By: Kennedy Shelley
Vegans, vegetarians and government regulators are pushing a new idea that high protein diets increase our risk of cancer.
If you notice, politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have pushed legislation trying to change our diets to reduce beef consumption because of her fear of farting cows destroying the planet.
In other words, these self-styled environmentalists and socialists are trying to politicize your diet and tell you what to eat for your own good.
And they often will use really shaky science to justify their actions.
The latest was an obscure and deeply flawed study that was published in 2014 in the journal Cellular Metabolism that tried to link too much protein with higher cancer risk.
The problem with this study is that it was done on mice and did not look at the data that shows the opposite effect when people are studied.
But what was particularly infuriating about this study is that its own data contradicted their own press release.
The studies authors tried to claim that high protein increased cancer risk in the rodents, but their very first chart showed that low protein increased cancer risk.
Yet the popular press picked up on the study with headlines such as this in Science Daily “Meat and Cheese May Be As Dangerous as Smoking.” The article went on to say that a chicken wing is just as dangerous as a cigarette.
And then the politicians started chiming in echoing these ridiculous claims.
While this may be important dietary advice for rats and mice, what is the science when it comes to humans?
One of the problems with the study when they started trying to apply the rodent studies to humans is that they looked at people who said they ate lots of meat and cheese especially in the 1990’s when the government was pushing a low-fat message.
It turns out those people who were still eating cheeseburgers during that time also smoked and drank a great deal.
In other words, these were not the most health-conscious people on the planet at that time.
But the authors didn’t factor this in. If the study was honest, they would have said “Unhealthy people tend to die earlier than healthy people.”
Getting a gram of protein per every kilogram of body weight seems to be the minimum needed to maintain good health (or around 2 ounces for every 100 pounds of body weight).
The problem with politicians is that when they meddle with diet recommendations it affects a large number of people. It affects the school lunch programs, meals for senior citizens, hospitals and the military.
If they start pushing a low protein diet because they want to “save the planet” they are not really worrying about your health and cherry picking bad or seriously flawed studies puts millions of Americans’ health at risk.
Older citizens are most at risk because as you get older, you don’t metabolize protein as effectively as you did when you were younger. As a result, we need more as we age.
While this study did take this into account and recommended “moderate amounts” for older citizens, unfortunately many politicians don’t always read the fine print. If AOC gets her way we will have less cow flatulence, but emasculated senior citizens.
It is difficult to get enough protein eating a strictly vegan diet and impossible to get vitamin B12 without artificial supplements.
This is hardly the all-natural diet they keep taunting.
Protein is a vital macro nutrient that helps keep our lean muscle and helps us to recover from exercise and illness. Getting dietary advice from vegans and politicians can be seriously dangerous to your health.
