By Trent Loos
I recently had a tremendously refreshing conversation with Nina Teicholz. For the past 10 years I have had many great conversations with the investigative journalist who spent 27 years as a vegetarian until she learned about the health risks that accompany eliminating animal fat and protein from your diet.
In my opinion, she has single-handedly done more to promote healthy living through the consumption of milk, meat and eggs than all of the commodity groups combined that exist solely to promote their products.
In case you are not familiar with Nina’s most prominent work, the book “The Big Fat Surprise,” her own website describes it this way:
More than a dozen scholarly review papers over the past five years have confirmed Teicholz’s conclusions on saturated fat. For average people, the implication is that we have been needlessly avoiding meat, cheese, whole milk and eggs for decades and that we can welcome, guilt-free, these “whole fats” back into our lives.
Interestingly, this conversation happened within hours of a discussion with my own family members about how many of our relatives, who grew up in the tough times of the 30s, ate lard sandwiches and just happened to live to 100-plus quality years. I don’t think it is any accident that this food, containing an extremely high level of vitamin D, was eaten as poor folk’s food but yet it answered the call for proper nutrition.
During our recent discussion, Teicholz also started down a path that not many have wanted to venture: the impact of meat and egg consumption on hormone production. One must pause to ask the question how does this demonization of meat and eggs affect hormone production?
If we really look at the importance of cholesterol, a precursor to testosterone, we continue to see a growing percentage of humans losing the real essence of being healthy living beings. In fact, in a great bit of irony, the Harvard School of Nutrition shares information about testosterone in women:
If you thought testosterone was only important in men, you’d be mistaken. Testosterone is produced in the ovaries and adrenal gland. It’s one of several androgens (male sex hormones) in females. These hormones are thought to have important effects on
- ovarian function
- bone strength
- sexual behavior, including normal libido (although evidence is not conclusive).
The proper balance between testosterone (along with other androgens) and estrogen is important for the ovaries to work normally. While the specifics are uncertain, it’s possible that androgens also play an important role in normal brain function (including mood, sex drive and cognitive function).
The reason I say that is ironic is because Teicholz’s recent article was about the conflict of interest regarding Walter Willett, a nutrition researcher at Harvard School of Nutrition, who relentlessly shares his view about how we should avoid animal products in our diet.
Milk, meat and egg consumption are vital to human health; it is vital to men being men and women being women. God gave us animals to consume what humans can’t and humans to consume animals. It is called the healthy cycle of life. Let’s get back to healthy eating and healthy living.
Editor’s note: The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not represent the views of High Plains Journal. Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.LoosTales.com, or email Trent at [email protected].
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