The GAPS diet: One reason why it's so difficult to digest

My wife and I have three children, one of whom struggles with epilepsy.  We have tried MANY different treatments, both natural and traditional, none of which have yet to yield any long-term results.  In researching what else we could try, we were introduced to the GAPS diet by Dr. Campbell McBride. We got her book and decided to read it to see if this felt like something that could help my son.  Before diving into her claims, I want to preface this by stating that there are many people who swear by this diet, including close family.  I believe their claims are most likely accurate, and do not intend, with this post, to discredit any of the claims made by individuals who have tried this diet out.  What I DO intend to illustrate with this post is how inaccurate many of her claims are toward the environmental sustainability of her diet, and briefly mention the inaccuracy of her claims toward veganism.

As many of you know, I eat a whole-foods plant based diet.  This means all my calories and nutrition comes from plants, and while I am definitely not perfect, I try to ensure that the majority of my food is unprocessed, whole foods.  In her book, Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism, ADHD/ADD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Depression and Schizophrenia, Dr. Campbell McBride asserts that veganism is both unsustainable for human beings, AND that veganism is unsustainable for our planet.  The first claim is very easy for me to debunk.  Simply put, I've been eating this way for 11 years, more than 1/3rd of my life.  I have no major health problems (even though I did prior to changing to a whole-foods plant based diet), and I am in great shape.  For me, assertions by Campbell McBride in her book, such as, "The fact is, humans can live without plants!  However, we cannot live without animal foods" are obviously tough for me to digest, since I am a living contradiction to what she is claiming, and there are tens of thousands of other individuals and studies (here are just a few) that contradict her as well.  (and I mean come on! Humans can live without plants!? Seriously doc!?). While I could write a novel exclusively on why her claims about veganism and your health are so contradictory to reality, that isn't my primary focus.  If you want to read another blog dedicated to that, let me recommend one titled "Finding my Kid" or you could simply read one of the many, MANY books or research documents on the subject.  My favorite: The China Study.

My focus is to address her assertions that vegan living isn't sustainable for our environment.  She even claims that the reason there are so many studies and articles stating that vegan lifestyles are so positive for our environment is because "This propaganda for vegetarianism has likely been launched by the agrochemical industry, which can increase their profits dramatically if large populations of people turn vegetarian."  This statement blows my mind!  There are plenty of resources out there to support that it takes significantly more agriculture to raise meat than it does to raise plants for human consumption. In fact, it takes 3 years and 24 pounds of food a day, to raise a cow to maturity to where it can be butchered.  That's a total of around 26,280 pounds of plants.  The average vegan eats around 5 pounds of plants a day.  This means that you could take the same amount of food you just grew to feed one cow to the point where it can be food, and feed someone for 15 years!  Alternately, you could feed 5656 people for one day!  In 2018, the average American ate.6 pounds of meat a day, or about 650 calories.  Taking that average into account, one average cow can feed 750 people in a day (as long as those people got the other 1350 calories needed from PLANTS!).  In other words, you can feed 4906 more people per day having your plants go straight from farm to table, than you can if it makes a stop inside a cow first.  Why in the world would the agrochemical industry EVER want people to stop eating meat?  Their profits would absolutely plummet if there were no animals to feed with their crops.

Here's where things really get interesting.  Campbell McBride's counterargument to this is that animal farming should only be exclusively pasture-raised: "All [animals] need is natural, chemical-free pasture with plenty of growing herbs.  They will convert the plant matter into meat and milk for us.  And the grass grows for free!"  We have all seen the happy looking cow, grazing carelessly in a pasture as we stroll through some part of rural America.  Seems so serene, but is it sustainable?  I took a deep dive into this topic, and found some very startling results.  

