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Game Changers – the Truth

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In recent weeks, I have been asked many times if I have seen ‘Game Changers’ and what I thought about it. Apparently, this film is regarded as convincing by many people. I watched it so that I can give my honest appraisal.

Having spent several years researching the science of our dietary needs and our evolution, I can state categorically that it is impossible for a vegan diet to be superior to an omnivore diet or, indeed, an entirely carnivorous diet. I can make this statement because we are not herbivores. This is the only indisputable fact that anyone needs to remember when wondering if veganism is for them. If you are a member of the human race, veganism cannot be your optimum diet: it is lacking in too many essential nutrients.

My book is called Stop Feeding Us Lies for a very good reason. We are constantly bombarded with myths, misinformation, fake news and downright lies. You just have to watch a political debate to know that. ‘Game Changers’ is just another big lie. It is part of a large and well-coordinated attack on our traditional foods by vested interests. Those vested interests are food manufacturing companies that stand to make a fortune if they persuade enough people to stop eating the animal foods our ancestors have been eating for a million years and switch to fake foods made in their laboratories.

The producer of ‘Game Changers’ is just one of those vested interests. His name is James Cameron and he is the founder and CEO of Verdiant Foods, an organic pea protein company with the goal of becoming “the largest pea protein fractionation facility in North America.” Pea protein isolate is the main ingredient in all those fake meat products that have recently arrived on the shelves. ‘Game Changers’ is not science: it is an indirect advertisement for the producer’s business. If this film persuaded you to go vegan, I believe you have been duped by a clever advert.

Do not just take my word for it. This link is to an independent, scientific review of the so-called ‘facts’ https://tacticmethod.com/the-game-changers-scientific-review-and-references/

The film claimed they had evidence that Gladiators in Ancient Rome ate a plant-based diet and this was supposed to convince us that veganism conferred physical strength on these people. The truth is that gladiators were slaves and ate what they were given. Also, they needed to be fat rather than strong because the more fat they had the more protection their vital organs had from cuts and blows.

There was one section in the film which I thought nobody could be fooled by, but perhaps I was wrong. I did not think anybody could be gullible enough to believe that a meal of vegetables, rather than meat, would make a man’s penis significantly larger (while he was asleep!) I suppose most men (and perhaps women) would like to believe something so unlikely might just be true.

We evolved into who we are because our ancestors ate meat for a million years. When I go to my local butcher’s shop and buy some meat; the butcher got it from a local farmer; the local farmer reared it on his fields using sunlight, rainwater and the fetiliser that came out of the cow. There is nowhere in this process for global corporations to make any money and that is why they are trying to persuade us it is wrong. It isn’t wrong; it is exactly what we should all be doing for the good of our health, the benefit of our local communities and the climate.

My complaint to the BBC

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This is my complaint to the BBC about ‘Meat: a threat to our planet?’

Whilst I agree that the US Feedlots shown are an awful way to treat cattle and we should not be catching fish to feed to animals, this programme completely failed to show how sustainable farming is done in the UK. If it had pointed out the difference between the worst practise and the best of animal farming it would have been very useful. It did not. It implied that all animal farming is bad and damaging. This is a lie by omission. The programme completely over-used emotion in trying to change people’s perspectives. Many of the statistics given were grossly exaggerated.
The truth, which was completely ignored, is that correctly managed, grass-fed ruminant animals increase soil fertility and biodiversity; they sequester carbon into the soil and can be carbon negative. They provide the most complete and nutrient dense food our species can eat. Methane emitted by cattle is part of a carbon cycle and does not cause global warming. How can it do so when ruminants have been burping methane for 50 million years? Independent UK farmers care for their animals and the land: this programme implied they are pariahs.
The clear instruction that we should all stop eating meat involved absolutely no mention of nutrition. Research from all over the world has shown that children on vegan diets suffer from stunting, failure to thrive, a wide variety of mineral deficiencies and serious, sometimes irreversible, neurological defects. This programme openly encouraged parents to risk severe developmental problems in their children without any word of warning about the removal of meat from their diets.
As a licence fee payer, I insist that you balance this anti-meat propaganda with a programme showing how UK livestock farmers provide nutritious food in a fully sustainable way, whilst improving the soil and sequestering carbon.

Cow burps and climate

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The graph below is courtesy of the 2 Degrees Institute. It shows the level of atmospheric methane over the last thousand years. We are told that the methane burped by cows and sheep is a significant cause of global warming.

