Why Good Nutrition & Healthy Food Choices are Important

It’s a chilly late-fall evening on the homestead, and it’s dinnertime. There’s been plenty of activity chopping wood, tending the animals, putting the last of the root vegetables in the root cellar, and spreading cow manure on the garden. Sitting down to a hearty meal of good nutrition sounds delicious. Steam rises from the pot as soup is ladled into each bowl. The flavor of the tender meat and garden vegetables is enhanced by the nutrient-dense bone broth to make a truly nourishing meal for rebuilding the muscles, cartilage, and bones after a hard day’s work.

The butter (drizzled over the popcorn) and a slab of cheese are tonight’s contributions to dinner by the friendly milk cow, Buttercup.

But, then, there’s a knock on the door.

“I was just traveling through. Boy, this place is in the middle of nowhere! I’m so tired and hungry. Do you have anything to eat? I don’t need much. A green salad and a few chunks of tofu should help me make it to my next stop.”

A quick glance toward the garden where frosts have already turned any remaining plants to brown says a green salad won’t be possible. And tofu?!

“You’re welcome to our soup, cheese and popcorn.”

“Oh, I’m vegan and don’t eat anything that used an animal to produce it.”

Another glance at the garden where chicken and cow manure will enrich the soil that’s already teeming with micro-organisms makes producing food without animal assistance a near impossibility.

“We have apples in the cellar. And if you don’t mind cracking your own walnuts from the shell… you’re certainly welcome to join us. Are you sure you wouldn’t like us to fix an egg for you? You look like you could use some nourishment.”

“The apple sounds great, but I’ll pass on the nuts. Ever since I tried eating a fruitarian diet for a while, my teeth have felt loose and have been quite sensitive. I thought adding vegetables and tofu into my diet would help, but so far I haven’t seen much change. Do you have a paring knife so I can cut up the apple into small bites?”

An Exaggeration?

So, did I exaggerate the difference between vegans and omnivores? Maybe, maybe not.

The issue of different dietary choices is certainly a controversial one, and at first, I hesitated to write about it here because it can become such a hot-button issue that it rivals the heated debates surrounding religion and politics. And truth be told, the controversy over meat-eating vs. vegan/vegetarianism is often based in religion and politics.

Did I characterize meat-eaters correctly, and vegans correctly? No, probably not. Many meat eaters (knowingly or unknowingly) buy their meat from Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) instead of farms where cows graze on their natural diet of grass. And many vegan/vegetarians can be found eating extruded soy meat analogs, filling up on pasta, and washing it all down with soda pop simply because none of it contains animal products.

Everyone is different, and some of us have severe food allergies that prevent us from eating certain foods that might otherwise be nutritious. Aside from philosophical reasons for avoiding animal products, dairy allergy/intolerance is one of the main reasons people choose to become vegan.

Elimination Diets

Going on an elimination diet can be very helpful in some cases in order to find a food sensitivity (and then avoid that food in the future). But, for many folks, if the root cause of their food sensitivity is not addressed, simple avoidance will not heal the problem, and gradually more and more foods become problematic.

When too many foods and/or food groups are eliminated, the body doesn’t have enough good nutrition and building blocks to repair itself and consequently, health problems spin out of control.

I have seen some elimination diets work wonders for the seriously ill (for example the Breuss juice diet [BK461]), but these kinds of diets for therapeutic purposes are meant to last a finite amount of time.

I believe strict vegan and vegetarian diets have their place in the toolbox of good nutrition but should not be undertaken for long periods of time due to lack of vital nutrients.

If you’re thinking about eliminating some foods from your diet, there are several important questions to ask yourself:

Philosophical & Religious Reasons

If your dietary restrictions are based on the health guidelines of your religious affiliation, consider the origins of those guidelines. For example, monks have been encouraged to eat soy to reduce sexual desires, and other religions originally restricted meat for the same purposes.¹

There are many Biblical examples of eating meat and animal products. Abraham served fresh meat, milk, bread and butter to his guests (Genesis 18:1-8), and Jesus served fish to His followers (John 6:8-9) and to His disciples after His resurrection (John 21:9-10).

So, it’s worth considering the hidden agendas of modern organizations when they suggest diets that are not natural, and/or alter the natural, normal functions of the body.

Side Note of Encouragement: Do what’s beneficial for your health so you can share the Good News in robust health. How can you positively influence the world if you’re sick, tired, and cranky? Eat what gives you true nourishment and the resulting strength and solid well-being.

I found the book "Defending Beef" [BK542], by Nicolette Hahn Niman, to be very helpful in understanding the arguments against meat-eating, and it contains excellent answers to those objections.

What so many people don’t realize when they make a decision to avoid animal products in favor of a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle is that their choice may not help the cause they were eager to support.

For example, take animal welfare. Personally, I don’t want to support an animal “industry” where the poor critters are subjected to a life of confinement, standing in stinky muck their whole lives, being pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. My choice is milk and meat from grass-fed/pastured, healthy animals who happily live their lives in the open fields.

