Background
Time for the next episode on the negative health effects of meat. I have recently covered the environmental destruction caused by the meat industry in part 1 and lipids and our health in part 2. Both aspects are very negatively affected by eating & producing animal products. This is the follow up on part 2 and will focus on toxins that are common in meat, or non toxins that become toxic when we over consume them. Obviously most compounds are toxic when over consumed, even water, but disguised in meat, few know about the dangers that comes with a “meaty” lifestyle.
Read part 1 and 2 below!
Meat is full of toxins
First of all,I just want to mention that the meat we consume is often not what we think, so if you must eat meat, eat high quality meat. Grass fed and fresh meat from cows living without chemical additives, which hardly exists today, contains no toxins really, apport from the fat and low digestibility of the meat.
Sadly, there is little meat being sold in supermarkets that comes from such a source, or is as it were during & after slaughter. The animals is already dosed with antibiotics and hormones along with herbicides, pesticides and fungicides and chemical wormer from top to toe or injected with it seems. Both hormones and pesticides are made by the company Monsanto, who would let us eat about anything as long as we survive long enough to buy more of it!
The company has grown very powerful and are responsible for much of the fake information about meat and the health benefits it has, which is essentially 0 today.
Prior to arriving at the supermarket, the meat is filled with salt water, it is colored, treated with enzymes to get better texture and sprinkled with preservatives to even survive to the shelf. To make the enzyme treatment penetrate deeper, the meat is stabbed and injected with it.
The risk of the meat containing bacteria that could kill us and toxins produced by the bacteria, is always present, but more on bacteria and antibiotics in the next part.
Essentially, the low quality meat is reconstructed from something hardly eatable to a chemical sludge, prior to reaching our plates.
There is Brazilian beef being sold in EU, more than a month old, harvested where once rainforests stood, transported on huge ships all around the world and loaded to the max with chemicals, sustainable? eh no!
Common toxins in meat
Glyphosate
Glyphosate is a compound used globally to fight weeds and insects and works by shutting down the shikimate pathway. This pathway is possessed by weeds and insects but not humans so it was proposed to be safe. The fact that bacteria has the shikimate pathway is a huge concern since we are made of more bacteria than human cells! The bacteria in our body produces essential amino acids from this pathway, and shutting it down will cause deficiencies of essential aromatic amino acids in both our gut bacteria and ourselves.
The alternative pathways that activates to break down the glyphosate also produce toxins INSTEAD of the essential aromatic amino acids. In result we both see massive rises in gut problems along with deficiencies in serotonin and other compounds directly based on tryptophan or other aromatic amino acids.
This might be one of the biggest global health risks there is and since nothing besides the GMO from Monsanto can grow in a soil, after using roundup a few times, we are doomed unless we stop soon. We have millions of name signatures in EU, demanding the de legalisation of glyphosate, still nothing happens, will Monsanto win?
Glyphosate was said to degrade fast and never be stored in waters or soils, but where quickly found building up in both soils and water. It was supposed to be non carcinogenic but monsanto's own trials were of course to short and at to low dosages.
Independent studies showed clear tumor progression inside 6 months when doing trials on mice.
This problem also extends to GMO´s made for roundup, called roundup ready crops, and can be found all over the world today. I advice you strongly to stay away from such GMO and meat that is not 100% organic / ecologically produced.
Herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and chemical wormer.
The food animals eat are sprayed with e.g glyphosate during its life and drying stage. The food is dosed with pesticides and fungicides to last long enough. The cows are sprayed from top to toe with chemical wormer and given huge amounts of antibiotics. They live close to each other and in their own and other cows feces, making life without antibiotics impossible.
Chicheks must mature within 6 weeks or they will die from heart attack prior to week 8, they live on more than 50% chemicals, and of course, the other 50%, grains, is also dosed with chemicals. I would never eat anything so toxic, especially when I must put animals through such horrors to do so!
The meat we consume is loaded with different chemicals stemming from herbicides, fungicides, wormers, pesticides and antibiotics.
