In the 2007-08 National Health Survey in Australia, nearly all people aged 65 years and over reported having at least one long-term condition (with more than 80 per cent of people in this age group reported having three or more long-term conditions)

Key findings Of Australia’s Health survey 2014

• Chronic disease leading cause of illness, disability and death – accounting for 90 per cent of all deaths in 2011.
• More than 3 in 5 adults (63 per cent) are overweight or obese (70 per cent of men, 56 per cent of women)
• Nearly 3 in 5 adults (57 per cent) do not exercise enough
• Only 8 per cent of adults eat enough vegetables
• Only 49 per cent of adults eat enough fruit

The government tells you by its ad campaign(go for 2 &5-nobody knows what it means!) to eat more fruit and vegetable, but it doesn’t tell you to eat less meat and animal products (you could say that is the indirect message, but it is very indirect!)

Pharmaceuticals

Of the 234 million prescription medicines dispensed in 2005,  the two prescription medicines distributed most frequently
through community pharmacies, with the greatest cost to the government and with the highest defined daily dose per 1,000 population, were both medications prescribed for lipid
reduction (lowering of blood cholesterol).

The cost of these medications to the community is staggering and the suffering to the individual and their families is also staggering.

 There is only one reason to have high cholesterol and that is eating meat, eggs, dairy.     Some people reading this will say, but what  about my genes?   These are outside of my control.   Our genes are a very small contributor to the diseases which commonly kill Australians.    Most cancers and heart disease our  two biggest killers could be prevented by diet and exercise.     Even mainstream health information would say 70 -90% of these illnesses.   This is what makes our current technological fix we are pursuing by  pursuing our genetic make up, only make sense in terms of making money,  not good health.   No-one can make money out of you eating plants and exercising.

Genes react to the environment they are placed in and can be turned on or off by that environment.  The biggest environmental impact on us, is the environment we create in our bodies by what we put in our mouths.   Is it an environment that promotes sickness or health, inflammation or a balanced immune system, blocked blood vessels or flexible clean blood vessels, unregulated cell growth or regulated cell growth?   Eating plants is on the postivie side of that ledger every time.  Eating animals is not.

How the body functions is incredibly complex and T Colin Campbell author of that great book, The China Study, doesn’t think we will ever know the complexity of how it works.  As John McDougall says(see link in sidebar),  What do you care, which mechanism it is?  Just knowing that it works, is what’s important.  As he likes to say, “It’s the food!”

For example, do we get heart disease, because of the cholesterol blocking our arteries, the fat blocking our arteries or the TMAO blocking our arteries, with the TMAO being produced from  choline and carnitine in meat, eggs, dairy and fish as it is broken down by the bacteria we need in our gut to digest animals. (if we eat plants only we have different bacteria in our gut to digest plants).  All we need to know is the less meat  and other animal products you eat, the less likely we are to get heart disease (zero is best of course).

I am staggered by how many people have one of the inflammatory bowel diseases: irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colits, ulcerative diverticulitis or on another tack constipation.  A sure fire way to have easy, good consistency of bowel movements is to eat plants and exercise( no varicose veins, no haemorrhoids)

What a Dr will tell you is that if you are low in iron, you need to eat meat.  I am not sure how they explain away all of the people  who are eating meat and are low in iron?  There is plenty of iron in leafy greens for example.    Dr’s will tell  you, you must have dairy to stop osteoporosis because if you don’t eat dairy you will have weak bones.  The countries where people have the most fractures, eat the most dairy.  This has been known for decades, but that doesn’t stop the myth being perpetuated.  This fracture story is another example of the mechanism of action being complex.  It was thought for a long time that as animal foods are high in protein( protein is made up of amino acids) that animal foods create an acidic environment in the body and in an attempt to get the balance right, calcium was leached out of the bones, weakening the bones.  It turns out that wasn’t right.  Recent experiments with radioactive calcium in animal products have shown that the calcium that is coming out in the urine after eating animal products is the same calcium that was coming in-  not from the bones.

Where high protein and high calcium foods interrupt health and probably bone density is through blocking the activity of the enzyme in the kidney, which converts the vitamin D made in our skin via sunlight into the more powerful form used in the body.   As McDougall says what do we care about the mechanism?

T Colin Campbell in The China Study outlines eight principles of food and health.  These are:

• Nutrition represents the combined activities of countless food substances.   The whole is greater than the sum of the parts
• Vitamin supplements are not a panacea for good health
• There are  virtually no nutrients in animal based foods that are not better provided by plants
• Genes do not determine disease on their own.  Genes function only by being activated,  or expressed and nutrition plays a critical role in determining which genes, good and bad are expressed
• Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals
• The same nutrition that prevents disease in its early stages(before diagnosis) can also halt or reverse disease in its later stages (after diagnosis)
• Nutrition that is truly beneficial for one chronic disease will support health across the board
• Good nutririon creates health in all areas of our existence.  All parts are interconnected.