But vegans and vegetarians may choose to abstain from animal products entirely, thinking this will help. By doing so, they may stop eating butter and switch to non-dairy spread or margarine. Most of these spreads are made with industrial seed oils extracted from corn, soy or canola. Then the pulp from the production of those oils is fed to the animals in the feedlots!

By purchasing these non-dairy options, one is actually contributing to the industry that’s causing the animals so much distress.² Sometimes doing what you think is right turns out to have unintended consequences when you don’t understand the bigger picture.

Allergies & Intolerances

If you must exclude certain foods due to allergy, do you know how to obtain the missing nutrients without that food?

For example, if you must exclude dairy and butterfat, are you eating enough resistant starch to get adequate butyric acid?

Are you getting enough saturated fat to help you absorb the other fat-soluble vitamins in your food? If you can’t tolerate butter, can you tolerate beef tallow (from grass-fed animals) or coconut oil?

Not just any other oil can replace butter and provide the same benefits as butter with its vitamin D, K2 and butyric acid. Butter is mostly saturated fat, so replacing it with polyunsaturated fats (or blends) high in omega-6 can be detrimental. Non-dairy spreads that emulate butter and may even contain small amounts of healthy mono-unsaturated fats such as olive oil are becoming popular, but may also contain harmful preservatives and artificial flavors. Caveat emptor.

Supplementation

Some advocates of very restricted diets such as veganism say that complete plant-based nutrition is possible except you’ll need to supplement with vitamin D3 and B12. These vitamins come from animal products.

Sure, it’s probably better to supplement than not get these nutrients at all, but eating whole foods with all the nutrients together in harmony grown just the way the body was designed to ingest them is by far the superior way of getting good nutrition.

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles such as the one on grass-fed meat, vegetarians are frequently deficient in zinc (something highly available in meat) and perhaps copper toxic.

Until you fully understand the dynamics of restricting your diet, it’s best to eat a wide variety of plant and animal foods.

The Underlying Problem

Although there are many things that can cause ill health, I believe that an impaired or malfunctioning digestive system is one of the main culprits. Trouble is, it becomes a catch-22 situation: You need to digest and absorb your food so you can digest and absorb your food.

For example, vitamin A prompts secretion of gastric juices that are necessary for properly digesting proteins.³ Vitamin A deficiency is common in vegetarians because vegetarians mostly get beta-carotene from their vegetables, which must be converted by their bodies into vitamin A.

For many vegetarians (where thyroid issues are common), they don’t have the mechanisms to convert beta-carotene to vitamin A, and a vicious cycle ensues.4 To fix this problem, its best to eat sufficient animal products high in vitamin A, so you can have the digestive juices to digest all of your food.
A deficiency of stomach acid is common in vegetarians, and may be one reason they avoid meat since, without adequate acid, meat may seem difficult to digest.

Lack of stomach acid not only impairs digestion of all foods, but prevents what little B12 they may intake from being absorbed (due to lack of Intrinsic Factor). So, vegetarians become B12 deficient not only because they don’t ingest it from animal products, but because they’re not able to easily absorb oral B12 supplements.5

Liver is very high in vitamin B12 and can be very helpful for those suffering from low energy and sluggish brain function. And typically, vegetarian diets are low-cholesterol diets. Diets low in cholesterol have been linked to leaky gut and other intestinal disorders.6

Dietary cholesterol is not a villain, but can actually benefit your health.

In recent years many scientists and doctors have finally admitted that they were wrong about dietary cholesterol and now recommend people eat eggs without fear.

It’s very important to do your own research for cutting-edge information about health because many religious, medical, and/or governmental organizations are tangled in alliances, dogmas, and social conflicts that prevent them from changing their message suddenly when new information comes to light that is in conflict with their previous message.

But, the true message of health isn’t really about “new information” at all. It’s about eating what we were designed to eat — putting in our bodies what it knows how to digest, and what it can use for rebuilding and maintaining a healthy body. It's about good nutrition.

What Were We Designed to Eat?

First, consider ruminant animals — true vegetarian herbivores.

It’s a very peaceful scene, watching a cow sitting lazily in the green grass chewing its cud. Cows have an amazing digestive system. As ruminants, their stomach has four different compartments — the first and largest section can hold up to 50 gallons of plant material. This is where fermentation occurs with microbes that help break down the cellulose in grass.

They can bring up food from this first stomach and chew on it a bit more before sending it down to the second compartment of the stomach. The special function of their digestive system enables them to eat and get nourishment from plants that would certainly be inedible to humans. But, they spend all day eating (and chewing), and they must eat a lot and have big stomachs to get the nourishment they need.

Although I’ve never seen a big lion sprinting across the plains in hot pursuit of fresh meat (I’ve only see it through someone else’s video camera lens), I have seen our barn cat do something similar. She’d lay around for hours looking sleepy all curled up next to a gopher hole not acting particularly hungry, but ever-patient for the next meal.

