Page 17 - Spring 2019 Journal

EAT-LANCET’S PLANT-BASED PLAN FOR YOU
With much fanfare, and a pretentious title (“Food in the Anthropocene”), The Lancet has published “an important new study about global nutrition.” It seems that since the planet has reached a crisis point, and we are running out of everything, we all have to eat lentils. The diet that is going to save the world from global warming and environmental devastation allows just over one teaspoon of red meat, one- quarter of a piece
of bacon and about
two tablespoons
of egg per day,
eight tablespoons
of “plant protein”
(soy, lentils, peas
or nuts—beans are
oddly absent from
this list), twenty-five
tablespoons of grain
foods, and about
three tablespoons
of olive oil or sun-
flower oil. The diet
allows more sugar
(two tablespoons)
than meat! Although prepared by “an international group of thirty-seven scientists,” contradictions abound. To quote the amusing analysis by Dr. Georgia Ede, the EAT-Lancet authors claim that while complete protein is essential, it is also cancerous. While meat “can improve dietary quality, micronutrient intake, nutrient status, and overall health,” it also causes heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Vitamins and minerals are essential, so we’ll need to take supplements; everyone should eat a vegan diet, except for most people— growing children, adolescent girls, pregnant women, aging adults, the malnourished and the impoverished (diagnosis- diet.com/eat-lancets-plant-based-planet/). How does EAT- Lancet propose to make people adhere to a plant-based diet when they’d rather eat beef? Suggestions from the report include “the elimination or restriction of consumer choices, and taxation” (eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/).
NOW WE KNOW WHY
We’ve often wondered why government agencies harbor such an intense prejudice against meat, and beef in particular, even for growing children. For example, both the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and American Academy of Pedi- atrics assert that “well-planned” vegetarian and vegan eating patterns are healthy for infants and toddlers. The answer emerges from a study carried out over ten years ago and
reported by the author at the annual meeting of the American Asso- ciation for the Advance- ment of Science. In her presentation, Professor Lindsay Allan of the University of Califor- nia warned that “Deny- ing growing children animal products in their diet during the critical first few years of life is ‛unethical’ and could do permanent damage.” The study she conducted showed that adding just
one quarter cup of meat daily to the diet of poverty-stricken children in Africa transformed them both physically and mentally. Over a period of two years, the children almost doubled their muscle development and showed dramatic im- provements in mental skills. They also became more active, talkative and playful at school. The African study involved over five hundred children in Kenya, typically aged about seven, whose diet chiefly consisted of starchy, low-nutrition corn and beans. Over a period of two years, one group of the children was given a daily supplement of two ounces of meat. Two other groups received either a cup of milk per day or an oil supplement containing the same number of calories. The fourth group had no dietary changes. The meat group had an 80 percent increase in muscle mass over the two years of the study while the milk and oil groups had a 40 percent increase. Test scores for mental skills improved by thirty-five points for the meat group and fourteen for the milk group, with no change in the group that received no supplements.
Caustic Commentary
Sally Fallon Morell takes on the Diet Dictocrats
SPRING 2019 Wise Traditions 15