. A pig that is not allowed to forage for mushrooms, seeds, and roots in the woods will never be as healthy or nutritious as one that has roamed free. Much of today's animal feed is made from genetically modified corn(again thanks to Monsanto et.al.). Since the cow's digestive system was not designed for corn from an evolutionary standpoint, corn simply creates a fatter cow. When industrial beef is sold by the pound, it is faster and more desirable to add fat pounds than muscle pounds, and of course, corn does that(for humans, too!). However, one must ask if fatter is healthier, for either the cow or the consumer. Most people would say no, that being lean is healthier. It has only been in the last century that corn has become King of feeds. Yields increased with farming methods and the excess was turned into animal feed. Later, in the 1970's, the excess was used to make High Fructose Corn Syrup. Our bodies, rather, our digestive systems, simply haven't had enough time to adapt and process HFCS, and cattle and swine certainly must have the same problem with the addition of corn in their diet. Whether or not you think GE corn and HFCS is healthy or harmful, it is a fact that adaption takes time, and not enough time has elapsed for our bodies to adapt and evolve so that we can process these seemingly foreign substances(fattier meat from corn fed animals and HFCS) without harm. I think the same could be said for foods like margarine and shortening and other foods that contain highly processed oils. But I digress...

Anyway, as strange as it sounds, probably the first red meat was from other humans-which might lend credence to the mythos that eating another human being gives one that person's strength, etc. Compared to other foods that early man might have eaten, snakes, frogs, turtles, etc., I would think human flesh would be very energy rich and nutritious. I'm kind of freaked out just writing about it, so I'm sure that it did not take long for early humans to develop taboos about such.

I think my digestive system operates like a pack rat....if it gets something that it can't digest well, or something foreign that it doesn't know how to process, it stores it in a fat cell somewhere, just
in case it is needed later. If what is stored in the fat is a carcinogen or other harmful substance, then we risk disease until we can eliminate the substance from our system. This can be a real problem for all animals, including humans. As animals are exposed to toxins in the environment, like dioxins-PCBs, these substances are stored in the animal's fat cells, which other animals or humans later consume. Dioxins have been found in the fat of many food animals; it is a real problem in fish, but it is also in beef, pork, and chicken fat. Humans are exposed to these toxins directly in the environment and indirectly via the food chain, and being at the top of pyramid, we store the pollution-the pesticides, the dioxins, the PCBs of our parent's and grandparent's world-in the fat cells of our own bodies. Is it any wonder that cancer seems like an epidemic? Is it any wonder that more and more people are reducing or eliminating meat from their diet? In actuality, I believe that most digestion is aided by bacteria and enzymes in the gut. A vegetarian might not have the same bacteria or enzymes as a someone who regularly eats meat and that can cause digestive problems if they happen to consume animal protein, at least temporarily until the gut flora is able to compensate or diversify. The system will then adapt to the 'new' food...but that type of adaption is quick and possible because humans have been eating meat for hundreds of thousands of years. When the body is given something as artificial and as new as HFCS, there may be no bacteria or enzymes to aid digestion at all. It is genetically modified-a three way Frankenfood-what processes that??? The additional fructose causes all kinds of problems, but that is a topic for another day.

Make sure that you know what you are eating, and eat what you know will be good for you. Look for healthy alternatives and make small, sustainable changes to your diet.