Category: Health

Bananas, Bees, and Breakfast

Bananas, Bees, and Breakfast

You ate what for breakfast?

A banana.

That’s it?

Yeah. A banana.

Don’t you think that you should something more substantial than just a banana?

No, I wasn’t hungry.

So you ate just a banana.

Yes. And drank two cups of coffee?

Anything in the coffee?

No, just black.

You wake up in the morning and eat only a banana and drink two cups of coffee. Don’t you know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day?

I never believed that marketing mantra. But I did eat breakfast. I ate a banana.

Don’t you know that you need protein to stimulate your muscles? A banana doesn’t have protein!

A banana has protein, about 2 percent of what the government tells you that your body needs in a day.

That’s nothing! 

No, that’s something.

What are you having for lunch then? An apple?

I was planning on a salad with baby kale, spinach, a couple of cherry tomatoes, cannellini beans, mustard, and a sweet potato.

What the heck kind of salad is that? Mustard? Do you mean honey mustard dressing?

It is a salad with greens, beans, tomatoes, and regular spicy mustard with no oil. The sweet potato is great with this salad. And just so you know, I don’t eat honey.

Why don’t you eat honey?

I follow a plant-based diet that doesn’t include anything that comes from animal.

But honey comes from a bee?

Yeah, and?

But it isn’t an animal.

Well, bees are animals, don’t you think?

But taking a bee’s honey it isn’t hurting the animal. You ain’t killing a bee to get its honey. Not like when you eat a steak because you have to kill the cow to get its meat.

It comes from a bee. That is why I don’t eat honey. Plus, honey has never been a favorite of mine, though I was in love with Honey Nut Cheerios for a while.

Are you going to eat an apple?

Maybe in the middle of the afternoon. I could eat an orange or a peach.

So what’s for dinner?

Leftovers. I made this really good dish last night that doesn’t have a name. It included brown rice, green peppers, onions, spinach, black beans, a frozen vegetable mixture of zucchini, broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower, and a sauce that included tamari, peanut butter and red pepper flakes.

That sounds OK. You should call it “Anthony throws a bunch of stuff in a wok and hopes it tastes good.”

Hey, that sounds like a good recipe title!

But what the heck is tamari?

It’s gluten free soy sauce.

Why not eat normal soy sauce? You’re not allergic to gluten?

I bought it at Whole Foods. It was on sale.

Whole Foods has sales? Whenever I go in there I go broke buying stuff.

It’s not that bad. And now that Amazon owns them, I hope some prices come down. Even better is if they link up their Amazon Fresh grocery program with Whole Foods. That would be great!

Anthony, you’ve lost your mind. Eat a steak.

Why I Don’t Eat Dairy

Why I Don’t Eat Dairy

One of the most often asked questions that I receive when I tell people that I do not eat anything that comes from animals is “You mean, you don’t eat cheese?”

I don’t eat any kind of animal-based cheese. Why? I tell people that science shows that dairy is not good for the human body.

Dr. Michael Greger runs a non-profit website called Nutrition Facts. Three times a week, Dr. Greger posts short videos outlining some of the best new science regarding health. Additionally, Dr. Greger is the author of “How Not To Die,” a complete rundown of science detailing how consumption of animal products is detrimental to human health. He shows in his book how eating a whole foods, plant-based diet can virtually eliminate or make rare many diseases.

In his latest podcast, he dives headfirst into this most controversial topic (who doesn’t like a good grilled cheese sandwich every now and then?)  looking at the science behind the consumption of dairy.

Studies have shown that greater milk consumption during childhood and adolescence contributes to peak bone mass, and is therefore expected to help avoid osteoporosis and bone fractures in later life.  But that’s not what they found.  Milk consumption during teenage years was not associated with a lower risk of hip fracture and, if anything, milk consumption was associated with a borderline increase in fracture risk in men.

And:

A hundred thousand men and women followed for up to 20 years; what did they find?  Milk-drinking women had higher rates of death, more heart disease, significantly more cancer for each glass of milk.  Three glasses a day was associated with nearly twice the risk of death and they had significantly more bone and hip fractures too.

Men in a separate study also had a higher rate of death with higher milk consumption, but at least they didn’t have higher fracture rates.  So, a dose-dependent higher rate of both mortality and fracture in women, and a higher rate of mortality in men with milk intake, but the opposite for other dairy products like soured milk and yogurt, which would go along with the galactose theory, since bacteria can ferment away some of the lactose.  To prove it though, we need a randomized controlled trial to examine the effect of milk intake on mortality and fractures.  As the accompanying editorial pointed out, we’d better figure this out soon, as milk consumption is on the rise around the world.

A bit more:

The latest meta-analysis of all the best case control studies ever done on the matter concludes that milk consumption is a risk factor for prostate cancer.  And the latest meta-analysis of all the best cohort studies ever done also concludes that milk consumption is a risk factor for prostate cancer.  An even newer study suggests that milk intake during adolescence may be particularly risky in terms of potentially setting one up for cancer later in life.

To listen to Dr. Greger’s podcast, click over to NutritionFacts.org.