Looking for a movie to pass the time, I flipped on Netflix and found a new health documentary called What the Health. With a click of the mouse, I threw myself into an unintentional 90 minute session on vegan propaganda. Veganism, it appears, is the only way to reduce diseases like diabetes and obesity. Unlike the steadfast physicians in the movie, I believe in other paths to health salvation.
After twenty minutes of being assaulted with inflammatory ideas, I temporarily turned off the documentary. The interviewees claimed that animal products are carcinogenic, the greatest reason for our ailments, and that diabetes could be reduced on a carb and sugar diet… Fox News must have tampered with its production.
Credit is due to the producers of this film because it is convincing. I admit that my knowledge of the effects of meat was critically questioned as I stammered to poke holes in their arguments.
The debate on which foods are healthy is not new to me. I’ve been on a quest for quite some time to understand why certain foods are supposedly more destructive than others, although this list is becoming very lengthy: saturated fats, coconut oil, cholesterol, red meat, starchy carbohydrates, sugar, fructose, salt, and so on. So to be free from disease, we should avoid everything on that list right? But then what would we eat?!
And that just doesn’t make sense. How can so many foods be so detrimental to our health?
Eat to grow
With years of information on this topic percolating in my head, this movie finally blew the steam out of the kettle. What I realized was that the harmful foods people shame are also the foods essential to growth. The main difference is when this Jackal and Hyde switch occurs.
All supposedly bad foods have an underlying similarity. They are consumed or desired abundantly during early development of nearly every animal species. Life would not exist without yolk, mothers milk, or plentiful calories.
And here lies the problem with these foods and why their effects on health are continuously misrepresented. As adults we are no longer growing at the pace of infants or children and have instead entered a more maintenance phase of life. The calories and nutrients that promote growth are needed less than they once were, unless intentionally forcing growth, i.e. bodybuilders, athletes, trauma/burn victims, etc.
Many of these negatively-associated foods contain key growth signals or essential bodily building blocks that instruct cells to replicate and divide. To illustrate the growth vs. maintenance hypothesis, below I walk through how different controversial foods contribute to the different phases of life.
Eggs
Eggs contain key nutrients for cellular growth like cholesterol and protein. Cholesterol is essential for cell membranes and is in heavy demand as cells divide, while the complete protein helps to signal cell growth (see Meat below). During adulthood, excess cholesterol can be found trapped in inflammatory plaques surrounding blood vessels, although role of dietary cholesterol in disease has been questioned.
Dairy
Dairy provides sugars, fats, and proteins as well as essential immunity from pathogens during our infancy. But the enzymes to breakdown many of the complex sugars of dairy turn off as we age, suggesting dairy use is only designed to be consumed for a finite period of time. For endurance athletes though, science suggests a unique role for diary to improve recovery and muscle growth. Even the head football coach of Michigan boasts the necessity of milk to gain size.
Carbs
Carbohydrates and sugars trigger insulin production which facilitates storage of calories into cells, particularly fat cells. Insulin acts as a growth factor that directly instructs cells to grow and divide. During a time of tremendous cellular expansion and energy expenditure in youth and adolescence, insulin release is paramount, but in adulthood we could do without the excess fat cells and cell replication. If insulin remains to high for too long, the chances of developing diabetes or a tumor increase.
Meat
Finally on to meat, the most contentious issue of health—at least in the documentary. Meat packs an enormous amount of calories and nutrients into a very dense size. Iron, fat, and protein all support the development and delivery of nutrients throughout the body. As seen throughout What the Health, veganism stands firmly behind the idea that meat is our greatest threat to human health. Because the supposed harms of meat are so vast and complex, let’s first break down its components into three contentious categories: fat, protein, and iron.
Saturated fat is associated with increased heart disease, mainly through its effects on raising LDL cholesterol. But typically as we age, we become less physically active and less efficient at processing fat. Exercise is essential to maintain health at any stage of life and one benefit may be due to its ability improve fat metabolism. Thus, getting active may be a useful way to blunt the consequences of a high fat diet.
Iron is abundant in red meat and while it is needed for the creation of red blood cells, it’s associated with diabetes due to its strong oxidizing nature (think of rust on your car). Anyone who believes in the benefits of anti-oxidant supplements is aware of the dangers of too much oxidation in the body.
A high protein diet has been linked to an increased risk of cancers but what may matter most is the type of protein. Individual amino acids may affect particular genes, like mTOR, differently. Reduced mTOR activation has been shown to increase lifespan in humans while certain branched chain amino acids, like leucine, upregulate mTOR and lead to cellular growth. Restricting other proteins, like methionine, may increase lifespan through additional pathways. Plant proteins in general contain fewer key amino acids and in less quantities than in animal products which potentially explains the protective role of plant protein.
Eat to maintain
As adults, we aren’t growing taller. Instead, we are shrinking. Thus, our diets should better reflect our actual bodily needs and focus it towards maintaining the fruits of our youth. The constant consumption of foods that signal cell growth may be better replaced with foods that signal repair to clear the years of accumulated cellular damage and debris.
Restricting calories is one way to help clean up cellular damage, increase lifespan, and reduce disease. But as I’ve stated, there is a time and place for each diet pattern. Children would suffer from a restricted calorie diet when growth is essential, whereas it can significantly help later in life.
With less nutrients available on a calorie restricted diet, the body shifts toward conservation and repair through an increase of signals that promote synthesis of antioxidant and repair structures. Thankfully, these pathways can also be targeted through certain vegetables and fruits without the need to starve.
Veggies and fruit contain certain phytonutrients that trigger these same repair pathways, through a mechanism I’ve previously discussed, key for long term health.
The dose makes the poison
A famous saying in pharmacology is the dose of any substance determines its toxicity. In low doses, the body can handle alcohol, radiation, UV light, and other poisons. In excess, anything can kill you—even water.
When cells receive chronically more instruction and nutrients than is required to thrive, nourishing food may become dangerous with problems arising in the form of disease. Too many foods that promote growth and replication when the body is no longer in a state of rapid expansion, fuel diseases of excess.
Think of any chronic disease: Alzheimer’s, diabetes, heart disease, or obesity. All are diseases of too much: too much protein accumulation in the brain, to much sugar in the blood, too much cholesterol in arteries, and too much fat in cells. Even cancer involves too much out of control cell replication.
There is a fine line of consuming foods to sustain life or fuel disease as these foods play a critical role in regulating the trade-off between survival and maintenance vs. growth.
A final thought on veganism
Back to where we started on whether veganism is our salvation, I think it depends where you are in life. Are you young, athletic, still growing or older, sedentary, or maintaining? Any dietary pattern can reduce disease if it limits the instruction to grow, when growth is no longer the goal.
Veganism works because it addresses the effects of growth-promoting foods by avoiding them without even knowing it. One could eventually reach the same amount of such nutrients to fuel growth with a vegan diet but this may prove difficult based on the sheer quantity of consumption needed.
So yes, maybe veganism is a good way to live life once you’ve physically matured although it’s not the only way. But to label all animal products as carcinogenic is as misleading as telling people with diabetes that a diet of sugar can fix your illness.
The Healthy Pharmacist 
Leave a comment