Well, that wasn't the headline, but it should have been. An article I read today said that foods rich in potassium may cut the risk of heart disease and stroke. For those of you who don't know, potassium is what carries the electrical signals from your brain to your heart. I know this because low potassium, and because of that, sinus arrhythmia, run in my family.
When I ate the standard American diet, I used to get irregular heartbeat all the time. It's very upsetting, and once I wound up in the emergency room because I thought something was seriously wrong with my heart. They had me hooked up to an EKG and took blood and informed me that my potassium was low. The doctor told me to eat a banana.
Well, that's BS really. Bananas don't have much potassium in them. Potatoes have more, but they're not good for you either.
You know what has a lot of potassium in it? Meat. An 8oz steak has 850mg of potassium or about 25% of your recommended daily intake. Since eating low carb and trying to keep my food paleo friendly, I haven't had any problems with my potassium level, no sinus arrhythmia. Another thing that might help besides an increased intake in potassium, is that without elevated glucose and therefore elevated insulin levels my body may use the potassium more efficiently. I read somewhere that insulin interferes with the uptake of Vitamin C, and that raised glucose levels do as well (though which it is, is difficult to untangle since increased glucose leads to increased insulin). It stands to reason that glucose/insulin may interfere with other biological function too.
Of course, the press can't tell you to eat more meat, because that flies in the face of what they're advocating, which is a vegetarian (or better yet vegan) diet devoid of essential fatty and amino acids. Why are they advocating it? One could speculate, but what difference would it make?
Hi mherzog,
ReplyDeleteIn case you weren't aware, almost everyone is against the corporate mistreatment of animals. If you're hoping for a black-and-white argument, you've come to the wrong place.
We eat a lot of deer, which I kill myself. I know where my food comes from. Do you?
Agriculture is probably the worst thing that ever happened to this planet. It has stripped the rain forests and has plowed up countless fields, endangering species and killing all kinds of small rodents. You cannot eat enough grain to get all of the essential amino and fatty acids that you need. Period. End of fucking discussion. We evolved to eat meat. Like it or not. Your metabolism does not care about your ethics. Eating a very small amount of meat will give you more vital nutrients than eating five pounds of grain. Unless you're a bird. No mammal in the wild naturally consumes grain. Even cows eat grass and deer eat broad-leaf weeds. Cows are only fed grains because humans thought it was a good idea and it fattens them up.
We need free range animals for food that are not raised for profit. Will that ever happen? Not as long as people like you waste time, energy and money trying to get people to be vegan. The real evil here is the corporation, which you support by promoting commodity agriculture.