Insulin resistant meat?

(Erin Macfarland ) #1

I have been reading The Hacking of the American Mind by Robert Lustwig and in it he asserts that corn fed cows have so much fat and marbling in their muscle because they are insulin resistant. So in eating commercially raised beef you’re consuming meat from an animal that was IR and therefore it’s harmful to our health. Is it even possible this is true?

#2

Well, it certainly makes sense being that muscle tissue is cellular and molecular, and can be very different according to what nutrients it is composed of and what hormones it’s exposed to. I think it’s very possibly true - and that the USDA is so enmeshed with largescale, concentrated, industrial farming and the big ranchers who rely on such places to do final fattening of their huge herds that, like how the food pyramid is, nothing will change until scientific studies validate these things and then 10 years later policy changes on behalf of human health and general ethics.

I’m grateful that grassfed and pastured beef is more and more available at places like Costco, Trader Joe’s, and the large health food stores. The best meat I’ve ever found however has been at my local farmer’s market - and it feels good to (when I can afford it) pay more to support a local small family farm which knows each of their dairy and beef cows by name, and treats them with the stewardship that used to be normal in the western world.

There are several body composition differences in bovines that were unheard of in human history until the 1950s American factory/intensive farms (soon followed by factory farms in other countries, at least for chickens): fatty, weaker muscles created by industrial grain feed, disease-producing brain changes from protein pellets added to said feed (bovines don’t eat protein once they wean from their mother’s milk), microbiome disease due to heavy antibiotic usage on them because in addition to the body composition factors, the environment of the industrial farm is so unnatural and crowded that their immune systems further suffer. Then connecting the dots between an unnatural diet and IR/deranged metabolism, we add adrenaline in the final meat product of these stressed and abused creatures, which is also an issue and has a negative impact on the human endocrine system and cellular health.

The Mad Cow disease was linked at source to bovine protein fed to bovine (thus making them cannibalistic technically speaking) - another unprecedented in human history thing.

Apparently the feed-lot bovine slaughtering occurs onsite in a different area of these hellish places - and the cows have final waiting areas very near where their relatives are being slaughtered and there is a general heightened anxiety and panic amongst the animals which in turn means that the adrenaline they produce is circulating in their tissues at time of slaughter. I learned a lot about this from a long, investigative article on slaughtering practices that was published in the magazine Mother Jones, in the mid 1990s. Industrial slaughterhouses also have the highest rate of worker turnover, due to the intensity on several levels.

So, I think the advice coming from many in the Integrative Medicine and Functional Medicine realms is sound: look for meats that are as naturally raised as possible, and also try to eat wild-caught fish and wild-hunted deer/rabbit/elk etc.

(Erin Macfarland ) #3

I agree with eating locally sourced, pasture raised meat, as I work for a local food co op that supports small family farms and only allows pasture raised meat to be sold to members. So I understand the difference in quality and micronutrient content in grass fed vs grain fed beef. But it does not make sense to me how eating a corn finished steak would promote IR or metabolic disease in a human. Those are diseases of insulin dysfunction. If a fatty steak that was finished on grain does not cause a large insulin spike due to its high fat content, lack of carbohydrates, and moderate protein, how would it promote insulin resistance? There are many people out there who eat commercially raised meat on keto and seem to reverse their metabolic syndrome. And I admit I occasionally love to eat a really well marbled fatty ribeye that I know damn well was not grass finished . So is this really as harmful as he’s making it out to be?

#4

That’s cool you work for a local food co-op.

Well, I think the hormonal aspects of meat haven’t been studied… Yeah, people can do well on industrial meat keto in terms of muscle/fat recomposition and metabolic healing - but I would think there might well be glandular health factors, HGH differences, or cumulative effects of molecular, and even subatomic, realities that current industrial medicine may not care to study or be funded to study. Time will tell, I guess. Lustwig seems like an intrepid thinker/scholar.

