Why we should eat meat. By a former vegan.

I can already feel that I’m about to stir up the pot with this post. As a former vegan, I know why. I was a hard-core vegan advocate, like hard hard. I preached veganism as the only source of true health and demonized anything that had to do with animals (in the food sense). Before we get into the post I want to make it clear that I’m only referring to health in this post. Regarding animal cruelty – yes, being vegan is the better option. So what changed? What made this vegan babe crave the meat again? That’s what she said…

Baby steps. It all started with eggs.

After about 5 years into being completely vegan (being vegetarian about 4 years before that) and consuming whole foods such as beans, lentils, vegetables, rice, and potatoes I started to feel like “something” was missing. I couldn’t really pinpoint exactly what this something was but I found myself thinking about omelets and scrambled eggs in a way I’ve never thought about eggs before…So after a mental battle between myself, I went to the store and got myself some eggs. What happened when I ate that bad boy? Nothing. It was good. Like actually good, and as I continued to incorporate eggs into my diet again I could feel this “something” started to go away.

Eggs are the healthiest food on the planet.

Or at least one of the healthiest foods. Eggs are a natures protein bar packed with vitamin A, B, omega 3, and cholesterol which isn’t a bad thing! It’s 2021, can we please stop demonizing cholesterol as the root of all evil?! Sure if you’re blood is made with only cholesterol, maybe not optimal, but cholesterol itself is extremely important for our body to make vitamin D and A. Eggs are also very versatile food that we can find in the sneakiest of things. Pasta, bread, vegetarian meat alternatives, sauces, fried stuff, the list goes on. Without eggs, in your diet, you have to remove even more things than “just the eggs”.

why we should eat meat.

Omega 3 from fish.

The natural second step was to get fishy. Not that I had to, more that I started to crave it. A nice salmon was literally screaming my name. Fish and seafood, in general, are healthy sources of protein and essential fatty acids such as omega 3 which can be hard to get on a vegan diet. Even though walnuts, flax seeds, and chia seeds contain a fair amount of omega 3 you will need to eat a lot more of it to hit your targets. Omega 3 is essential for your brain, skin, and reproductive health. Looking at other types of fish such as cod and tuna, we are getting a lot of good quality protein for a little to no fat.

The fishy thing about fish though is that we want to be kind to our oceans and not promote overfishing. There’s also a discussion about our fish containing mercury and other toxins. It’s all about quality. And maybe not eating fish all day every day. It should be an addition to your meal, not your staple.

Let’s get real about protein.

Okay guys, let’s talk about protein. We can’t shut up about it. No matter if you’re a gym rat or someone just trying to be healthy, we always come back to get in enough protein. But why is protein so important? Protein is the building block of literally everything in our body. Muscles? Protein. Hair, skin, and nails? Protein. Our DNA? Protein. Quick protein lesson. Our body is capable of making 11 out of the 20 amino acids by itself. The remaining 9 amino acids we have to get through our diet. Foods that contain all these 9 amino acids are called complete proteins.

Everything we eat has protein from spinach to chicken breast, even though they contain different amounts and especially different qualities of protein. Animal protein such as chicken, meat, eggs, dairy, and fish all make up a complete protein by themselves. Plant proteins such as beans and lentils are incomplete proteins meaning they don’t contain these 9 amino acids by themselves. To make a vegan protein complete they need to be combined with another incomplete protein such as rice, bread, or potatoes. Of course, you can still get enough protein from a vegan diet but it needs more planning and could potentially also lead to a higher calorie and carb consumption just to hit your targets. I still eat my beans, trust me! But I don’t make them my source of protein anymore.

Get cheesy for your gut.

Dairy was the hardest thing to start eating and I didn’t for the longest time just because it grossed me out. I’m also still a bit conflicted if I believe it’s that healthy for us, but after doing research I do believe that good quality dairy is very much beneficial to us. Natural sources such as greek yogurt and aged cheeses are extremely good for our gut. The fermentation process of these dairy sources packs with so many healthy gut bacteria and protein. The French do know something about finishing the meals with bread and cheese. Butter from grass-fed beef also contains a bunch of retinol (vitamin a) which is a vitamin the body can’t make by itself.

why we should eat meat.