If the number of ruminant animals on the planet had tripled in the last 100 years, I might believe this. The truth is that methane-belching ruminants have been here for tens of millions of years. Before the advance of European farmers across America’s mid-west, there were an estimated 75 million bison, deer and elk roaming those plains with no on-going rise in green-house gases. About one hundred years ago, when we started taking coal, oil and gas deposits out of the ground and burning them, methane and CO2 levels rose exponentially. Vested interests, however, want you to be gullible enough to believe this rise is caused by cow burps.

Evolution

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The ecosystem of Earth evolved over hundreds of millions of years. It flourishes because it is always in balance. Plants grow in the ground, herbivores eat the plants and carnivores eat the herbivores. This process evolved because it works. We evolved into exactly what we are today because our ancestors ate a largely carnivorous diet for a couple of million years. How can we be sure this is true?

1. Sweat glands. Unlike all other primates, we have lost our body hair and gained a multitude of sweat glands. We have the greatest ability on the planet to run long distances in hot weather because we can lose body heat from the evaporation of sweat on our skin. We developed this ability by chasing large animals across the grasslands of Africa. They struggle to lose heat by panting and eventually collapse and die from heat exhaustion. The Bushmen of the Kalahari still hunt for food this way. (Watch a 7 minute Attenborough video of this here) There is on reason to develop this ability if we were eating plants.

2. Nutrient density. We are closely related to chimpanzees and the other apes. Some of them are entirely herbivores while others are more omnivorous. Gorillas are herbivores and they possess very large intestines and small brains. We have large brains and small intestines. The difference is because we evolved to eat the nutrient and energy dense meat and fat of animals, which are easily absorbed. The Gorilla’s plant diet is difficult to absorb and they need large intestines to extract any nutrition. In fact, they find it necessary to be ‘copraphagus’, which means they eat their own poo in order to improve their diet.

3. Stomach acid. We have exceptionally strong acid in our stomachs. The only other creatures with comparable acidity are all scavengers of dead animals. This suggests that our meat-eating past began by cleaning up the remains of a big cat’s kill. This nutrition helped us to develop the ability to catch our own animals.

4. Vitamin B12. All animals need B12 to form red blood cells and to build the protective Myelin sheath around all our nerves and allow for proper brain development and function. Plants have no blood, nerves or brains and therefore do not need, nor contain, any of this vitamin. We definitely need an adequate supply which get from animal-sourced foods. Herbivores also need B12 but do not eat it. They rely on bacteria in their rumen or caecum to create vitamin B12. In the very distant past, we had a caecum to do this for us, but as we ate more meat the caecum became redundant and shrivelled to what we now call the appendix. This fact alone proves that we evolved into what we are by eating meat.

Its OK, all my drinks are sugar free.

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Imagine that I take you to a chemistry lab. I put some water in a glass beaker and then I go around the shelves opening jars of chemicals adding a bit of this, a bit of that and a bit of the other to the beaker. I stir the water until all the powders dissolve and then I pass it to you and say, “Here, drink this.”
I am guessing you would refuse because you don’t really know what I put in there.

I agree that it doesn’t look very appetising, so I add something else to make it a brown colour and then dissolve carbon dioxide in it to make it fizzy. I invite you to drink it again. It looks like something you might drink but I am still thinking you will say no. It is odd that you would refuse because if I poured it out of the beaker and packaged it in a brightly coloured ring-pull can and called it Diet Cola, not only would you drink it but you would pay me for it.
Those chemicals I put in the beaker would typically be carbonated water, caramel colour, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potassium citrate, natural flavours, citric acid and caffeine. What do they do?

Read moreIts OK, all my drinks are sugar free.

Is a vegan diet safe for children?

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The simple answer is no. A quick internet search reveals that parents from all over the world have been convicted in court of causing either the death, or severe malnutrition, of their own young children as a result of their vegan diet.

In Canada – Religious Vegan Parents Convicted in Starvation Death of Son. This boy was fed a strict vegan diet and died at 14 months old. At the time of death, the child suffered from a rash on 70% of his body, gangrene, hypothermia, and a staphylococcus infection.

In Belgium –  Baby Death: Parents convicted over Vegetable Milk Diet. The baby, Lucas, weighed just 4.3kg (9.5lb) when he died aged seven months, dehydrated and malnourished. The parents ran a ‘health food shop’ and fed him for four months with milk made from oats, buckwheat, rice and quinoa.

In America – Vegan couple sentenced to life over baby’s death. The couple were found guilty of malice murder, felony murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children for the death of their malnourished 6-week-old baby boy, who was fed a diet largely consisting of soy milk and apple juice.