(Erin Macfarland ) #5

It’s a great book, and i do think there are some qualitative differences between grass and grain finished beef over and above things like fatty acid profile. But for those who can’t afford pasture raised meat, I wonder how much of a concern this is. And the same for commercially raised eggs or dairy.

#6

Well, turning around diabetes is life-changing… and, discovering intermittent fasting and doing it 4-5 days a week sure cuts down on one’s grocery bills and allows for a redistribution of spending more towards quality. It sure would be a valuable area of research, to see the economic comparison on it! As well as to advocate for more government-subsidized food co-ops to expand the local farm-to-table food access in marginalized communities!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #7

I respect Dr. Lustig, and he usually backs up his assertions with data from high-quality studies, but on the other hand this assertion sounds a little too wild to be true. Unless Dr. Lustig is claiming that the meat contains insulin or carbohydrate, I don’t see what mechanism could make that assertion true. Guess I’ll have to read the book!

(Ken) #8

In case you don’t have a basic understanding of mammilian biochemistry, adding fat requires a raising of insulin resistance.

The term “Factory Farming” is merely a demonization term used by the so called health and natural food industry to not only justify their absurdly high prices for their “Natural” products, but to allow people to believe that by consuming them they’re somehow Morally Superior. It is totally normal for grazing animals in the wild setting to consume large amounts of natural grains in Summer and Fall in order to gain fat to survive through the Winter. Fat animals were always preferred by our paleo ancestors, they understood lean animals did not meet their nutritional needs. It makes no difference if the animals were fattened on natural grains, or finished in a feed lot.

The “sustainability” argument is not valid, as recent studies have shown that current meat production is much more efficient as far as resources needed, compared to plant based nutritional patterns. The overall issue is that people do not understand that a fat based diet is not only healthy, but is more economical as well. If it makes you feel good about yourself, go ahead and pay for it, but it is certainly not necessary, nor provides superior health benefits.

Farmers treat their animals well, considering they want them to gain fat as quickly as possibly. It must be a pretty tough life to hang around and eat a couple of times a day. Believe me, I know, when younger I helped out at my Uncle’s farm.

I raised my two sons paleo. Our staple was the evil, fatty, factory farmed, Walmart sold, Packer Brisket. Probably the toughest cut available, as well as fattest, but when you want to eat lot’s of beef every day it was affordable. It just required creative tenderizing. Besides leaning myself out, one of my sons was overweight, he leaned out as well.

Anyone ever either hunted or slaughtered a large animal? I certainly have. Believe me, when you hunt and kill a large animal it’s very stressful for them, in the hormonal sense. The meat is superior if you can make a clean kill as opposed to wounding and tracking it down. This is the reason slaughterhouses keep the animals as calm as possible and kill the animals cleanly, to prevent hormonal changes that impact meat quality.

This reminds me of the old egg demonization, when people were brainwashed that somehow dietary cholesterol translated into blood cholesterol.

(Erin Macfarland ) #9

Wow @240lbfatloss, that is just the kind of reply I was looking for. I love hearing all of these perspectives here, people always get me thinking about these things in new ways. It does make sense that grazing animals would ingest grains when they were plentiful during the warmer months. I am skeptical to believe the extreme opinions of those on either side of this issue, I listened to another “expert” on this subject, Dr Anthony Jay, who asserts that the artificial estrogens in commercially raised meat gives us metabolic disease and cancer. And I think those that advocate eating pasture raised meat at all costs are not being practical. I wonder about the “science” behind these claims, like you say it may be just as skewed as that which influenced our idea about dietary cholesterol. I know many people here thrive on “wal mart” keto and eat nothing but commercial dairy and meat and seem to thrive. I can’t let myself get too focused on eating only pasture raised meat all the time, I think one of life’s greatest pleasures, especially if you’re committed to eating this way, is a perfectly grilled, fatty, grain finished rib eye. But I only will eat pasture raised eggs from my local farmers because they taste superior. Still, I would love more science based anecdotal evidence on this issue. It’s pretty fascinating!