Your Steak In The World

Description

If you are considering how much and what kind of meat to consume, how do you know what is acceptable? Reports continue to issue on all sides of the question about what quantity of meat consumption is or is not healthy. Some people advocate veganism or vegetarianism, others promote eating lots of meat to provide quality proteins and vitamins. “New” reports seem to issue weekly seeking to “settle” the debate on meat consumption but serve only to stir more debate. Chapter 1 points readers to scientific reports which should be considered more strongly by describing a basic understanding of the types of scientific studies. From tissue cultures to large population and synthesis studies, each type offers strengths and weaknesses. We believe it is critical for a person who really wants to understand dietary recommendations to understand how nutritional research is conducted. There are inherent strengths and limitations in any type of study, and some should carry more weight than others. When many reports by qualified researchers arrive at similar conclusions over time, that preponderance of evidence should be valued heavily.

Chapter 1: Meat Consumption: How to Interpret the Scientific Literature

• Nutrition by Sound Bites
• How Should We Interpret Scientific Studies?
• Low Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol (LDL-C) of various vertebrates
• Mechanism of Diverticula Production
• Dietary Factors Affecting the Incidence of Colon Cancer
• Mortality from Coronary Artery Disease by Country and Total Cholesterol over 40 years
• Expert Panels, Scientific Consensus Panels
• Putting Studies Together to Build a Reliable Diet Plan: Salt, Chocolate, and Meat

Chapter 2: How do We Get Disease?

• What is Disease?
• What is Health?
• What Leads to Disease and Why?
• Understanding All that ‘Chronic’ of ‘Chronic Disease’ Includes
• What Causes Premature Death?
• Putting Disease and Health into Perspective

Chapter 3: Consumption of Red and Processed Meat and Health

• Is the NIH-AARP study representative of all the medical research literature?
• Corrected Relative Risk of Mortality for Men and Women in the AARP-NIH Study
• Would changes in eating habits affect risk?
• Does consuming less red and processed meat help me live better?
• The longer explanation—diabetes mellitus
• Risk Reduction in the Incidence of Diabetes Associated Various Food Substitutions
• The longer explanation–hypertension
• Cholesterol and the Texas White House
• Summary

Chapter 4: Technology to the Rescue or Not?

• Vitamins and Supplements
• Potential Cancer Preventing Substances Beyond the Vitamins
• Homocysteine
• Homocysteine Randomized Trials: No Benefit
• Help From the Food Industry
• Trans-fatty Acid Content in Selected Foods
• Variation in Trans-fatty Acid Content in Selected Restaurants
• Baby Formula
• Drug Industry to the Rescue (or not)?
• Drug Therapies and the Risk of Chronic Disease
• The Future of Drugs to the Rescue
• Summary
• Side Bar

Chapter 5: What is a Prudent Diet?

• What is Jeremiah Stamler Eating?
• Very Low-fat Diets
• Vegetarian and Vegan Diets
• Differences in the Incidence of Diabetes and Hypertension between the Various Types of Vegetarians
• Reduction in Cardiovascular Mortality by Type of Vegetarian
• Diets from Consensus Panel
• American Heart Association Diet
• American Heart Association Recommended Diets
• Three Large Oranges or a Large Glass of Orange Juice
• Meat (protein)
• Fats
• Variations on DASH
• What is Wrong with your Diet?
• Source of Added Sugar in the Average American Diet
• Differences in Sodium Concentration between Natural and Processed Foods
• Seafood
• Dairy and Saturated Fats
• Back to Africa

Chapter 6: Changing our Diets and our Habits

• How bad is your high BMI? Metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver
• Three Conditions Associated with a High BMI that you might Not Know
• Etiology of Obesity
• Dieting
• Drugs for weight loss
• Weight loss without diet pills
• Fasting
• Fasting and weight loss

Chapter 7: Feed Production in an Inefficient and Unsustainable Agriculture

• What is Sustainability?
• The Scope of Meat Production and Impact on Ecosystem Sustainability
• Much of the Global Land Area is required for Livestock Production
• Corn and Soybean are the Primary Sources of Livestock Feed
• Impact of Feed Production on Environmental Health and Sustainability
• Industrialized Feed Grain Production Methods Impose Environmental Challenges
• Monoculture Grain Production Poses a Major Environmental Threat
• Sustainable Agriculture Improves Environmental Sustainability
• Plant Nutrient Investment is Both Necessary and Costly
• Soil erosion
• Water Quality
• Water Quantity
• Feed and Meat Production Systems: How Did We Get Here?
• Farm Industrialization, then Consolidation
• Consumer Purchase Patterns Drive Food Production Systems
• The Productionist Paradigm
• Productionist Outcomes Drive the Nutrition and Epidemiological Transitions
• Conclusion

Chapter 8: Cost-Benefit Tradeoffs of Meat Production

• Confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs)
• Reasons to Support or Oppose Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)
• Greenhouse Gases, Global Climate Change, and Animal Agriculture

Chapter 9: Employing Agroecology to Produce Healthy Food and Mitigate Global Climate Change

• We the People Need to Become the “Connected Elite” to Avert Collapse of Environmental Sustainability
• The World Food Problem
• Sustainably Intensify Food Production How?
• A Paradigm Shift in How We Produce Feed for Meat is Required
• What Kind of Efficiency is Required in Developed and Developing Countries?

Chapter 10: A Principled Basis for Eating a Healthier Diet

• The Long and Healthy Life
• Should the Government Legislate Less Meat Consumption to Improve Community Health?
• A Principled Rationale in Favor of Adopting a Healthy Diet
• Ethical Decision Making and Personal Dietary Habits
• Respect the Wishes of Free and Informed Competent Persons (Autonomy)
• Veracity – Tell the Truth
• Distributive Justice – Allocate Justly
• Beneficence (Provide Aid) and Nonmaleficence (Do No Harm)
• Environmental Ethics and Food Production Systems
• What is the Proper Role of Government to Protect Food Security?
• What Should Effective Government Do?
• Federal Regulation of Meat in the US
• USDA Grades of Beef
• Foods that are Considered Haram
• Conclusion

Chapter 11: The Whole Cost of Eating the Western Diet

• Externalized Costs and Benefits
• Externalities of Meat Production and Consumption
• Externalized Costs of Healthcare
• Externalized Environmental Costs
• How Shall We Then Live to Optimize Personal Health?
• How Shall We Then Live to Optimize Environmental Health?
• How Shall We Then Live to Optimize Community Health?

Dornbos, David_Your Steak in the World_Introduction