-Before I reveal them, just a quick disclaimer.  I am not a scientist, and all these numbers are based on empirical averages that I used to make calculations,  these numbers are averages linked together, NOT actual scientific studies.  These numbers are extremely rudimentary, nevertheless, I believe they are very eye-opening.-

In order to feed all 7.6 billion people on this Earth the way Campbell McBride would want them to eat, we would have to produce at least 17 MILLION cows a day.  This is based on us getting 1,100 calories from meat each day, still only half our daily caloric consumption.  In order to raise a cow on an open pasture like Campbell McBride recommends, it needs approximately 2 acres of grassland per cow.  Plug in some simple math, and here's what we come up with:  

--In order for her ideals to work, we would need to be able to kill 6.2 BILLION cows a year.  All 6.2 billion cows slaughtered would be on average, three years old, which means there would need to be 18.6 billion cows on the earth, grazing, at any given time.  

--Each of these 18.6 billion cows would need 2 acres of grassland in order to get enough plants to survive, meaning there would have to be 37.2 billion acres of pasture land on Earth to feed our animals.  

Big reveal:  Scientists estimate there are about 4.9 billion hectares, or about 10 billion acres of land available to be cultivated or used for pastures on Earth.

 This means, that even if we were to grow enough cows to produce HALF our caloric intake on pasture land, we would be 27 BILLION acres of land short on this planet in order to do it.  

Compare that to sustainable plant agriculture, where you can grow more than 10,000 pounds of food per year per acre.  In order feed 7.6 billion people 5 pounds of plants a day, you would need 30 billion pounds of plants a day, and 11 trillion pounds of plants a year.  Sounds daunting, except that since you can grow 10,000 pounds of food per year per acre, the amount of land you would need to do this is 1.3 billion acres, giving our planet a surplus of 8.7 billion unused acres of farmable land. 

 The swing from plant growing to pasture animal raising is over 35 billion acres, and over 150 trillion pounds of plant-food.

Below is a spreadsheet to illustrate these numbers, for excel geeks like myself.  All these numbers were averages found on various credible sites, multiplied by the respective factors:

Again, I'm aware that these are VERY rudimentary numbers, and I don't claim to be a scientist at all, but it seems pretty darn clear, based on some stats that are easy to piece together, that Campbell McBride's claim that pasture-raised animals is more environmentally sustainable than plant production is simply untrue.

By the way, I approached this topic from a totally unfeeling standpoint, treating cows as simple produce rather than sentient beings that would rather not end up on your plate if they were given a choice.  

The above table shows that we would have to murder 6 billion sentient beings a year, practically the equivalent of the entire human race.  Seems a bit genocidal in my more emotional opinion.

To conclude, I want to reiterate that this post is in no way attacking Campbell McBride's claims regarding the efficacy of her diet on healing diseases, although I couldn't find any studies or scientific evidence to support her theories.  Regardless, I haven't spent the allotted time researching that aspect, so it will have to be tackled another time.  My only purpose in writing this post is to illustrate that her claim that "humans don't need plants" is complete nonsense, and her claim that pasture-raised animal farming is more environmentally friendly and sustainable than plant agriculture is impossibly untrue.

The Dreaded Vaccination Post

Okay.  This is the first post I have added in many years.  I didn't think I would be posting any time soon, but we as a society are inundated with news revolving around the measles outbreaks that are occurring in the world today, and as a result many states are pushing more and more legislations to mandate vaccinations.

Heads up...if you haven't figured it out by now, this post will be controversial...  

I am going to try to present my reasoning for why I have chosen my path regarding vaccines.  I will quickly state that I am attempting to do so without contempt for the choices that anyone else has made, and I believe the decision of anyone, whether it is the same as mine or not, can be completely justified.  My purpose in writing this is to illustrate the thought process that went into my decision not to give my family a measles vaccination, regardless of the outbreaks that are currently occurring.  My sources in presenting this argument will mostly come from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the WHO (World Health Organization).  I hope that staying within this realm will limit the argument of whether my sources are legitimate, as they are widely considered reputable among the pro-mandatory vaccine community.

