tuberculosis and the importance of meat

This weekend I listened to the BBC Radio 4 programme Any Questions?. Benjamin Zephaniah was one of the guests. He is a vegan and had some interesting things to say on the question of diet. This was prompted by a question about lab-cultured burgers.

Benjamin seemed very up to date on the subject of how much protein people need and the importance of meat. The other contributors continue to believe the old-fashioned idea that people need large amounts of protein and that the only easy way to get that is through eating meat.

I was especially perturbed by what was said by Hugh Pennington, Emeritus Professor of Microbiology at Aberdeen University.

I believe that the biggest factor in getting rid of tuberculosis in this country ... has been that people can buy cheap chicken. And chicken is the big big protein source. Herbert Hoover ran an election campaign ... on 'a chicken in every pot' but it was successful. Now you may not like the way the chickens are grown but it is very cheap very good protein, and that has saved lots and lots of lives. And white meat from chicken is good for you. Beef is a bit of a luxury. So that's where I stand. Chicken, eggs, milk and that sort of stuff.

It is true that when people are trying to recover from tuberculosis, or many diseases, that they should eat good quality protein. But, as it says on this site under the heading High quality proteins to repair the damaged tissue

• The best and easily digestible proteins are from egg whites and milk. About 2 eggs and 3 glasses of milk are required in a day.
• Other good sources of protein are chicken, fish, meat, cheese, nuts and seeds, pulses.

So it looks like vegetarians can very easily get the protein that they need to recover from tuberculosis. They can have egg whites and milk. Or cheese, nuts, seeds and pulses. It also looks as if vegans can easily get the protein they need too. They can have nuts, seeds and pulses. So I really don't know why Professor Pennington is going on about chicken.

Another guest on the programme, Matthew Sinclair said It's hard to get the full mixed proteins you need without meat. This is simply not true. This belief stems from the time when scientists overestimated the amount of protein that people need. Now the scientific recommendations for the amount of protein that people need is much lower. I know that plant proteins tend to be slightly deficient in one or more of the amino acids, but when you have protein from different plants - such as grains and pulses - they make up for each other's deficiencies. That's not so important anyway now that we know people's protein requirements are more modest.

The other thing that Matthew Sinclair said I didn't like is what the audience member who asked the question also said. They said that scientists have done wonders in breeding crops to benefit mankind, so isn't it wonderful that now they are turning their attention to proteins. As if proteins only come from animals. Farm animals do not create proteins, they can only take protein from plants and very inefficiently re-organize them into their tissues. Soya and other pulses are the cheap proteins. It's about time people realized that, because if they don't we're never going to be able to feed the world.

People should not worry about whether they are getting enough protein. In Britain people, even poor people, get about one and a half times as much protein as they need. Even if they are recovering from an illness, such as TB, they wouldn't need to have more. Although, if they want to be on the safe side, they could have eggs and milk. If they want to worry about getting enough of any nutrients, it would make more sense if they worried about getting more vitamin D.

Vitamin D has been linked to TB, among other things, and it seems if you take more vitamin D then you are less likely to get TB or more likely to recover from it. It's difficult to get enough vitamin D from food sources or from sunlight, so I would take a vitamin D tablet. Not chicken. Eggs have got some vitamin D. Oily fish do too. So if you eat oily fish you get protein, omega-3 (another nutrient we could do with more of) and some vitamin D. Cod liver oil has omega-3 and some vitamin D.

The irony is that chickens are fed on animal feed that often contains anchovies. Anchovies are being overfished. This Guardian article is very interesting.

Betrand noted that despite accounting for the biggest stock in the world, anchovies are seldom used for human food, crushed instead into a fine flour to make animal feed for fowl, pigs and farm-raised fish.

If people fed less anchovies to animals like chickens and ate them themselves they would have cheaper protein, they would have more long-chain omega-3 and they would have more vitamin D. There would be less TB in the world. When anchovies are fed to chickens about half of the protein is lost, and nearly all of the omega-3 and vitamin D. It's not so bad if it is egg production and not meat.

Anchovies in the supermarket are expensive, but there should be a way of getting anchovies to people all over the world cheaply. You might say that people don't want to eat anchovies, but if instead of 'a chicken in every pot' for Americans we tried to get cheap protein in the form of soya and sustainably fished anchovies to everyone that would be a much better way of feeding the world.