In France – French vegans face trial after death of baby fed only on breast milk. The baby died from vitamin deficiencies because the vegan mother’s milk was deficient in the nutrients vital for infant development.

in UK – Baby death parents spared jail. A nine month old girl died of malnutrition and pneumonia because her vegan parents fed her a diet of only vegetables, fruit and nuts.

In Australia – Toddler fed vegan diet so malnourished she had no teeth. The parents of this 19 month old girl have pleaded guilty to ‘causing danger of serious injury’. After feeding her oats, potatoes, rice, tofu, bread, peanut butter and rice milk she had grown no teeth and looked like she was three months old.

These are tragic cases but they are not freakish anomalies. Malnutrition among young children of vegan parents is widespread.

I am extremely concerned that, for some people, veganism has become a quasi-religious doctrine and they feel compelled to follow their ideology even when it causes clear and significant harm to their own children. I am not the only one who thinks it is completely unsuitable for children. The Federal Commission for Nutrition in Switzerland stated, in their 2018 report, “The positive effects of a vegan diet on health cannot be proven, but there are relevant risks regarding nutritional deficiencies. Children and pregnant women are advised against adopting a vegan diet due to those risks.” Across the border from Switzerland, the German Nutrition Society have stated, “The German Nutrition Society does not recommend a vegan diet for pregnant women, lactating women, infants, children or adolescents. Persons who nevertheless wish to follow a vegan diet should pay attention to an adequate intake of nutrients, especially critical nutrients, and possibly use fortified foods or dietary supplements.” On May 16, 2019, the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium issued an opinion that will make it possible to imprison parents who enforce a vegan diet on their children.

Why do children fail to develop on a vegan diet?

Vitamin B12 This essential vitamin is nowhere to be found in plant foods. It is abundant in animal-sourced foods. Studies show that women with vitamin B12 deficiency in early pregnancy are up to five times more likely to have a child with birth defects, such as spina bifida and anencephaly, compared to women with high levels of vitamin B12. Anencephaly is a fatal condition in which the brain fails to develop. B12 is required for the formation of red blood cells and the creation of myelin. Myelin is a fatty substance that surrounds and protects all of our nerve fibres and without it our nerves cannot transmit signals.

Iron. Most people know that we need adequate levels of iron to enable haemoglobin to transport oxygen around the blood stream. However, iron is also essential in brain development. Iron-containing molecules are required for the production of the myelin sheath and of the neurotransmitter dopamine. While iron does occur in many plant foods, it is in a form with very low bio-availability. The iron found in animal foods, which is referred to as heme-iron, is much for readily absorbed. Vegans and vegetarians are much more likely to be anaemic than people who eat meat and consequently, their babies do not get enough iron in the womb.

DHA. DHA stands for Docosahexaenoic acid, which is why we refer to it as DHA. It  is an omega-3 fatty acid that is a primary structural component of the human brain, cerebral cortex, skin, and retina. It is the most abundant molecule in the brain and is essential for our thought processes. It can only be found in animal-sourced foods especially fish. There is none of it in plants, although they do contain a fatty acid known as ALA, which can be converted to DHA. However, the conversion process is very inefficient and vegans and vegetarians invariably have much lower levels than omnivores.

There are many other components of a healthy diet missing from plant-based foods. A vegan diet cannot provide all the nutrients for the development of a fully functioning, optimised human brain. There is more comprehensive information in the members’ area.

References: The Role of Iron in Neurodevelopment: Fetal Iron Deficiency and the Developing Hippocampus

Omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA: health benefits throughout life.

Effects of folate and vitamin B12 deficiencies during pregnancy on fetal, infant, and child development.

Breakfast Cereal

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Have you ever wondered where breakfast cereal came from? Nearly everybody eats it nowadays and we are told it is a wholesome way to start the day, but who invented it and why? It will probably come as no surprise to learn that the first breakfast cereal was invented by a man called John Harvey Kellogg in 1878. It will probably come as quite a surprise to learn why he did it.