When you think of measles, what comes to mind?  Google the word measles and read the news articles being published.  All the news articles use words like "hotbeds for disease." and "putting other people in danger unnecessarily" (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/nyregion/measles-outbreak-ny-schools.html)

These articles and phrases are the media's way of grasping viewer's attention.  Throughout media history, fear-based reporting has always been the best way to secure viewership and make sure they thrive as a company.  While there is truth in what they are saying, it's really only half the story.  Here's the other half:

According to the CDC, in the decade prior to 1963 (when the measles vaccine was created), there were about 4 million cases of measles in the US each year.  Of those 4 million cases, 48,000 people were hospitalized, 1000 of those cases developed encephalitis (swelling in the brain.  In most cases, encephalitis is minor, and resolves itself in a few days, however, it can be serious enough to cause lasting brain damage and death) and 400 of the 4 million resulted in death. (https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html).  All of those statistics look terrifying, but they don't have to.  Simple statistics tells us that in the decade prior to 1963 only .01 percent of the population that contracted measles died.  Encephalitis rate was .025 percent, and hospitalization rate was at 1.2 percent.  Meaning, if you contracted measles, all other factors aside, you had a 99.99% chance of surviving, a 99.97 percent chance of not developing encephalitis (which, in most cases was minor and resolved itself in a few days) and a 98.8 percent chance of not even needing to visit the hospital.  Please do not consider these statistics to be insensitive.  None of these statistics take away from the tragedy that 400 people died.  They do, however, lay a groundwork for why I am not afraid of the measles.

Let's leap to 2019.  Up to April 26th, there has been a reported 704 measles cases reported in the U.S., more cases than there have been since 1994.  If the statistics we took from pre-vaccination era measles held true, that would mean that there should be 8 hospitalizations, and no cases of encephalitis or death.  Fortunately there have been no cases of encephalitis or death yet, however, there have been 66 hospitalizations from these outbreaks (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6817e1.htm).  66! That rate is almost nine times higher compared to traditional pre-vaccine statistics in the 1960's.  So what is causing this explosion of hospitalization rates?

According to the CDC and WHO, the people that are most at risk for a severe case of measles are children under 5 years old, adults over 20 years old, and pregnant women.  Also, anyone with an already compromised or weakened immune system can be at risk (https://www.cdc.gov/measles/hcp/index.html).  Once you contract the measles, if you are one of the lucky 99.99% that survives, you will be immune to it for life.  In addition, women who have this immunity from contracting the disease can offer "passive immunity" through their breastmilk if they choose to breastfeed their baby (https://www.healthline.com/health/measles).  There are also studies that show that breastmilk, while not offering total immunity, can strengthen a child's immune system for life, and prolonged breastfeeding beyond six months has a greater impact (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9892025).

Here's the catch.  Thanks to vaccines, adults and mothers in our generation never had measles, never developed an immunity to it, and therefore could never offer passive immunity to their newborn children.  The result:  Greater susceptibility to developing measles under age 5 when it will be the most severe, and greater susceptibility to developing measles as an adult over 20 or pregnant due to not contracting it earlier in life.

Thus,

...When an outbreak like the one we are experiencing now occurs, the people who are most at risk for severe cases of measles are much more vulnerable... 

and our hospitalization rate is nine times higher than it should be.

It is clear, very clear, that vaccines are the most effective answer for preventing measles.  There's NO question about that.

My question for you to consider is this:  Are vaccines the most sustainable answer?  

With hospitalization rates skyrocketing the way they are, and the age groups referenced being vulnerable due to circumstances created by vaccines, ask yourself this question; if a collapse in the private sector stopped the manufacture of the measles vaccine, or a terrorist attack, or a natural disaster stopped the population from having access to vaccines, what do you think would happen?  According to the statistics we've seen this year, if 4 million people were to contract measles instead of 704, statistically speaking, one could argue that up to 360,000 people would be hospitalized instead of 48,000.

