The Case against a Carnivorous Diet:
Why You Should Switch

When I interview a patient for the first time, I routinely ask, “What's your diet like?”

The response is often “I'm a vegetarian” or “I'm mostly vegetarian.”

Prodding further, I ask, “Yes, but what do you eat?”

“Well, Doc, mostly vegetables—and some fish or chicken.”

I am frequently amazed at how many people think that a vegetarian diet includes fish, let alone chicken. Something else I've noticed: Even though these “vegetarians” may eat no meat, they're nevertheless packing in oodles of dairy products, eggs, and butter. In fact, this kind of diet has so much saturated fat and cholesterol that, though I wouldn't recommend doing it, switching from milk, cheese, and eggs to lean beef would significantly decrease a person's intake of saturated fat and cholesterol.

What It Means to Be a Vegan

Before we go any further, let's define exactly what a vegetarian is. Generally, vegetarians fall into one of three categories.

• Ovo-lactovegetarians consume eggs and dairy products.
• Lactovegetarians consume dairy products but not eggs.
• Vegans (pronounced VEE-guns) avoid all foods of animal origin, including meats, poultry, seafood, eggs, and dairy products.

The Anti-Aging Diet, one of the cornerstones of the Renewal program, is a vegan diet, which means that it excludes all foods of animal origin. By “animal origin,” I mean not only beef, chicken, turkey, pork, lamb, and seafood but also eggs and all dairy products, including milk, cheese, and butter.

By now you may be thinking, “Egads, there's nothing left! An occasional hamburger won't kill me, will it? Where is the pleasure in life if I can't have some cheese now and then? I take the skin off my chicken—you mean I have to give up chicken altogether? What about fish? If I can't use butter, what am I going to put on my toast?” And, of course, the ultimate question: “Is a life without ice cream really worth living?”

These are reasonable questions. And to be honest, if the trade-off were simply less time on this planet, I, too, might opt to go the burger-and-ice-cream route. Unfortunately—and this is what sold me on veganism—a high-fat, fiberless, phytochemical-deprived, toxin-laden animal-foods diet not only shortens life span but also tends to turn those final years into an extremely unpleasant experience. What should be the golden years instead become a nightmare in which inordinate amounts of time and money are spent traipsing from doctor to doctor seeking solutions to debilitating health problems. These diseases of degeneration—high blood pressure, circulatory problems, coronary artery disease, heart failure, kidney failure, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, cataracts, and senile brain disease—keep hospital beds filled and dramatically lower the quality of life for tens of millions of seniors.

As a physician who has treated many of these patients—the unwitting victims of self-inflicted illness—I've witnessed the slow deterioration of health up close, and it is not pretty. It always makes me profoundly sad because with a vegan diet, appropriate nutritional supplements, and regular exercise, most of this human suffering could easily be prevented.

The Fat Factor

As much as we might wish otherwise, the typical American diet—that is, one that's loaded with foods from animal sources—simply doesn't support Renewal. An enormous body of compelling research suggests that foods from animal sources not only cause degenerative disease but also lower general quality of life and shorten life expectancy. As observed by the late Benjamin Spock, M.D., a noted pediatrician, author, and humanitarian, “Death from coronary arteriosclerosis, from cancer, and from stroke keep increasing. There is no question that these diseases are linked to diets high in fat—particularly animal fats.”

The typical American diet is 40 to 50 percent fat, most of which comes from meat, poultry, fish, dairy products, and eggs—all animal-derived foods. Studies have linked a high fat intake to a litany of ailments, including high cholesterol, heart disease, and obesity.

Fat fuels cholesterol production. Not all fat is bad. Certain fats, called essential fatty acids, help defend your body against disease. (We'll discuss them in more detail in chapter 8.)

On the other hand, saturated fat, the kind supplied by animal-derived foods, has been universally condemned as detrimental to health. Your body uses saturated fat to make cholesterol. So the more of this type of fat you consume, the higher your total cholesterol level will be.