Whole Foods.

Don’t get me wrong, I still preach whole foods with all my heart. Fruit, vegetables, and legumes are still the biggest staple of my diet but I’ve also started to incorporate more animal products with my meals. We need to eat vegan food way more than we do today, especially in the western world where we are deficient in so much fiber that it’s scary.

Change the way we eat meat.

The most important thing in this the animal perspective, and here we can’t argue that being vegan is much more animal friendly. Mass production of meet is wrong on all levels and nothing I support. When I do eat meat, it’s usually when I’m out at dinners and I make sure it’s good quality and locally sourced. At home I eat meat with my vegetables and not vegetables with my meat. I also make sure to get plenty of meat that isn’t from an animal source. What? Nothing.

Sources

https://www.piedmont.org/living-better/what-is-a-complete-protein

https://medlineplus.gov/cholesterol.html

Getting skin deep – how to age GRACEFULLY.

Smooth, healthy, glowy, radiant, and crispy (if chicken). This is how we want our skin to look like. But skin can also be irritated, uneven, dry, itchy or filled with spots and acne. The amounts of dollar dollar bills y’all we spend on expensive skin care products and treatments with the hope to cure our skin problems overnight is crazy, (and might actually be a big waste of money). What we tend to overlook is that there’s more to the skin than the surface, and we need to go skin deep to really get that Instagram filter glow. So let’s uncover the basics to get healthy skin from the inside out.

What is skin?

Besides being the entire thing that holds this meat bag of a body together, our skin is also the largest organ of our body. I mean, imagine if we didn’t have skin. Meat markets running wild! The skin’s job is to regulate body temperature, protect us from bacteria, vitamin D absorption, and give us the sensation of cold and hot. Let’s say you’re chilling with your hand on a hot stove top, because I mean who doesn’t do that? Without the skin and the sensation of touch you would literally burn off those hands of yours. Saucy.

Healthy skin

How your diet affects your skin

When we talk about skin health we refer to clean, elastic, nutrient, and hydrated skin. A lack of these will result in premature aging which shows up as wrinkles, dryness, hanging, and brittle skin. Besides the shallow results of skin aging, we are more prone to diseases or skin tears as the skin ages which obviously isn’t so great. By keeping a healthy lifestyle and especially making sure you get all the good stuff through a healthy diet you can significantly push back the aging clock. Baby face forever, baby!

Vitamin E

Vitamin E is the skin’s love child. Our skin loves it and needs it. Vitamin E is an antioxidant which protects our skin against the UV damage from the sun and increase collagen production. Get your daily dose from almonds, leafy greens, avocados, bell peppers, and mangoes. Make sure you eat your vitamin E together with a fat source (avocados is a great choice since it contains both vitamin E and fat) since the vitamin is fat soluble – meaning the body absorbs it better together with fat. 

Vitamin A

If you’re a skin fanatic you have probably stumbled across the holy grail of skin care – retinol. Retinol is essentially just vitamin A. Just more concentrated and processed into an oil or cream, packaged into a fancy packaging, and extremely overpriced.

Lycopene, this amazing antioxidant found in red and orange foods such as tomatoes,carrots, sweet potatoes, watermelon, red bell peppers, mangoes, and grapefruits turns into vitamin A as it enters our body. Vitamin A promotes a healthy glow to the skin as well as protects and prevents damages and sunburns from UV rays. Almost like a self protectant sunscreen (even though you should ALWAYS slap on that SPF daily!!). Just like vitamin E, vitamin A is also a fat soluble vitamin. Make a pasta sauce with tomatoes and olive oil, roast some sweet potatoes or have some watermelon with almonds as a snack – to look like a snack.

Vitamin C

We are all familiar with vitamin C. From oranges to multivitamins, we’ve been exposed to this guy since we were children. So, does vitamin C deserve the hype? Of course it does. Vitamin C is a vitamin our body can’t store which means that we need to get it through our diet every single day. We need this vitamin to strengthen our immune system, repair bones and skin tissue, and protect us against free radicals. Good thing about Vitamin C is that it’s water soluble which means your body absorbs it just fine by itself. Finding a good source of vitamin C isn’t that hard either. Basically every fruit and vegetable contains some amounts of Vitamin C, but keep an extra eye on red bell peppers, kiwis, leafy greens, berries, broccoli, I’m honestly not kidding when I say most fruits and veggies contains the sweet C.