The alternative:
So what do we do?  We are kinda stuck aren't we?  Anyone who chooses not to vaccinate is exposing themselves and the community to potentially contracting measles, regardless of their philosophical viewpoint that perhaps this isn't a sustainable way to combat the disease.  While I can't offer a major earth shattering, revelatory change you can make, I can offer something simple that can help.  There have been several studies conducted that show if you are high in levels of vitamin A or receive a proper vitamin A dosage after contracting measles, your morbitity and mortality rates can be reduced by up to 84% (depending on age) (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11869601) (https://www.cdc.gov/measles/hcp/index.html).  This means that with the proper administration of vitamin A, that group of 400 people out of 4 million that died in 1963 would be reduced to as low as 4 people.  Two other ways of looking at it:  With this proper management of measles, if you are one of the 4 million people who contracted measles, and you get the proper vitamin A treatment, you may have a .0001 percent chance of dying, or a 99.9999% chance of surviving.

In Conclusion:
I understand that these numbers are oversimplified.  There are deeper dives that need to be taken with all of this.  My issue is that instead of looking at measles from the standpoint of seeing how we can combat this without the use of vaccines, everyone is only pushing more vaccines.  The vaccine industry is a 6 billion dollar industry.  Until someone can figure out how to make 6 billion dollars by giving people vitamin A and a good diet, change is going to be hard to come by.  Ghandi told us that we need "to be the change you want to see in the world."  That is why my family and I have chosen, despite ridicule from family, friends, and the public, to seek after more sustainable ways of fighting against diseases  like the measles.  I do not claim to be a professional on this subject.  I am just a dad that wants what's best for his kids.

I do not believe I have the authority to tell someone what decision they should make, but I also believe that NO ONE else does either.  

Every individual should choose for themselves what they want to do.  Every individual should have the right to objectively study these things out for themselves and make a choice without worrying about persecution that may occur based on the choice they made.  Our country is founded on these principles of freedom.  I have researched it for myself and have made a choice.  As I said in the beginning, I can see the justification behind the choices others have made that are not the same as mine.

Regardless of what your choice is, there is no room for unkindness or contempt for the choices anyone makes. 

 If nothing else, I hope this post has illustrated my thought process behind why I choose not to vaccinate for measles, and perhaps can at least illuminate that maybe people who have chosen not to vaccinate are doing so because they are trying to make an educated decision.



DISCLAIMER:  I am happy to receive any comments or opinions that are centered in kindness regardless of whether they are aligned with my own.  As a rule, any unkind or contemptuous comment will be deleted and the person making it will be blocked. 

Homemade Vegetable Stock

    Malissa and I love preparing food that requires vegetable stock.  We think it adds a depth to the flavor that would otherwise be lacking.  The problem we found, however, is that many vegetable stocks have MSG's or other bad ingredients in them.  We also realized that we have a ton of food scraps while cooking that usually go to waste.  Solution: we discovered how to make our own vegetable stock with no MSG's that would allow us to put our food waste to a good purpose!

Health Benefits:  With regards to nutrition, this is more about subtracting bad things than adding good things into your diet.  Most stocks have a base involving animal products, which come complete with a huge amount of sodium, and some saturated fat, which increase your chances of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart disease.  Even the vegetable based stocks at the store usually have high levels of sodium and some unhealthy or unnatural ingredients.  You can avoid all of these things by making your own stock, lowering the amount of bad sodium and saturated fats you consume with each meal.

Homemade Vegetable Stock

4-6 cups scraps, frozen 
1 bay leaf
black pepper (or for a better taste, you black peppercorns)
Garlic

Salt, to taste

Add all ingredients to a 5 quart pot. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil over high heat.  Reduce heat to medium and simmer one hour.  Let cool until lukewarm, strain and discard (or compost) the solids, and pour stock into clean jars, leaving a half-inch of head space. Refrigerate or freeze to store.

Super easy, sustainable, healthy, and delicious!  Enjoy!