Animal-derived foods raise your total cholesterol in another way as well. All animals, be they cows, chickens, or fish, manufacture their own cholesterol. So when you eat red meat, poultry, fish, dairy products, or eggs, you're taking in not only saturated fat but cholesterol, too.

This dastardly combination can really do a number on your cholesterol reading. People who eat animal-derived foods get fully one-quarter of their cholesterol from their diets, with their bodies making the rest. By comparison, vegans get no cholesterol from their diets. Remember, vegans eat only plant-derived foods, and plants do not produce cholesterol.

This gives vegans a decided advantage in terms of their cholesterol levels. The body of a vegan makes only as much cholesterol as it needs to support itself, and in the right proportions. Vegetarians have low levels of low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), the “bad” cholesterol, and high levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDLs), the “good” cholesterol. For people who eat animal-derived foods, the opposite is usually true: they have high LDL and low HDL.

Many doctors tell their patients that they don't have to be concerned about their total cholesterol levels so long as they're within the “normal” range, typically defined as anything below 200 mg/dl (that's milligrams of cholesterol per deciliter of blood). This “normal,” however, is anything but: It's a statistical artifact, derived by studying people who follow a high-fat, meat- and dairy-centered diet. For people who eat this way, the “normal” total cholesterol level is, on average, 210 mg/dl. For vegetarians, “normal” is 150 mg/dl. This little oversight can have some mighty unfortunate consequences.

I'd like to have a nickel for each time I've heard a patient say, “Thank goodness my cholesterol is in the 'normal' range. At least I don't have to worry about that.” People with low total cholesterol readings are easily lulled into a false sense of security, thinking that they are not at risk for heart disease. The truth is that the more cholesterol you consume (that is, the more animal-derived foods you eat), the higher your risk for heart disease—regardless of your total cholesterol reading.

People with low cholesterol levels have heart attacks, too, though not quite as often as those with high levels. In fact, approximately half of all heart attack victims have “normal” cholesterol levels.

And forget the misguided notion that you can lower your total cholesterol—and presumably your risk of heart attack—by replacing the saturated fat in your diet with polyunsaturated fat from vegetable oils (such as canola, corn, peanut, and safflower) or, God forbid, margarine. This trade-off would be great if it worked, but it doesn't. In fact, polyunsaturated fat generates lots of disease-promoting free radicals because this kind of fat molecule is held together by oxidation-sensitive double bonds. (You'll recall that oxidation is the process that produces free radicals.) So in terms of free radical activity, “cholesterol-free” fat is even more dangerous than the saturated fat it presumes to replace.

Fat favors heart disease. Because a high fat intake raises your levels of LDL and total cholesterol, it also raises your risk of heart disease. LDL is the stuff that clings to arterial walls, causing the arteries to become clogged and to harden.

To understand what happens, think of your cardiovascular system as a superhighway. Blood surges along the thoroughfare, delivering nutrients and oxygen to your cells and picking up the cells' waste products. Then LDL sets up a roadblock. Suddenly, essential supplies can't get through to your cells. Waste removal becomes impossible, so garbage builds up and further obstructs passage. The cells not only starve, they're forced to wallow in their own excrement. Not a pretty picture.

When this process, called atherosclerosis, occurs in one of the arteries that serves the heart muscle, it sets the stage for a heart attack. Heart attacks are the number one cause of death in the United States. Every 25 seconds a heart attack strikes, and every 45 seconds one is fatal. The average American male has a 50 percent chance of dying from a heart attack.

The best way to beat the odds? Switch to a low-fat vegan diet. By becoming a low-fat vegan, you can all but eliminate the possibility that heart disease will do you in. Because their diet is naturally low in all fats, strict vegans have just a 4 percent chance of dying from a heart attack.