When she did catch lunch, she’d be satisfied to mosey off in search of more adventure… and another cat nap. Cats eat virtually no plant matter, but thrive on full-fat raw meat (and raw milk when they can get it.) Their digestive systems were designed for this kind of diet with a shorter and simpler system than that of a cow.

So, there are herbivores (like cows) that eat only plant matter and carnivores (like cats) that eat only meat. But, our human digestive systems are designed as somewhat of a compromise between the two. We can digest plant material (even without four compartments in our stomach), and we can digest meat (although our intestines are a bit longer than that of a cat).

We’re designed to be omnivores (“omni-” meaning “all”), so we can eat whatever and our bodies miraculously seem to digest it all. (Somehow we even survive when we feed our body’s industrial stuff that doesn’t resemble anything in nature. Amazing!)

Consider the teeth and mastication process of herbivores vs. carnivores. Herbivores have flat teeth for grinding, while carnivores have sharp teeth for tearing their food (and can swallow their meat without much chewing because their digestive juices can easily break down raw meat).

Humans have some teeth for grinding, and some sharp teeth, too. I found a fascinating chart7 that shows how much more similar humans are to carnivorous dogs than herbivorous sheep. Humans were definitely not anatomically designed to eat only plant foods.

Note of Caution: If you attempt a completely plant-based diet, you may find you crave more food (as your body begs for more nutrition), your stomach expands (all those plant foods take up more space than nutrient-dense animal fats — remember how big a cow's stomach needs to be!), and the extra carbohydrates found in plant foods could cause you to gain weight and possibly have blood sugar problems.

The Financial Costs

Many people find they simply can’t afford healthy meats and fats. Unfortunately, in our modern world, the cheapest foods may also be the least healthful. Sugary and carbohydrate-based foods tend to be easier to produce with the big-industrial-agriculture model and are therefore cheaper.
But, just because you’re on a tight budget doesn’t mean you can’t get good nutrition. Cooking rice in bone broth adds lots of good nutrition and flavor without a lot of extra costs. Choosing only the most nutrient-dense cuts of meat (such as liver) can add a boost. Consider adding bone broth, gelatin, eggs, and animal fats (such as butter and tallow) in place of less nutritious foods. Quality fats could actually be more important in lean times than worrying about protein sources.

The long-term financial costs of eating a deficient diet lacking in good nutrition are much higher than eating more nutrient-dense foods now (even if you have to eat a lot less of them).

Maybe Frances Pottenger (author of “Pottenger’s Cats” [BK521]) was right in his observations that when animals don’t eat a diet suited for their digestive system, their offspring suffer. After several generations of malnutrition, the consequences are horrible.

As pointed out in the book “Pottenger’s Prophecy” [BK515], by Gray Graham et. al., Americans have been eating an incorrect and malnourished diet for generations, and we’re seeing the results in lower school test scores, more violence, mental health problems, and reproductive issues than previous generations.

I heard in the news recently that the young “millennial generation” has weaker hand strength than previous generations. Is it just because of overuse of technology and not enough manual labor? Or does the modern nutrient-deficient American diet play a role?

A Happy Ending

Back on the homestead, there’s another knock on the door.

“Hey! Just stopping by to pick up my regular order of farm fresh milk. I’ve been doing so much better on Buttercup’s raw milk. My wife says she does better on the raw goat milk, so I’m glad you have goats, too. I really do appreciate you selling me some of your milk. I just picked up my Azure order from the drop point and raw milk is just about the only thing I can’t get from Azure. It’s a shame raw milk is so inaccessible to more people that can’t drive way out to farms like yours. In Europe, they actually have vending machines in the cities that supply farm-fresh raw milk.

“I don’t mean to keep you — I see you have a guest. But, my!” He turns to the vegan. “You’re only eating an apple? You must have some severe food restrictions not to be enjoying all this nutrient-dense food from the homestead. Are you familiar with Azure? They’ve got so many good foods that everyone who’s seeking to improve their health can find something to help them out.

“If you’re not eating the popcorn because of the butter, you might like the new Popcorn Oil [OL323] from Wilderness Family Naturals. It’s made from coconut oil and red palm oil so you get all the good saturated fats without the dairy. And you might consider encapsulated liver [NS0105] from Vital Nutrients to help you feel better without actually putting meat on your plate. Azure also has nut butters from Wilderness Family made from soaked and dehydrated nuts (such as almonds [NB267]) so they’re much easier to digest.”

Then he turns to the homesteader.

“I know you don’t grow pomegranates here on the homestead, but there’s a special substance in pomegranate juice that helps prevent the cartilage from breaking down in that injured shoulder of yours. It might augment your bone broth regimen for healing. Azure’s got it! [JS439] Good night and I’m off to make something delicious with all the good food I just got from Azure! Thanks again!”

Here at Azure we’re eager to help you find the natural and organic products that fit your diet and lifestyle wherever you are in your health journey.

Editor's Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Azure Standard and its affiliates.

REFERENCS:

2 Ibid. p.77

6 Ibid. p. 12

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