Soya in the form of tofu and tempeh has a bland flavour but miso is delicious. Anchovies could combine quite well with miso, even in the form of anchovy flour, to make a tasty soup or stock. There may be other ways to use anchovies.

anchovies

smugness about science

A few days ago there were articles in a couple of newspapers about celebrities and their pseudo scientific ideas. There is a campaign group called Sense About Science. They did something on their site about celebrities and fads and some of the newspapers did articles on it, including this one in The Independent.

I don't think they've checked their facts though. It's as if they've already made up their minds that things like vitamin pills and fasting must be pseudoscience and they aren't interested in recent research. Don't get me wrong. I believe in science. I just can't accept the lazy smug attitude of some people who claim to have a monopoly of rationality.

After slagging off a lot of celebrities about their health tips, the campaign group commends Jennifer Anniston and Al Murray for what they think are their more rational ideas. Jennifer Anniston is praised for saying that fasting is 'bad for the body'. Al Murray is praised for saying that 'popping vitamin pills is a waste of time and money, apart from perhaps cod liver oil'. Ursula Arens and Lucy Jones, both from the British Dietetic Association, are quoted in support of each of them.

Is Sense About Science not aware of the research publicised by Dr Michael Mosley about fasting? As this news article shows 'Scientists are uncovering evidence that short periods of fasting, if properly controlled, could achieve a number of health benefits, as well as potentially helping the overweight, as Michael Mosley discovered'. I have posted on Dr Mosley and intermittent fasting a while ago.

When it comes to vitamins, there is more and more evidence that vitamin D is very important in a number of different ways, and that it is difficult to get enough through a balanced diet or though exposure of skin to sunshine (some vitamin D can be synthesised though sunlight). In this news article it says 'Writing in Scrubbing Up, Prof Blair said: "Vitamin D can be found in some foods such as oily fish, eggs and mushrooms - but only 10% of a person's recommended daily amount is found naturally in food. Put bluntly, eating more fish and getting out in the sun a bit more won't make much of a difference to your vitamin D levels". I have posted on vitamin D a while ago.

There is vitamin D in cod liver oil, although that's not what it's mainly used for. Most cod liver oil has added vitamin D and it often has added vitamins A and E too. I prefer to buy fish oil and then buy my vitamin D separately. If anyone has the right to be smug, it would be someone like me who has been taking extra vitamin D for years. That seems perfectly rational to me. As each new piece of research comes along showing the value of vitamin D, I am pleased that I have been taking supplements for years. I'm glad I didn't listen to these people.

If it is unscientific to believe that vitamin pills are anything but 'a waste of time and money', why is it that so many foods are fortified with vitamins? Why aren't scientists complaining about that? Not only don't they complain about it, they think it is a clever thing to do.

Another thing I didn't like is this paragraph 'Gary Kemp, former singer with Spandau Ballet, came to the aid of medical science by declaring that acupuncture as performed by his chiropractor didn't do much for him and that "hardcore science" should be everyone's first port of call when dealing with a serious illness'. I don't know much about acupuncture. I'm not interested in alternative or complementary medicine and it's outside the scope of this blog. But my understanding of acupuncture is that it is a valuable method of pain relief. 'Hardcore science' has shown that this is true. I don't want anyone in pain to dismiss something that could help them because of the cynics.

Tracey Brown, managing director of Sense About Science said "we have had more examples than ever sent to us of people in the public eye who clearly do check their facts". Well, Tracey, perhaps it is you who should check your facts.

misleading information in the Daily Mail

I read the Daily Mail on Friday (05/11/10) and there were two articles about food that were misleading. The first was by Martin Samuel on page 18 entitled Fish oil or a load of codswallop? The second one by 'Daily Mail Reporter' was called Organic vegetables 'no better for health'.

Martin Samuel referred to a review by Dr Majid Fotuhi last year which concluded that fish oil cannot prevent or treat Alzheimer's Disease. This was interesting to me because I had no idea that anyone had ever suggested that fish oil or cod liver oil could help Alzheimer's Disease.

Fish oil contains long chain omega-3 fatty acids (DHA and EPA). They are known to help reduce inflammation and as such are helpful in preventing heart disease as well as things like arthritis. They are an important part of the structure of the brain, and lack of it is associated with depression.

Martin Samuel wrote 'Fish oil is among the great modern myths. Excellent as part of a balanced diet; largely lacking in wonder-pill qualities if taken alone'. What he seems to be saying is that eating fish could be beneficial but consuming fish oil is of no value at all. This is simply wrong.

