We are sick. Around the world, we struggle with diseases that were once considered rare. Cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes affect millions each year; many people are also struggling with hypertension, weight gain, fatty liver, dementia, low testosterone, menstrual irregularities and infertility, and more. We treat the symptoms, not realizing that all of these diseases and disorders have something in common. Each of them is caused or made worse by a condition known as insulin resistance. And you might have it. Odds are you do—over half of all adults in the United States are insulin resistant, with most other countries either worse or not far behind. In Why We Get Sick, internationally renowned scientist and pathophysiology professor Benjamin Bikman explores why insulin resistance has become so prevalent and why it matters. Unless we recognize it and take steps to reverse the trend, major chronic diseases will be even more widespread. But reversing insulin resistance is possible, and Bikman offers an evidence-based plan to stop and prevent it, with helpful food lists, meal suggestions, easy exercise principles, and more. Full of surprising research and practical advice, Why We Get Sick will help you to take control of your health.
I’ve posted this book before, it’s super impactful and makes a great demonstration of why hyperinsulinemia is so bad. It’s written in a very easy to understand and compelling way. I can not recommend this book enough. I’ve given out nearly a dozen copies of it to friends suffering from metabolic problems.
I just discovered, today, that a official chinese version is now available! If you have relatives, friends, who arn’t so great at English (especially such they wont try to read a book)… this is a great gift. Especially the auntie who smiles kindly at you, but never stops chain smoking and pops metformin like candy.
I don’t think there is a vegan option for a ketogenic metabolism. You can do lower carb vegan if you like. https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/vegan
Your right, 80% of the worlds vegetarians are economic vegetarians - It’s a critical humanitarian issue to increase the supply of animal based foods available to them (i.e. one egg a day can have a huge impact on developing children).
Calories yes, but humans don’t run on calories, we run on nutrition. a nutritionally complete WFPB is about 2.3kg-3kg of food per day, but the same complete nutrition on animal sources is 350g per day. If your just looking at kg/output per unit land pbf wins, but that is far less effective then abf. Not to mention 70% of the worlds agricultural land is pastoral and only suitable for ruminants anyway (can’t grow crops there)
The animal has to eat the food then. It doesn’t limit the needed space.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/feed-required-to-produce-one-kilogram-of-meat-or-dairy-product
Rising animals comes with a loss that could feed more humans or leave more space to nature. The biomass of wild animals has drastically shrunk.
How do you come to that conclusion? It’s just less volume for humans to eat.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore
Beef needs 120 m2 while rice needs 0.76 m2 for the same output. Those 70% pastoral grounds have to be weighted with 1/120th. They maybe create 1% of the food while agriculture creates 97% and some calories come from the oceans.
Ruminants are pastoral, they should be out grazing the land, fertilizing the ground, and churning the soil. They should not be in barns being fed human harvest crops.
Less volume, and you can get nutrition out of the 70% of pastoral land that doesn’t yield crops. for a well balanced nutritionally complete diet all foods can be sourced locally, no need to ship exotic plants around the world to cover nutritional gaps.
Pastoral vs Arable land - Most agricultural land cannot be used for crop farming. The space comparisons are a non-sequitur because the lands are not fungible.
ANYWAY we are getting far from the subject of this post. Be aware that modern metabolic illnesses (snoring, fatty liver, obesity, visceral obesity, type 2 diabetes, and probably cancer too, etc) are ROOTED in elevated insulin. If you, or someone you love, has these problems this book would be a great boon for their health. Keto is probably the most effective tool in fixing a broken metabolism, but not the only tool, people should be aware of it.
True, but you can only feed 1% of the population with it.
There is no pastoral land to feed 99% of the population.
You have posted the Chinese version of a book. China is more than 10% of the global population. They can’t go keto on pastoral land. If they go keto on barn fed animals my guess is that there will be a food shortage for the world.
If keto is needed for people to stay healthy the world has a very big problem.
It really does… thats why this book exists.
So… what is your core thesis here? People need to just accept being sick and metabolically unwell? I refuse that premise, people need to optimize their health.
There is no obvious solution. It’s even worse. Supposedly only grass fed beef is healthy so the barn fed beef doesn’t help much. People will compete for the resources and prices will rise until only the rich can eat healthy.
I’d love to see a source for this - As far as I have read red meat is amazing, and if you can afford pastoral regeneratively farmed beef - great, do it, but its a minor optimization - Both will improve your health.
Let me circle back to keto does not mean eating more meat, its eating less carbs, people’s protein requirements are the same regardless.
Update - We don’t have to solve every problem at the same time, we can just focus on taking steps to better health. Don’t like perfection be the enemy of good.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-disease/expert-answers/grass-fed-beef/faq-20058059
One increases inflamation, the other reduces it. Source is only the first Google hit.
The carbs have to be replaced. Eating more meat is the easiest option. Others are possible but none comes without other problems.
You have solved it for yourself but by spreading awareness you have to become rich to maintain that solution for the future or find a healthy diet for most of the population of the world.
Actually the world knows. There is no way around finding a healthy diet for everybody.
Sure, if you can afford grass fed beef go for it. But I haven’t seen any convincing data on animal based saturated fats that shows any negative effect. You might be interested in https://discuss.online/post/28134438 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2020.05.077
Yes, with fat, you can eat avocados, olive oil, chug seed oil if your feeling spicy. Most people don’t eat animal fat, most animal fat is thrown away, I can go to a animal butcher and get fat for free (or nearly free)… So there is a optimization here where people start consuming that fat rather then disposing of it.
That is no reason to give up. Spread the knowledge, as people get healthier they will have more time/energy/resources to find better solutions.