Eating Organic Meat Doesn’t Stop You From Getting Sick.
Majority of people know that organic food is best. As a plant-based coach, I made the decision to step away from eating meat for ethical reasons AND health reasons.
The simple fact is that the body does not care if the meat or animal products you eat are organic, grass-fed, hormone-free, etc. Flesh is flesh. Here is a kick-ass response from nutritionist and creator HMI Nutrition School, Liana Shanti, educating us all on what is happening in our bodies when we eat meat:
“Before we get to the #actualscience of the digestion of flesh, including the 3 stages of digestion: Oral; Gastric; Intestinal, the first step in understanding the science of digestion, is a scientific understanding of what you are consuming.
In the case of rotting flesh digestion, it’s critical to understand that this flesh is already putrefying. Putrefying flesh is decomposing animal tissue, and the rotting/putrefying flesh begins decomposing the minute the animal is dead.
When an animal dies in the slaughterhouse, their nervous system fails to deliver stimuli for muscle contraction, blood flow, and oxygen delivery, and pathways for nutritious substances to tissues and organs are interrupted.
After a period of time, (6 and 12 hours for cows, 1-6 hours for pigs) muscle flaccidity is gradually replaced by a progressive contraction of all muscles, that, when it reaches its maximum expression, is known as rigor mortis. At this moment, the toughness of the meat is high because the fibers of the muscle are fully contracted.
When pH values inside the muscle fibers of a dead animal drop below 5.8, a steady increase of protein degradation begins. This is when the softening of muscles takes place and transforms the carcass into the meat you consume. This softening accelerates when the animal is hung upside down.
During the progressive process of flesh softening, the growth of fungi in the meat surface, mostly of the genus Thamnidium, secrete enzymes and substances that increase the softening. This mold has to be removed before the flesh is presented to customers for sale.
Dismembered animals remain in cold storage for ten to thirty days. The fibers of dead flesh are one of the strongest materials in nature and can only be denatured by heat or bacterial putrefaction.
So, when you put a piece of this bacterially decayed flesh in your mouth, there is already putrefaction.
In the mouth, the salivary glands provide some saliva to aid swallowing and the passage of flesh. The flesh pieces then enter the stomach through the esophageal sphincter. The stomach then releases gastric juices containing hydrochloric acid and pepsin, which both initiate the breakdown of the flesh.
The acidity of the stomach helps “unfold” the rotting proteins that still retain part of their 3D structure after cooking, and helps break down the toxic protein aggregates that form during cooking.
Pepsin, which is secreted by the cells that line the stomach, dismantles the protein chains into smaller and smaller fragments.
Flesh proteins are large globular molecules and their chemical breakdown requires time and mixing. Powerful mechanical stomach contractions churn the partially digested flesh into a mixture called chyme. Protein digestion in the stomach takes a lot longer time than carbohydrate digestion. Flesh remains in the stomach much longer (one primary reason why cured meats are a known high risk factor for stomach cancer).
The stomach empties the chyme containing the broken down flesh pieces into the small intestine, where the majority of protein digestion occurs. The pancreas secretes digestive juice that contains chymotrypsin and trypsin, which further break down the flesh fragments. The cells that line the small intestine release additional enzymes that finally break apart the smaller flesh fragments into the individual amino acids.
The muscle contractions of the small intestine push the digested flesh to the absorption sites. The primary goal of course being to break the flesh down into dipeptides and amino acids for absorption.
In the lower parts of the small intestine, the amino acids are transported from the intestinal lumen through the intestinal cells to the blood. This movement of individual amino acids requires transport proteins and adenosine triphosphate (ATP).
Once the amino acids are in the blood, they are transported to the liver. As with other macronutrients, the liver is the checkpoint for amino acid distribution and any further breakdown of amino acids.
Amino acids contain nitrogen, so further catabolism of amino acids releases nitrogen-containing ammonia. Because ammonia is toxic, the liver transforms it into urea, which is then transported to the kidney and excreted in the urine, for the purpose of transporting excess nitrogen out of the body, because it’s toxic.
(Side note… or you could just eat plants)
Basically, all flesh is absorbed as tripeptides, dipeptides or amino acids and this process occurs in the duodenum or proximal jejunum of the small intestine. The peptides and/or amino acids pass through the interstitial brush border by facilitative diffusion or active transport. Once passed through the membrane, the amino acids or peptides are released into the intestinal blood stream and are transported to the liver by the hepatic (liver) portal vein. This is known as the enterohepatic circulation.
IMPORTANT: Here’s what you may not know. It is a known fact that certain amounts of protein escape digestion entirely - up to 12 grams per meal - which may not seem like a lot, but is a huge amount of undigested flesh to reach the colon, where it turned into toxic substances like ammonia, leading to increasingly high rates of colon cancer.
This degradation of undigested flesh in the colon is called putrefaction; so scientifically speaking, actual flesh does actually end up putrefying in your colon, in addition to the fact that the flesh was ALREADY putrefying.
In general, flesh fermentation mainly occurs in the lower end of colon and results in the production of potentially toxic metabolites, which is why colorectal cancer and ulcerative colitis tend to happen lower down—because that’s where the flesh foods are putrefying.
MOST IMPORTANT to this whole discussion however, is not to allow diversion by way of a red herring argument. In being of service in this world, and speaking to those who truly want to take charge of their health, it’s pointless to do anything other than teach the facts: no one, a total of zero people, are dying in hospitals from heart attacks, (the number one killer) lifestyle induced cancers, or diabetes because they ate an exclusively WHOLE FOODS PLANT BASED DIET CONSISTING OF FRUITS, VEGGIES, NUTS, SEEDS, LEGUMES AND GRAINS.
Period.
As an educator to people who wish to avoid the diseases that will kill most everyone you know: heart disease, cancer and diabetes, the focus must remain on the science that had proven in extensive research/peer reviewed studies that people who regularly consume animal flesh, are at much higher risk of these deadly diseases. It is a known scientific fact that rotting putrefying flesh from animals raises levels of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO). TMAO is a byproduct of gut bacteria. Research has shown high TMAO levels to a SIGNIFICANTLY higher risk of heart attack and stroke, and have higher risks of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).”
—Liana Shanti
HMI Founder, Juris Doctor, Certified Clinical Nutritionist, Natural Healing Institute of Naturopathy; Member American Association of Nutritional Consultants, Additional Certifications: Harvard Medical School Cholesterol Management Certification; Harvard Medical School Type 2 Diabetes Management Certification; Harvard Medical School Management of High Blood Pressure Certification.