Here is a list of everything you can  use to make your stock.  Instead of throwing these things away while you cook, stick them in a gallon bag and freeze them.

NOTE:  You can use anything on any of these vegetables, including skins, stems, peels, etc.

mushrooms, onion, leek, garlic, green onion, carrot, celery, peppers, asparagus, broccoli, zucchini, Stems of herbs

Sweet Potato Kale Salad

A couple weeks ago, Malissa and I were in the mood for something fresh.  A quick internet search on some of our favorite sites brought Malissa to this recipe, and after some simple modifications to make it simpler and vegan friendly, voila!  We had a new favorite side!  This salad has a sweet and tangy flavor, with a hardy taste and texture thrown in thanks to the sweet potatoes.  A definite favorite salad in our home, and an instant winner for any potluck!

HEALTH BENEFITS:  The combination of kale and sweet potatoes makes a powerful punch of vitamin A (the whole salad has around 1000% your daily need!) which is necessary for good bone growth and is a huge immune system booster!  This salad should be in your arsenal anytime someone is experiencing an illness.  Also loaded with potassium to help build stronger muscles, vitamin C to boost immune system more, and lots of fiber.

Sweet Potato Kale Salad

(Original Recipe by Real Simple, modified)

2 Sweet Potatoes cut into 1/2" cubes

6 Tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper

3 Tablespoons lemon juice

2 Tablespoons Dijon Mustard

2 bunches of Kale

1 Pink Lady, Fuji or other sweet apple, thinly sliced

1/4 cup roasted almonds

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Toss sweet potatoes in 2 Tablespoons of oil until coated.  Add salt and pepper to taste. Bake for 18-20 minutes until tender, tossing them halfway through.

In a large bowl, whisk the lemon juice, mustard, salt, pepper, and remaining oil. 

Add kale and rub leaves with mixture to coat and soften leaves.  Add apple slices, almonds, and sweet potatoes and toss together.

My conversion to healthy eating: A Plant Story

2009 as a missionary

I have always been a lover of food.  Have you ever heard the expression, “eat to live or live to eat?”  I have always been on the “live to eat” side.  Unfortunately, when I was younger, living to eat meant eating extremely unhealthy.   Some people say they eat unhealthy, but I REALLY ate unhealthy.  Let me give you an example.  A common snack (not my lunch or dinner, a mid-afternoon snack) would be two frozen chimichangas, fried a second time in butter, topped with two eggs, fried in the chimichanga grease, and smothered in melted cheese...then dinner came a couple hours later.

…like I said…unhealthy…

            So how did I change from gorging myself on all the fake, processed foods I could get my hands on, to being vegan, living a plant-based lifestyle, and juicing or making green smoothies every day? 

When I was 19, I was serving as an LDS missionary and was suffering from many health issues.  I had chronic headaches, stomach problems, and was gaining weight incredibly quickly.  I was also getting colds almost monthly as well.

Doctors didn’t help much.  Every issue I would present to them would be met with a pill.  Without any alternative education, I would take these pills, thinking; “If I take this magic pill, all my problems will disappear...right?”  Unfortunately, that’s not how it worked.  The pills only made things worse.

Finally, after nearly two years of suffering, one doctor examined me and simply said, “you should cut down a bit on red meat.”  In two years, this was the first time any physician had given me ANY kind of dietary advice.  I decided to cut out all red meat and see what happened.  After only a few days, I could feel a noticeable difference!  I was still very sick, but I had a little bit more energy, and the headaches were slightly less severe.  During this time, I remember thinking to myself,

“hmm…perhaps the food I eat affects my health!”

             After seeing positive results from cutting out red meat, I determined that perhaps I would have even better results if I cut out all meat!  When people invited us over for dinner, I would eat the meat they served, and would occasionally eat some lean meat on my own, but ultimately, I became vegetarian.  This decision not only again increased my energy, and decreased the intensity of my headaches, but it also made me feel happier and more focused!  It was easier for me to study the scriptures in the morning, and I felt like a fog lifted from my brain (a fog I didn’t even know was there!).