I was not aware that fish oil was supposed to help Alzheimer's, although if you look hard enough on the web you can find that some people do - or did - think that. What I do know is that vitamin B has been shown to be linked to Alzheimer's. In the New Scientist recently was an article Low levels of vitamin B12 linked to Alzheimer's.

Not long long ago there was an interesting programme on Radio 4 showing how important vitamin D is. New research shows that it is important to the body in many different ways, much more important than was thought before. Lack of vitamin D is associated with Parkinson's Disease, MS and TB. Martin Samuel railed against 'the dubious vitamin pill industry' but I am glad that for years I have take a vitamin supplement. I don't take a vitamin and mineral supplement because I don't want to take extra iron; as an adult male extra iron will not help me and could harm me.

The second article said that a 'universtity study' showed that organic vegetables have roughly the same amount of polyphenols. The article described polyphenols as 'the chemical compound in vegetables that helps fight cancer, heart disease and dementia'. Polyphenols are only one type of antioxidant. We cannot be sure that antioxidants in food have any health benefits.

Most people who buy organic food do so because the long term cumulative effects of ingesting a cocktail of small amounts of different agrochemicals are unknown. Or they don't like the effect that agrochemicals have on wildlife. Or they don't want to support an agricultural system that they don't believe in, for reasons explored elsewhere on this blog. It isn't anything to do with polyphenols.

We can see a pattern emerging in tabloid reporting on health issues. First they take some obscure research. Then they pretend that people buy a supplement or a food for a particular reason when they don't. Then they ridicule anyone who wastes their money on the supplement or the premium priced food. The annoying thing is that anyone who doesn't know anything about nutritition will believe what they are reading. They will avoid healthy food because people like Martin Samuel have cast doubt on it. I don't eat organic food but I respect people who do. This is people's health we're talking about, and these tabloid hacks are harming it.

There are three types of people when it comes to health information. There are those who take the information on board for the benefit of themselves and their family. There are those who decide to take no notice and continue as before. Both of these types of people I am happy with. I have no objection to people smoking, as long as they don't pretend to the world that smoking is not harmful.

The third type of person is the type of person who doesn't want to take the information on board but they don't want to appear to be stupid. They try to muddy the waters, to use convoluted arguments to try to cast doubts on scientific evidence. There is nothing wrong with challenging scientific evidence, that is what scientists do to each other all the time. It is a necessary part of science. But scientists use concise arguments and evidence. These people don't.

They insist that the way they were brought up must have been as good as any, that their traditional way of eating cannot be wrong in any way. They often believe that butter must be OK because it is natural and traditional. Fish oil must be wrong because Grandma never used it. Actually Grandma probably did use it, or at least cod liver oil. Maybe, in this case, Grandma knew best.

So I'm going to continue to take my fish oil capsules, and my vitamin supplement, not just because of research results but because of possible research results in the future. I want to be in a position where when more evidence comes along of the value of DHA and EPA or vitamins B and D I know that I've been taking it for years.

I don't swallow my fish oil capsules. They are quite big. I put one in my mouth and break it with my teeth. The oil tastes nice. It makes me wonder why in Grandma's generation they hated the taste of cod liver oil. It was probably because it came from a bottle and was rancid. I keep mine in the fridge. I intend to have cod liver oil in winter because it is considerably higher in vitamin D than fish oil, and we make less vitamin D in our skin in winter.

There may be a problem with Cod Liver Oil though. Some brands add vitamins A and D. It could be that some people may be taking too much vitamin A. Some would say that taking lots of vitamin A negates the benefits of taking lots of vitamin D. I don't take megadoses of any vitamin, and I like to get a lot of my vitamins from the food that I eat. RDAs (Recomended Daily Allowances) are not relevant to anything, they are just guesswork.

If you ask the question 'do we need vitamin pills?' that by itself is a meaningless question. If you ask the question 'do we need vitamin pills to stay alive?' the answer is obviously no. If you ask the question 'do we need vitamin pills to prevent deficiency diseases?' again the answer is obviously no. If you ask the question 'do we need vitamin pills to obtain the optimum amount of vitamins for all the various functions known and unknown?' that is a more difficult question to answer. It is a question I hope will be answered at some time in the future, but we are getting closer to the answer.

I went to the Daily Mail website to look for links to these two articles so that I could include them on this blog page. I didn't find them, but then I didn't look very hard. What I did find was that Martin Samuel seems to be a sports reporter. Nice to know that the Daily Mail always has an expert on hand when they need to deal with the important issue of the health of millions of people.