Fat feeds cancer. Animal-derived foods are high in fat, and a high-fat diet causes cancer. People who consume these foods on a daily basis for several decades have significantly higher rates of cancers of the breasts, stomach, colon, pancreas, bladder, prostate, ovaries, and uterus. A low-fat vegan diet, on the other hand, dramatically reduces the risk of these cancers.

If you're skeptical of the link between fat intake and cancer risk, these facts may convince you.

• Women who eat meat every day are four times as likely to develop breast cancer as women who eat meat less than once a week.
• Women who eat butter or cheese three or more times a week are three times as likely to develop breast cancer as women who eat these foods less than once a week.
• Women who eat eggs every day are three times as likely to develop breast cancer as women who eat eggs less than once a week.
• Women who eat eggs three or more times a week are three times as likely to die from ovarian cancer as women who eat eggs less than once a week.
• Men who eat meat, milk, cheese, or eggs every day are about 3½ times as likely to die from prostate cancer as men who seldom eat these foods or who avoid them completely.

Animal-derived foods contribute to all of the most common cancers. It's not only their high fat content that causes problems. It's also their lack of fiber, their high levels of pesticides, their added hormones, and more. (You'll read more about the relationship between dietary fat and cancer in chapter 12.)

Fat packs on pounds. A high intake of fat is responsible for yet another life-shortening condition: overweight. In fact, exceeding your ideal weight by just 20 percent—roughly 20 to 30 pounds—is an acknowledged risk factor for various health problems, including heart disease and certain types of cancer.

There's no truth to the popular view that complex carbohydrates, the kind found in grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables, are responsible for weight gain. For the most part, fat is what makes people fat. This is because, gram for gram, fat has more than twice as many calories (nine, to be precise) as carbohydrates (only four). What's more, fat calories are quickly and efficiently converted to and stored as body fat, while complex carbohydrate calories are not. (Calories from refined, simple carbohydrates such as white sugar, refined flour, and honey are metabolized like fat and readily stored as fat.)

Thus, a given amount of a high-fat food contributes more than twice as much flab to a person's physique as the same amount of a food high in complex carbohydrates. And once fat calories are stored in the body's fatty tissues, they're much harder to burn off than complex carbohydrate calories.

So leave the butter and sour cream off the baked potato, the gobs of cheese and dressing off the salad, the butter off the toast, the pesto off the pasta, the mayonnaise off the sandwich, and the cream sauces off everything. (And don't be fooled by nonfat foods that are laden with sugar: They behave no differently in your body than full-fat foods.)

The Problems with Protein

The typical American diet is not just high in fat but high in protein, too. “So what's wrong with protein?” you ask. Plenty. As with fat, your body needs protein for certain basic functions. But consuming too much opens the door to disease and whittles years off your life.

You may be surprised to discover just how little protein is too much. The National Research Council (which sets the Recommended Dietary Allowances for nutrients) advocates a protein intake of no more than 8 percent of calories. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Board (which sets the Daily Values) recommends 6 percent. And the World Health Organization suggests just 4.5 percent. By comparison, the average American gets a whopping 15 percent of calories from protein.

Some people—for instance, women who are pregnant or lactating, endurance athletes in training, and patients recovering from burns or surgery—may require a bit more protein in their diets. Most of us, however, are consuming far more than we need.

Protein saps your skeleton. Among the most serious health problems related to a high protein intake is osteoporosis, a debilitating bone disease that affects tens of millions of people—primarily women—in the United States alone. How does an overabundance of protein make bones brittle and susceptible to fractures?

When you eat too much protein, the excess is broken down by digestive enzymes into its component parts, called amino acids. Each molecule of an amino acid must be neutralized before the kidneys can excrete it. Your body calls on calcium to handle the job. But the calcium gets excreted in the urine, along with the amino acids. This process drains the supply of calcium in your bloodstream, so your body has to tap the stores in your bones.

