Susanne Prescott, immunologist, describes her viewpoint on the necessary reduction of meat consumption in a recent article. Too many people eat too much meat and the earth is going under. However, there is a huge world of interests behind our food, and the veg burger does not solve many health problems either. For that, we need a different diet, and above all a different relationship to convenience foods.

We have gone mad and the world is suffering

The government, WHO etc think, we need to feed ourselves differently. The earth can no longer sustain our western, meat defined diet and the earth is in danger of going under, due to excessive meat consumption and convenience foods, running on soy, corn and palm oil. Both the image of the huge feed lots, where cattle are fattened, and the closed stables, where billions of chickens and pigs live an extremely boring, too-short life, mostly in the dark, evokes disgust. Things must change, but how? And who is pulling the strings? Will it get better, if you leave the transition to more plant-based food to the global food corporations?

Obviously, 100 years ago, our food looked different from today. There are a number of terms in the literature that make you think, when it comes to the changes in our food. Anything marketed by the likes of Kraft Heinz, Unilever or Nestle falls under the term ‘highly processed convenience food’. An earlier term belonging to this is ‘ultra-refined food’ (refined and stripped down food), finally the newer term summarising all this briefly: ‘ultra-processed food’ (tinkered food or highly processed and reconstituted food). After all, who doesn’t want white bread, a squirt bottle of whipped cream, liquid egg or a ready-made pizza? Convenience was part of progress and there are estimates, that Europeans cover about 50% of their daily energy needs by ultra-processed food, Americans are at almost 60%.

Although we always shout, that the farmer produces our food, the food industry mostly determines what goes on the plate, and many farmers have become mere suppliers of raw materials, in the form of starches and sugars, proteins and fats.

Non-communicable diseases

We have gradually become sick of food, of our diet. The underlying drivers of pathogenic diets are: high saturated fat, too much meat, high omega-6/-3 ratio in fatty acids and consumption of (added) sugar, fructose in particular, but also lack of fibre and loss of secondary plant ingredients. Within 1 generation tooth decay arose, within 2 the crooked growth of our teeth, within 3 came the problems with increased cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes and now behavioural, mental health and Alzheimer’s. We have all just become fatter and sicker. Sick in terms of ‘non-communicable diseases’, such as asthma, allergies, type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Economically, it sounds like good business; first the food industry makes a lot of money by producing the processed food, then the pharmaceutical industry again makes a lot of money to curb the negative side effects of the diet, just think of the cholesterol inhibitors, or the blood pressure reducers and soon the weight-lowers. This is how the world turns these days and is becoming so slowly maddening. It is a typical consequence of end-of-pipe-solutions, fighting symptoms. However, for society as a whole, we are entering dangerous waters: unaffordable healthcare and an accumulation of medications not to mention deforestation, polluted drinking water and soil degradation. Not to speak about animal welfare.

Vega burgers and oat milk

Supermarkets and the food industry are ready to support the necessary transition from animal to plant-based with (obviously) new products. Universities, supported by governments, are putting money into alternative meat production, in the form of artificial meat, or insects. Cheese protein should soon be made in the laboratory from fungi, milk replaced by soy or oat milk. All these products have in common that they a) originate from reductionist knowledge about nutrition, b) are often highly processed, and originate from technological processing of agricultural products, c) try to resemble as closely as possible the product, which it wants to replace, and d) are part of the protein transition. Animal should be banned.

However, the plant-based alternatives, the new veg burgers, offered to us today still fall under the heading of ‘ultra-processed food’, says Susanne Prescott. The question is whether we need this or we want this and whether we are better off in terms of society.

Think different, like Weston A. Price did

The question is whether we only need a protein transition, or much more of a transition to ‘real, unprocessed food’, to ‘cooking with whole foods’, to ‘fermented foods’. We can get by with much less meat, than we believe, but we should not think, that transitioning from a meat burger to a veg burger alone, is going to save us. In the 1980s, there was a macrobiotic restaurant in Utrecht (The Netherlands) called the Groene Waterman. It cooked fresh and vegetarian food daily. Two parts cereals (e.g. rice) plus one part pulses (e.g. lentils) combined for better utilisation of plant protein. In addition, some cooked vegetables, raw vegetables and a water-based sauce. We learned there, that vegetarian cooking was more than ‘leaving out the meat’ or ‘eating vegetables’. Good vegetarian food was cooking a meal based on ‘whole grains and pulses’, which are unprocessed or refined. When you livened up such meals with some cottage cheese or cheese, you were eating a full meal. There was no need for meat.

The dentist and researcher Price concluded that due to traditional diets natural peoples stayed healthy by eating raw and raw-fermented products. Meat, fish, organ meat, bone broth was usually much rarer than plant foods, simply because animal products were much less available in large parts of the world. Fermentation was more important than vegetarianism. Price’s insight is consistent with the current view, that our Western diet lacks immune-supporting nutritional elements, bacteria, yeasts and fungi, which arise from real life processes, from fermentation. Slow and fermented food, rather than fast and ultra-processed food.

Literature

• Prescott, S. L., D’Adamo, C. R., Holton, K. F., Ortiz, S., Overby, N., & Logan, A. C. (2023). Beyond Plants: The Ultra-Processing of Global Diets Is Harming the Health of People, Places, and Planet. International journal of environmental research and public health, 20(15), 6461.