Pick Plant Protein Sources Instead Of Meat

step number three is to pick plant protein instead of meat and just a quick comparison here for you in the green are the things we talked about that are protective like fiber and phytochemicals and antioxidants and prebiotics and plant sterols and stanols and in the red below all the things that are not so protective fat and cholesterol and heme iron which is a pro-oxidant and neu5gc and chemical contaminants and endotoxins and if you compare beans and lentils with meat and poultry what you see is the the things that we want they’re the things that are protective to human health are either high or very high in the beans and lentils and are either zero or low in the meat and poultry and most of them are zero and then if you look at the things that we’re trying to reduce in our diet there are either low or zero or very low in beans and lentils whereas they are mostly moderate or high or very high in in the meat and poultry when we look at legumes and mortality well there was a actually there are two studies from 2017 that have analyzed the link between legumes and mortality and the the latest report showed a 7% risk reduction in the highest versus the lowest consumer groups and I think we didn’t see a bigger difference because a lot of people that eat beans beaten eat beans and pork or beans with with meat so it’s hard to separate the beans from the meat but there was another study looking at people of 70 years of age and older and they reported a 7 to 8% risk reduction in mortality for every two-thirds of an ounce of legumes eaten that’s an unbelievable two thirds of an ounce is like a tablespoon and a half or two tablespoons at the most so quite a remarkable risk reduction with legumes and remember they’re staples in all the zones every single blue zone consumes legumes so this is where I want to come to the question of soy because soy is such a big question in in you know not just within vegetarian groups but in in in general people often say don’t eat soy it’s dangerous so what do we know about soy well first of all to me the acid test is to look at the blue zones these are the longest lived healthiest people on the planet and the blue zones soy is a staple in two out of the five blue zones in Loma Linda California in Okinawa Japan and in Okinawa the diet looks like this seven servings plus of vegetables generous servings of purple fleshed sweet potatoes smaller amounts of rice and grains a tiny bit of fish about a half an ounce a day that’s their animal product in their diet and two servings of soy a day so if the healthiest longest lived people and actually the amounts in Loma Linda would be about the same around the two servings a day if the healthiest longest live people on the planet who have more centenarians than anyone else include soy as part of their diet it’s probably not poisonous or they probably wouldn’t be the longest lived people on the planet so what what is the science of soy while soy may protect against prostate cancer breast cancer as we saw in the sushi a study cardiovascular disease and kidney disease and bone loss as well and it may also help with menopause symptoms relief and male pattern baldness and a little bit on the prevention of wrinkles as well so however that having been said I would say if you’re consuming so you don’t have to it’s definitely not an essential food you want to always opt for organic soy non GMO at least but preferably organic and you want to stick with less processed choices most often like edamame tofu tempeh me so natto fortified soy milk are all reasonable choices that have been made with organic soybeans and you want to limit your intake of more highly processed choices like veggie meats and soy cheeses and if you’re eating veggie meats make sure they’re organic because sometimes the protein is extracted using hexane which is a neurotoxin so just to be on the safe side choosing the organic products now if we look at red meat and mortality we see quite a different picture okay compared to legumes I looked at all of the most recent meta analyses and we can see for processed red meat the risk of mortality is increased by 15 to 44 percent for red meat unprocessed red meat about 5 to 14 percent and for total red meat between 17 and 29 percent this is consistent evidence these are the largest meta analyses we have looking at red meat and mortality if we compare animal protein versus plant protein we’ll the Harvard health professional studies followed people for about 30 years and found that if we replace just 3 percent of the meat of the calories from animal protein with plant protein we will reduce our risk of death significantly by 34 percent if we replace the processed meat with plants by 19 percent if we replace eggs with plants by 12% with unprocessed red meat by 8 with dairy and about 6 for fish and poultry there was another study looking at high protein and mortality with over 6,000 people they found people that eat more than 20% of their calories from protein had a 74 percent increase in mortality a 433 percent increase in cancer deaths and a 393 percent increase in diabetes risk and that so CA ssin was abolished or greatly attenuated if the protein came from plants so those numbers were for people getting their protein from animal products