When I finished serving as a missionary, I returned home determined to discover how I can live the healthiest lifestyle.  While searching, my mother introduced me to the book “The China Study,” a book all about a “Whole-foods plant based diet.”  Before I was halfway through it, I adopted the whole-foods plant-based diet for myself.  Over the next six weeks, my headaches and stomach issues went completely away.  I no longer needed any pills and lost 36 pounds!  I remember getting on the scale some mornings and worrying that I was going to wither away to nothing with how fast I was losing weight!

March 2014 on a Cruise with my family

"Just pills and bills...well not anymore!"

Ironically, at the same time, I was taking a nutrition class in college, and after I had lost all 36 pounds, we took a BMI (body mass index) test, and mine was perfect!  I had lost every excess pound I had on my body, and had reached my genetically perfect weight.

It has been over four years since I changed my eating lifestyle.  I don’t get headaches, I don’t have stomach issues, I don’t get colds, and I don’t need pills.  I also haven't gained or lost a pound since I hit the weight I'm at right now.  

Before I began eating this way, I was always someone who “lives to eat.”  I am so happy to be able to say that I have never changed to someone who “eats to live."  I have been, and always will be, a lover of food!  I still “live to eat,” and thanks to my conversion to eating healthy, I am going to live a long time while doing it!

 "Eating Healthy is extremely important, but never forget that the healthiest thing you can do is be kind."

                                                           -Jacob Moench

Savory Tomato Gnocchi

The recipe we made tonight was a spur of the moment creation that turned into a masterpiece!  With very little food and a great desire to refrain from shopping, Malissa and I desperately looked through our cupboards for something to eat.  After finding a box of potato gnocchi, we devised a plan.  Who would have guessed that ten minutes later, we would have created one of our new favorite dishes!  This meal is delicious, reminding us of pizza in a bowl (except this is healthy).  To top things off, the total cook time is only 6-8 minutes.
  
Savory Tomato Gnocchi

1 pound (450g) potato gnocchi
1 Green pepper, chopped
4 Tomatoes, Chopped
1/2 Cup Olives, sliced
4 Tablespoons Olive juice (from the can of olives) 
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
Salt and pepper, to taste
4 Tablespoons chopped fresh basil (or 2 Tablespoons dried)

Cook Gnocchi in boiling water 4-5 minutes or until the Gnocchi floats to the top when stirred.  Rinse and set aside.
In a saucepan, heat oil over medium heat.  Add peppers, saute one minute.  Add tomatoes, saute 1-2 minutes more.  Add the gnocchi and all remaining ingredients into saucepan and saute for 1-2 minutes.  Easy enough!

10 Minute Artichokes and Dip

   

A Wild Rice Pilaf Makes an Excellent Side for These Artichokes

    Growing up, artichokes in our home were a delicacy.  Because they were so rare, I always assumed that they were either very expensive or very difficult to make.  I was wrong.  Artichokes are very inexpensive (around $1.50-$3.00 each) and easy to make.  The total amount of time you'll take on making the artichokes and the dip is 10 minutes!  They are incredibly healthy and delicious as well.

Artichokes and Dip 

2 Artichokes, stems and tops removed
1/4 Cup vegenaise (can be found in most grocery stores)
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon dill weed
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon celery salt
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
Salt, to taste

    Place artichokes in pressure cooker with water just up to to the bottom of the steam rack.  Seal pressure cooker and cook on high.  Once it starts pressure cooking, turn heat down just a few degrees and cook for 9 minutes.  Take pressure cooker off heat and hold under cold running water until it can be released.

  For the dip:  Mix all ingredients together in a small container, adjust seasoning and mustard to taste.

*Note: to make the artichokes have a rich, smoky flavor, try putting a small amount of liquid smoke and onion powder in the pressure cooker water.



That's it! Super simple!