Medical scientists call this condition protein-induced hypercalciuria. In plain English, it means that lots of valuable calcium is being flushed out in the urine by all that extra, unneeded protein. To give you an idea of the seriousness of this problem, female meat-eaters lose about 35 percent of their bone mass by age 65, while female vegetarians lose only about 18 percent.

This finding challenges the long-held belief that calcium deficiency is the sole cause of osteoporosis. Certainly, calcium deficiency accelerates the loss of bone mass. But an excessive protein intake plays a major role as well.

You may wonder where dairy products fit in all this. After all, they're protein foods that just happen to be high in calcium. Unfortunately, the dairy protein also causes a net loss of calcium. So if you want to boost your intake of the mineral, dairy products are not a good choice. In countries such as China, where people consume few dairy products and get most of their protein and calcium from plant-derived foods, osteoporosis is rare.

Of course, your body uses calcium for many purposes besides building and preserving bone mass. This versatile mineral helps maintain a regular heartbeat, aids blood clotting, and prevents health problems such as high blood pressure and colon cancer. Good stuff to have around!

Because a vegetarian diet has a lower protein content, it protects against calcium loss. This is especially important as we get older, because the ability to absorb calcium (and all essential nutrients) declines with age.

Protein taxes your kidneys. Excessive protein consumption has been linked to another disease of epidemic proportions: chronic renal failure. This silent, gradual erosion of kidney functioning hasn't received much publicity, perhaps because it has no outward signs—unlike osteoporosis, which manifests itself as hunched spines in some people and painful fractures in others. Still, chronic renal failure is disabling and potentially lethal. And it's widespread: There are tens of millions of cases in the United States alone. In studies of animals with chronic renal failure, merely restricting protein intake extended their life spans by up to 50 percent.

Pesticides: Covert Poisons

Beyond their high fat and protein contents, meats and dairy products have another, man-made problem. Collectively, these foods account for more than 75 percent of all pesticide residues ingested by Americans. By comparison, only a small fraction of the pesticides in the American diet come from produce—even from the nonorganic kind.

In fact, animal-derived foods dominate what has come to be known as the “Dirty 15.” This list, compiled by the National Academy of Sciences (a fairly persnickety group of scientists not given to exaggeration), identifies the foods that contain the most and the nastiest pesticides.

Now you might think that the worst offenders would be weeded out through the food inspection process. But that's not the case. Take meat, for example: Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture claims to inspect it, only one of every 250,000 animals slaughtered—that's 0.00047 percent—is actually tested for pesticide residues.

So why do meats and dairy products have such high concentrations of pesticide residues? Well, animals ingest the pesticides through their feed. Considering that it takes 16 pounds of soybeans or grain to produce just 1 pound of meat, the average cow or chicken consumes an enormous amount of pesticide-laden feed in its lifetime.

Once ingested, the pesticides, being fat-soluble, are stored in the animal's fatty tissues—an attempt by the animal's body to rid itself of the toxins. But the pesticides linger in these fat cell storage sites and eventually get eaten by humans.

Then the human body does the same thing: It tries to get rid of the health-threatening pesticides by stowing them away in fatty tissues. But the toxins remain, poisoning the immune system, sabotaging cellular structures, and scrambling the processes of Renewal.

The pesticides are even more harmful to humans than to animals because they're so highly concentrated by the time they get into our systems. It's actually a two-step process. First, the toxins from the feed are concentrated in the animal's body. Then when a human eats that meat, the toxins are further concentrated in his own fat cells.

Medical scientists are just beginning to understand what types of damage pesticides can do to the human body. Here are a few examples of what they've discovered so far. (For more on pesticides, see chapter 11.)

Pesticides raise cancer risk. Pesticides are carcinogens. They directly and dramatically increase a person's chances of developing cancer sometime in life.

Pesticides compromise fertility. Polychlorinated biphenyls, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), dioxane, and other commonly used pesticides are to blame for declining sperm counts and other indicators of reduced fertility. The sperm count for the average American male is 30 percent lower today than 30 years ago. Plus, more than 25 percent of male college students are considered sterile today, compared with only 0.5 percent in 1950. That's a 5,000 percent increase.