Kellogg was an American medical doctor of some renown and you may be thinking that, as a doctor, he devised Corn Flakes for sound nutritional reasons. Sadly, you could not be further from the truth. As well as being a doctor, he was also a religious zealot in the church of the Seventh Day Adventists. They take Christian scripture literally and have a strong emphasis on diet and health. Dr. Kellogg took these beliefs to extremes. Like many other members of his church, he regarded passion and sexual arousal as sins and the greatest sin of all was masturbation. He went to great lengths to try to stop it. He wrote a booklet entitled ‘The Rehabilitation of Masturbators’, where he described the extreme measures, even mutilation, he used on both sexes to curtail this ‘sin’. He was an advocate of circumcising young boys and applying phenol to a young woman’s clitoris to make the dreaded habit much more difficult. He sometimes sowed silver thread into the foreskin of boys so that erections were painful. He had a wife but never consummated his marriage because he thought it was sinful and they adopted their children.
Corn Flakes were invented as part of his strategy against self-gratification. He strongly believed that completely bland foods would decrease, or prevent, sexual arousal and that strong (nutrient dense) foods like meat would increase physical excitement. So, Corn Flakes were designed from the start to be as bland as possible in the belief that a lack of taste and nutritional quality would diminish normal human passions. His brother, William, who was less of a zealot and more of a business man, started the Kellogg’s company to sell bland, processed flakes of corn. William wanted to add sugar to the flakes to make them palatable but John wanted blandness above anything else. Eventually, William got his way and they now come sprayed with sugar. To make them slightly more nutritious than the cardboard box they come in, they are also sprayed with a few vitamins. This allows the Kellogg’s Company to make the dubious claim that dried flakes of corn might be healthy.
I find it ironic that millions of families all over the world give their children Kellogg’s cereals every morning without realising the sinister intentions behind their invention. The real irony is, that in a much less dramatic and obvious way, he is still managing to damage children’s health and well-being with a daily dose of sugar laden junk food.

The Basics of Nutrition

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Our food consists of three macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate and fat) and many micronutrients (vitamins and minerals).The macronutrients provide our energy and a lot of the structure of our bodies. The micronutrients are involved in a wide range of systems, hormones and enzymes that keep our bodies running smoothly. We need the right amounts of all of them to function at our very best.

Macronutrients

Protein

Protein consists of twenty different amino acids. Nine of them are called essential amino acids because our bodies cannot make them and we have to eat them in our food. We are able to create thousands of unique proteins by altering the combinations of different amino acids.

Which part of the body is made of protein?  All of our muscles and connective tissues are made of protein but protein is also used to make skin, hair and our organs. Some of our hormones and enzymes are made of protein. The reading of our DNA is controlled by protein. Antibodies in our immune system are made from protein. Haemoglobin is a protein that transports oxygen in our blood and fats are transported by lipoproteins.

Fat

Fatconsists of different fatty acids. They vary in length (because of how many carbon atoms are joined together) and in structural stability. Saturated fats are the most stable followed by monounsaturated fatty acids. Polyunsaturated fats are the least stable. There are at least two essential fatty acids that we must eat in our food. (Some experts argue that there are more than two.) 

Which part of the body is made of fat? The membrane, or outer wall, of every cell in our body is made from fat. Thirty per cent of all our cell membranes consist of cholesterol. The membrane controls what goes in and out of each cell. The sheath around all our nerves are made from fat. Sixty per cent of the structure of our brain is made from fat molecules. Vitamin D and all of our sex hormones are made from fat. 

Carbohydrate

Carbohydrate consists of various sugars. The most common sugar is glucose but our diets can also include fructose and galactose. Sucrose and lactose are combinations of these, while starch (potato, bread, pasta) is a long chain of attached glucose molecules. There are no essential carbohydrates because the liver can make glucose.

Which part of the body is made from carbohydrate? No part of the body is made from carbohydrate. There isn’t any real need to eat it. 

Micronutrients

Vitamins

Vitamins are classified as either water-soluble or fat-soluble. There are 13 vitamins that humans need: 4 fat-soluble (A, D, E, and K) and 9 water-soluble (8 B vitamins and vitamin C). The water-soluble vitamins are easily absorbed but the fat-soluble ones need fat in the diet to transport them into the body from the intestines. Vitamins have a wide range of essential functions and they ensure that the complex systems that operate throughout our bodies are running smoothly. A lack of certain vitamins can lead to dangerous deficiency diseases. It is essential that we eat a variety of fresh foods to ensure adequate intake of vitamins.

Minerals

Dietary minerals are chemical elements that are essential for optimum function of our bodily systems. In order of abundance in the human body they include calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. Others, known as trace elements because they are needed in small amounts, include iron, cobalt, copper, zinc, manganese, molybdenum, iodine, and selenium. As with vitamins, we need to eat a good variety of unprocessed foods to obtain the minerals we need.