The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet Read Online Free PDF Page A

with these superbugs, so we have no efficient antibiotics to use against them. By dosing the cows and pigs with antibiotics, we are actually endangering ourselves.
    Meat carries freaky pathogens: Have you ever seen the inside of a slaughterhouse? Suffice it to say they’re not exactly the cleanest places on Earth. When animals are eviscerated, it’s not unusual for their bowels to be punctured (workers kill up to 330 animals an hour), leaving all sorts of intestinal bacteria splatter on the meat and skin. In 1998, an amendment to an agriculture appropriations bill was proposed to give the USDA the power to fine meatpacking plants for unsanitary conditions. The House Appropriations Committee voted it down 25 to 19. Why would they do that? Turns out the 25 “nays” receive six times more money from the meat and poultry industries than the 19 “yays.”
    A USDA report published in 2000 estimated that a staggering 89 percent of U.S. beef ground into patties contained traces of deadly E. coli. 12
    Another bug called campylobacter is the leading cause of food-borne illness in the United States, and it usually arrives via chicken flesh. A dangerous little bacterium, campylobacter is estimated to infect more than 2.4 million Americans each year. 13 It is also estimated that 70 percent of American chickens and 90 percent of our turkeys are contaminated with campylobacter, the result of the birds being housed in ridiculously crowded conditions and their regular dosing with antibiotics. In fact, factory-farmed chicken is so unclean that Gerald Kuester, former USDA microbiologist, says, “The final product is no different than if you stuck it in the toilet and ate it.” 14
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Superhero: Dr. William Castelli
In 1948, scientists at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute began a huge research project called the Framingham Heart Study, which continues today. It is the longest-running study of its kind in medical history, covering three generations of roughly 5,000 participants per generation over the last 60 years. Dr. William Castelli served as director of the project from 1979 through 2008. After analyzing all the evidence, he concluded vegetarians have the lowest rates of coronary heart disease of any group in the country. He added that when individuals keep their cholesterol below 150, they are virtually guaranteed never to suffer a heart attack.
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    When the flesh we’re putting in our mouths is full of disease, is it any surprise we get sick ourselves? It would be nice to think that Uncle Sam is there to protect us, but unfortunately, the Federal Humane Slaughter Act is so full of exceptions and loopholes that 90 percent of U.S. animals are exempted.

    Another disturbing thing about meat is that it’s secondhand food; in other words, because you are eating an animal, you are eating everything stored in that animal’s tissues—including all the toxins he couldn’t get rid of. And while we’re on the topic of all things disgusting, consider what the animal you’re eating has eaten; livestock feed is routinely beefed up with slaughterhouse wastes like blood, bone, and viscera as well as the remains of euthanized cats and dogs. 15 The drug used to kill these pets, sodium pentobarbital, survives the rendering process, so it gets passed into the feed as well. Ugh. 16
    Meat is full of hormones: Cattle, pigs, and chickens are routinely pumped full of hormones to promote muscle mass, and these hormones are passed directly on to you. Eggs are chockfull of hormonal goodies as well, as are farmed fish. That might sound good to the bodybuilders out there, but excess hormones have been linked to many cancers, including breast and prostate. We have our own hormones, and the body is constantly working to keep them in balance—simply put, we don’t need more!
    Plus, when an animal is led to slaughter, the adrenaline and stress hormones coursing through her veins get passed onto the dinner plate. Might this cause excess anxiety