Pesticides contaminate breast milk. This is perhaps the most grim reminder of the pervasiveness of pesticides. In the United States, 99 percent of mother's milk contains levels of DDT above the rather conservative limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Meat-eating mothers have 35 times the breast milk contamination of vegetarian mothers. This means that virtually all nursing babies of meat-eating mothers are being exposed to levels of DDT that the EPA has deemed unsafe for adults. It is generally acknowledged that a baby's developing organs are much more sensitive than an adult's organs to the detrimental effects of these chemicals.

Where's the fiber?

While animal-derived foods supply plenty of bad stuff—fat, protein, pesticides—they come up short on one very important substance: fiber. In fact, these foods have no fiber whatsoever. This causes real problems for nonvegetarians, because fiber plays an essential role in good nutrition and supports optimum health. Here are some ways in which fiber helps your body function.

fiber cleans up cholesterol. fiber sops up cholesterol and flushes it out of your body. Consuming too little fiber accelerates the development of atherosclerosis, setting the stage for high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases.

fiber supports waste removal. By absorbing water and adding bulk to stool, fiber encourages waste to move through your digestive tract faster. Without enough fiber in your diet, you're at greater risk for chronic constipation and colon cancer. Consider this: World populations with high rates of meat consumption have high rates of colon cancer, while those with low rates of meat consumption have low rates of colon cancer.

fiber escorts toxins from your system. fiber soaks up cancer-causing toxic chemicals, so they can't be absorbed from the large intestine into the bloodstream. One Dutch study found that deaths from all cancers—not just colon cancer—were three times higher among men on a low-fiber diet compared with men on a high-fiber diet.

The Pros of Plant-Derived Foods

Interestingly enough, what's wrong with animal-derived foods is what's right about plant-derived foods. Grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits are naturally low-fat and cholesterol-free. They're high in phytochemicals and fiber. They supply liberal amounts of the healthful essential fatty acids. Preferably, they are organically grown and so are free of pesticides. But even if they're commercially grown, they harbor far fewer pesticides than meats and dairy products.

Replacing the animal-derived foods in your diet with supernutritious plant-derived foods supports health, prevents disease, and promotes longevity. In short, it nurtures Renewal.

Now you know why you should follow the Anti-Aging Diet, which is a plant-based, vegan diet. The question is, how do you do it?

To help you make the switch, you'll find menu plans and recipes beginning on page 487. But if you don't feel ready to completely give up animal-derived foods, remember: The extent to which you follow the Renewal Anti-Aging Diet determines the extent to which you'll benefit from it. Try stepping down to nonfat (not low-fat) dairy products since they're the least problematic. They include nonfat milk, nonfat yogurt (sugar-free, of course), nonfat cottage cheese, and nonfat sour cream. Stick with them until you feel comfortable phasing them out.

You might benefit from having a doctor who supports and encourages your newly acquired healthful eating habits. Unfortunately, most doctors are not very knowledgeable about nutrition and its relationship to health. In fact, they received an average of just 2½ hours of nutrition training in medical school. What's more, if your doctor eats meats and dairy products, he'll most likely defend this unhealthy practice. Finding a doctor who is a vegetarian can be difficult. But it's not impossible—and it's well worth the effort.

I'm convinced that if you try the Anti-Aging Diet, you'll like it because you'll feel better than you ever believed possible. Over time, you'll come to see this eating plan not as an exercise in self-denial but as a cornucopia of delicious, healthful foods that you actually crave. You'll be surprised at how easily you make the transition to veganism, even though right now it may seem impossible. And you'll wonder how you ever could have been enticed by disease-causing foods in the first place.

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Now it's time to learn more about fats—in particular, how certain fats literally keep us alive, while others literally do us in.