Omega 3

If it ain’t thick we don’t want it. Thick in this instance means fat, the healthy kind. That cute fat from fatty fish, avocados, and nuts that also packs all that good omega 3 which makes our skin radiate brighter than a radiator. Omega 3s are the moisturizer that does the job form the inside out. 

Healthy skin

Protein

Bob the builder, legos, and proteins all have one thing in common. Building blocks, baby! From our DNA to our collagen levels and muscle growth, protein plays a huge part in our body and skin. Collagen is found in animal protein and gives structure to skin, bones, and joints and essential for keeping our skin smooth an youthful. I know that eating animals is a controversial topic, but the best quality collagen can only be found in animal products. Bone broth, chicken,fish, and eggs provides the highest collagen production in our body. But you can also get that good stuff by filling up on berries and dark leafy greens.

Antioxidants

Antioxidants, meaning anti oxidation is a set of different vitamins that our skin needs to reduce inflammation and repair itself. Foods rich in phytochemicals (a type of antioxidant) makes our skin more resistant to environmental damage such as free radicals, pollution, and UV rays. A great rule of thumb when looking for antioxidant rich foods is to go for foods with dark pigments. All kinds of berries, especially blueberries and blackberries. Dark leafy greens, purple cabbage, beets (not the ones by Dre), pomegranate seeds, green tea, dark chocolate. Just think dark reds, greens, blues, and purples. Like Kendrick Lamar would say, the blacker the berry the sweeter the juice.

A diet rich in antioxidants protects your skin from cell and collagen damage and makes this vitamin one of the most affective anti aging foods. Don’t sleep on your antioxidants!

Healthy skin

H2O

Hydration is cool and I can’t trust people who say they don’t like water. Seriously, what the hell?! Water is essential for us to literally live, and besides the keeping us alive factor it also works miracles on our skin. When we don’t drink enough water our body will prioritize keeping our inner and most vital organs hydrated such as our liver and kidneys. This means that our skin takes a big L which results in dry, lifeless skin.

Exercise

Working up a sweat isn’t only good for your heart and your biceps but also for your skin. Exercising stimulates blood and oxygen flow to nourish the skin cells to give you a more elastic, glowy, and youthful face. Your daily sweat feast also helps to remove toxins and waste products from the body. Look at that, yet another good reason to start exercising! Just make sure to get a good shower after your workout and not let the sweat soak into your skin to clog your pores…

Aging. It’s a beautiful yet terrifying thing. We don’t hate the idea of growing older but we’re not that fond of looking the part. Unfortunately we can’t escape the aging process, yet. Who knows what Elon Musk cooks up in the near future… But in the time being, we can do our best to age gracefully and keeping our baby face as long as we possibly can.

https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/picture-of-the-skin

https://medcraveonline.com/JDC/the-role-of-diet-in-maintaining-healthy-skin.html

https://www.aad.org/public/everyday-care/skin-care-secrets/anti-aging/reduce-premature-aging-skin

FODMAPs what are they?

Sometimes you’re so hungry and confused that you need a map to find the food you saved for later. Or sometimes, if you’re being a total bitch to yourself you like to hide snacks all over your house so you won’t eat them, to later frantically hunt them down like a pirate on a treasure hunt. What you’ll use then is a food map, but what we’re about to talk about now is FODMAPs.

Seriously, I can’t be the only one who’ve stumbled across this term on the internet and having my tiny head voice read “food maps”. Lazy reading obviously, but please tell me I’m not the only one? Either way, what is FODMAPs and why are we seeing this word thrown around every health blog as the new superdiet that will save your life while saving the depleting oceans? Okay, that’s no true, and by the way, our depleting oceans are a serious issue. I apologize for making a stupid joke about it. I do love and care deeply for our blue planet. By the way, if you haven’t, check out Blue Planet on Netflix! That shit’s amazing!

