Hi Bob. Fairly new to your site. I feel like I should say something here, since I am a healthcare professional, a cardiovascular intensive care unit nurse(CICU RN) and a vegetarian since birth. I am 6′1′ and 280 lbs. was on a sports scholarship in college. I’m big and strong and fast, always have been. And my little brother is bigger than me. I am saying this since Dave apparently likes to make wild unsubstantied claims about being a meat-eater vs. being a vegetarian. You don’t need to eat meat to get adequate nutritionally complete protein, that’s bunk. And if Americans are taller and bigger (fatter) it’s because of the steroids fed to the animals and the increased number of calories we eat. If you went to another country, it would be patently obvious that this is the case. The difference between rich and poor was not meat in the diet. It was diet and lifestyle in general. Less food (veggies, grains, or meats) equals less calories. CALORIES. As you mentioned earlier, a calorie is a calorie. But not all calories are created equal. If you eat extra fat calories, your body doesn’t have to do anything to convert the fat, it simply stores it, not a lot of work involved. It prefers to store fat, less work. It you eat higher amnounts of protein, it is a lot of metabolic work for the body to convert it to fat, same with carbohydrates though not so much. I feel that a complete explanation of biochemical reactions at the cellular level is beyond the scope or interest of this message board. If you really want to know more, I’d be happy to tell you. Plants, by the way, have sterols, which are similar to cholesterol from animals, and of course, a person’s body produces cholesterol all by itself. So, while you would seemingly like to claim no correlation between eating meat and CAD(coronary artery disease), there is. Eating extra calories, which are fat, are readily stored in the body as fat. DUH. And if you eat a lot of protien, most people eat too much in this county, that creates a state of metabolic acidosis, that your body doesn’t like. And this is also ignoring the bodies’ systemic response to basically any stressor, which is an inflammatory response. Which creates a whole cascade of problems you body has to scramble to fix, like acid-base balance. Notice how osteoporosis is only prevelant in socities where people eat a lot of meat and dairy? The animal protien leaches calcium from the bones. Now as for your example of people in Alaska, don’t you find it odd that a remote people like the Eskimos who eat this diet all the time who as a distinct population are much fatter than most people all over the globe with the same standard? Is this an attempt at stimulating discussion about differences of race? I hope so, otherwise you seem oblivious and naive to such an obvious thing. It is mainly fat from fish by the way, which most Americans are deficient of, the omega 3’s and 6’s, I am sure you have heard of them. And if your buddy is taking a survival class in AK, do you think he is eating a lot of processed foods, empty calories, extra calories? You may be very astute in the sociopolitical arena, international relations, foreign policy, but you don’t know jack about the human body or optimal nutrition. And at this point I really doubt this post gets put up on your site, but here it is anyway.

Comment by Jeremy

ME:

I am very happy to have a professional nutritionist as a commenter. I will treat you rough, but I NEED you. You will notice I do not need people who treat me with kid gloves either.

No way I would refuse to print your contradiction to my statements. This is NOT Mommy Professor territory.

YOUR COMMENT MADE ME GET TO BASICS. See below.***

“you don’t know jack about the human body or optimal nutrition. ”

If you will read what I said carefully, you will find that I did not give a single PERSONAL opinion about either subject. I quoted a study on pure meat consumption in Alaska, given by doctors to doctors as a life-and-death course. I quouted my doctor brother who has become fascinated by the fact that no medical journal has yet found a connection between EATING cholesterol and heart disease.

“your buddy is taking a survival class in AK, do you think he is eating a lot of processed foods, empty calories, extra calories.”

“My buddy” is a full professor at a major medical school.

What I said in “Meat” is informati0n you will not see elsewhere, and an illustration of what gets left out of people’s stock of basic info, which is basic to my whole approach to thought.

*** YOUR COMMENT MADE ME GET TO BASICS:

“You may be very astute in the sociopolitical arena, international relations, foreign policy, but you don’t know jack about the human body or optimal nutrition. ”

True. But I needed your comment to make me say precisely how this falls into Bob’s Blog.

One way of thinking I am trying to inculcate here is for readers to realize that an industry is an industry is an industry. It doesn’t matter if it calls itself Medicine, Law, nutrition, or anything else. That is right in the center of my expertise.

And my experience. I have dealt with untold legions of lobbyists, and the ones for the AMA look just like the ones from the National Association of Manufacturers. You know hwat they want before they come in the door.

Rule One:
Professional objectivity is an oxymoron.

A professional ANYTHING is biassed, though he will believe every word he is saying. Professors honestly believe that the crap they are shoveling out is education.

Professional nutritionists have biases, HONEST biases.

One very serious problem I have in trying to get my message out is that, when I point out what may be a bias, people immediately begin to see it as a conspiracy or bad intentions or greed.

That is WRONG. But talking about Greed and feeling morally superior is far more exciting than the simple fact that, if you spend your life in a particular profession, you are going to absord some of the attitudes natural to your profession.

Which is more entertaining:

1) A diatribe about how dietitians are engaged in a Conspiracy to undermine the health of Americans and they are greedy and we are morally superior, or

2) Dietitians act like people?

Alternative 1) wins by a landslide.

The only problem with alternative 1) is that it isn’t TRUE.

I am saying that every time a reader sees ANY information, he should consider that that information is provided by a group of PEOPLE, and he, unlike anybody outside this seminar, must consider WHY that information is there.

Human nutrition is not my field. But human motivation IS.

Thanks! This needed ot be said, and you made me say it.