Monsanto even made a GMO called BT crops, that make its own peticide, so it is bound to be negative to our gut bacteria, since it works in a similar fashin to glyphosate.
Hormones, Monsanto again..
I am sure you know that many chickens are force fed grain based foods with massive doses of chemicals all their short lives, but this also extends to hormones. Pigs and cows, our biggest sources of meat, along with chicken and fish eat them all their lives to grow as fast as possible. Every animal that is raised “industrially” is infused with many different hormones during their lives, which we then gladly eat without a second though. FDA has approved 6 classes of hormones that can be used to grow these animals faster and to make them produce more milk.
Back in 1993, FDA approved Monsanto's application to use rBST, recombinant growth hormones to get more milk from cows. By 2015 the usage had spread to meat production in many countries such as South Africa, Australia and Canada. As a biochemist and someone who believes in the rights of animals, this is just deranged. The government always protects corporate interests not consumers, we have to stop eating toxins, maybe they are the reason why we cannot see the horrors right in front of our eyes. 128,000 Americans are hospitalized every year due to food borne diseases.
The hormones can act both intra and extracellular, giving them different rates of accumulation in the animals. Even if the hormones do not build up in the animal, since it could be limited to the bloodstream and cell surfaces, it will reach the milk of cows so we are not safe either way.
Even more affected then meat, by many hormones, is milk from animals that consume them, it should never be consumed daily by our children!
Arsenic
If the toxins mentioned was not enough, there is more! To keep poultry hungry and to promote pigmentation of the meat, they are fed arsenic. yeah really, the heavy metal that is lethal to humans in very small doses, if eaten often. They have a 5 day window prior to slaughter, where no arsenic is given, to no effect i can assure you, much of the arsenic is still in their cells and skin.
Arsenic is a potent carcinogen and should be avoided in your diet at all costs but there still is no laws against using it in animal medicine. Pfizer gladly supplies the market with arsenic containing medicine such as roxarsone, all for the money!
In a test that covered 10 US states, high arsenic doses where found in 90% of the samples, not good! I´ve done a recent review on arsenic and the epigenetic changes it induces. Low dose chronic arsenic exposure leads to many different cancer types. I would under no circumstances eat any meat from a supermarket but could still rate the meats depending on their health impacts. Chicken is on the bottom of that list along with pigs.
Chronic inorganic arsenic exposure has been shown to cause lung, bladder and skin cancers and has been associated with other conditions, as well, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cognitive deficits, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. According to National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data, at least 75 percent of Americans regularly eat chicken.
https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2013/nachman_arsenic_chicken.html
Carbon monoxide
To make meat look fresh many use carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas, to treat the meat and make it look fresh.
This applies to fish as well, not just cow and pig meat, have a look!
If we saw how the meat really looked i don´t think many would eat it in the amounts we do, possible for pure survival.
There are so many different toxins in meat i could go on for every but I think you see now that meat is a disaster in any aspect. It makes you sick at the same time as its production devastates the environment and wastes away water.
For the sake of your health, the environment and the animals, do not eat them
If you did not guess it, I avoid Monsantos GMOs, not because they are GMOs, but because they are sprayed with glyphosate. This is the widest use of GMO today, sadly! This is very important for me as a Vegan, meat is not the only problem here, it is also the crops that accumulates more and more toxins every year.
Many resistant weeds were found quickly after the introduction of roundup, but instead of going back to square one, Monsanto and their stock owners wanted the cash back, so they just made it even more chemically hazardous to penetrate plants deeper. New and stronger versions a long with increased usage is making plants more and more toxic.
On the positive side, Monsanto where recently thrown out of Greece and latvia and Scotland and germany a while back, since they said no to their GMO´s. This might be indicating that a long needed turning point is coming closer, after what ,50 years of toxic plants and meat....
Thanks for checking in and sit tight for part 2 episode 3:
Antibiotics & our gut flora