But, back to FODMAPs. What are they? What do they do? Should you try it? Read on to get a better understanding of what FODMAPs are.

What are FODMAPs?

The first thing we need to do is to break down this two-faced word. The word itself is a mouthful, so buckle up your seatbelt… FODMAPs stands for, again, get ready for it, Fermentable Oligo-, Di-, Monosaccharides, and Polyols. I told you it’s not exactly in the category of “baby’s first words”.

Most likely, that long word didn’t make things clear for you at all, so to make it simple, FODMAPs are a group of short-chain carbohydrates and sugar alcohols, which for some people cause a bad reaction in the gut.

It goes down in the gut

Once again, some people, have a hard time breaking down these short-chain carbohydrate foods which are high in FODMAPs. High in FODMAPs means that these foods are more likely to cause a bad gut reaction in some individuals. How exactly does it work? In our gut, we have a million bacteria called the microbiome. Probiotics are another trendy health thing, and what they essentially are is healthy gut bacteria. Living, stable, high-income taxpayers who like sports and go clubbing on the weekend. Well some of them might be more into fine arts and crafts, but bottom line, they are a bunch of bacteria living in our gut to make sure we stay healthy.

Since these bacteria are actually living things they need to eat, and unlike us, they can’t be picky with what they get. What you eat, is what they eat. That’s where we have prebiotics, which are foods that feed the probiotic bacteria with healthy nutrients. Fruit, vegetables, fiber, fermented foods are all part of the prebiotic family. But, even some of these healthy foods can in some people cause a bad reaction to our microbiome. This is where FODMAPs come in.

What happens is that these carbohydrates don’t break down properly in the large intestine. The gut bacteria just don’t know how to break it down on the dance floor together with these short-chain carb guys, they get out of sync and the whole party is ruined. Essentially, what happens is that the bacteria produce excess gas due to the bioproducts of the fermentation process. And, don’t we all know what happens when we have an overproduction of gas in our system..? We get bloated, experience discomforts, or serious digestive issues.

Foods high and low in FODMAPs

It’s hard to point out exactly which foods have the highest amount of FODMAPs. Since everyone reacts differently to different foods, and the quantity of the food we eat can have an impact on our guts as well, we can’t say exactly which foods to avoid.

What some research has shown is that there are some common foods which can cause these symptoms, and they are apples, pears, broccoli, cabbage, watermelon, cereals, pasta, milk, and bread. You can find more complete lists here. But, remember that these are just a general list. Some of the high FODMAP foods will work fine in some people while some of the low FODMAPs might not.

Is it healthy?

I have to make it clear that you shouldn’t jump on this “diet” before you’ve actually been to a nutritionist or dietitian who specifically told you to try the low FODMAP diet. Since there’s a lot of restrictions on this diet it’s important to understand that you can get nutrient deficient if you just “try it out” with no actual reason behind it.

The low FODMAP diet is also meant to be a temporary diet, not a lifestyle change! The main reason people with gut problems get on this diet is to slowly introduce these foods back into their diet again so their gut bacteria learn how to break them down properly.

Then again, we all process foods differently. Just because you read that your favorite Instagram influencer is on the low FODMAP diet and is feeling super duper amazing, doesn’t mean that it’s a magical cure and will make you feel amazing too. When we read about these new diets, superfoods, and miracle juices on social media and on the internet, we have to put our professor glasses on and think about the sources. How reliable is this source? Is this an actual nutritionist/health coach giving this advice? Can they back up what they’re saying with proper research? Do I have digestive issues?

There is no one miracle diet, just as there’s no one size fits all. Of course, we have foods that are more nutrient-dense than others, but that doesn’t mean that they are healthy for everyone. That’s why allergies exist for example. If you do feel like you could be suffering from these digestive issues, book an appointment with a nutritionist or dietitian and see if the low FODMAP diet is actually something for you. Don’t just do it because Kim Kardashian might have mentioned it in the caption on her latest Instagram post.

 

 

 Sources:

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fodmaps-101#definition

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5390324/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24150797

https://www.medicinenet.com/low_fodmap_diet_list_of_foods_to_eat_and_avoid/article.htm