Podcast: Meat, To Eat or Not to Eat – That is the Question.

As a practitioner of natural medicine I am often asked my view on eating meat. My patients are usually quite surprised when I say that I sometimes eat it several times a day. As with most concepts in ancient Chinese medical science, very little is seen as black or white. The consumption of meat can be applied therapeutically for one individual whereas not eating meat can be medically indicated for another. So how is this determined for a given individual? It comes down to an analysis of the internal energetic state of temperature, cold to hot.

Ancient Chinese medical science categorizes foods based on their energetic properties. Meat from animals that have a higher body temperature than humans impart a quality of yang/warming to us. Excess consumption causes us to become too hot. A little is good, a lot isn’t better. Animals that have a cooler body temperature than us have a cooling effect on us. Fish that live in cold water and move slowly are more cooling and support yin. Crustaceans are red and move very quickly and although they live in cold water and are cold-blooded are very heating.

Chicken, as you can see, is very hot. This is why chicken soup is renowned for helping with colds. The addition of the energetic heat of the animal boosts human yang energy which together with water is what is needed to push a cold invasion, known as a virus, back to the outside.

Meat that we consume in modern culture is muscle meat. Muscles move animals therefore are very yang or warm in nature. In ancient Chinese medical science, organs are called yin organs meaning they are energetically cooler than muscles. There is evidence that hunter-gatherers preferred the organs and fat of animals as opposed to the muscles. This is another tip we can learn from, eating more kidney, liver and heart is less heating and therefore less threatening to our health. Further, modern agriculture has mastered the technology to grow both animals and plants at accelerated rates using chemicals. Faster is yang which equals warm, so all industrial foods are energetically more heating than naturally-grown ones.

Meat can be used therapeutically to combat cold. As warm-blooded mammals the main threat to life we humans face is cold. We are on average 98.5° f so any temperature below that takes energy from us. However, because we are warm blooded we have a ferocious metabolism that produces enough warmth that our comfort zone is in the 70° range. When the environmental temperature drops much below that, more warming foods like meat can help our metabolism keep up with the cold challenge. It therefore seems wise to eat less and less-heating meats in summer as opposed to winter.

The reason that paleo diets work in many people to foster weight loss is because overweight people have an element of cold. Cold caused by inactivity and consuming cold drinks and food makes our digestion cold and sluggish. Eating more meat and cooked vegetables with fewer simple carbohydrates for a therapeutic period of perhaps months can warm digestion to accelerate weight loss. Stopping cold fluids and food enhances this process. This is called a clearing diet which can deplete energy if employed long term. We need some building foods to sustain us over the long haul.

To summarize, ancient Chinese medical science points us toward a conscious use of meat in our diets. Choosing meats based on the season, eating less meat than has become customary in our culture, and eating less muscle meat but more fat and organs are wise moves to support health.

From my patients I hear four main stories of why they struggle with eating meat. I understand each of these concerns. It is difficult to sort through all the stories we can find out there in information land and come to a conclusion about how best to support our health and mitigate our impact on the planet.

1. Meats link to heart disease – Red meat has been intensely vilified in western culture due to the misguided link of saturated fat to heart disease. Diet is multifactorial so implicating one element of it is a very difficult endeavor. Using ancient Chinese medical science reasoning, the SAD, standard American diet is the likely culprit. Its high amounts of sugar, dairy, processed food-like substances, meat, pharmaceuticals, and simply too much volume taxes our livers enormously. As we learned in my Metabolism Part 2 post, an overworked liver creates tremendous heat to which our body must respond in order to prevent damage. Accumulating cholesterol, a form of fat, in blood vessels is just one of its responses.
2. Ethical considerations about killing another living being – Meat does present a conflict for us as humans since it involves the loss of life of another being. Fear of death is inherent in all of us as it reminds us of our mortality. Modern meat production has severed consumers from what was once a sacred act of slaughtering and butchering animals that we eat. This loss together with consumerism contributes to our unconsciously eating meat. It is just another consumer product that comes from the grocery store that we feel no life connection to. This is a real loss for modern humanity.
3. Environmental concerns about the impact of modern agriculture – As the human population on the planet has grown to 8+ billion our impact on the environment has become enormous. Modern meat production is but one aspect of the larger problems created in supplying food to this population. Eating less meat and acquiring locally produced grass fed products is likely a good way to mitigate our impact slightly.
4. Concern that eating meat causes one to be more aggressive and violent – Again here, using ancient Chinese medical reasoning, the liver organ system includes anger. Healthy anger establishes our boundaries. Overheating the liver with the SAD diet described above can lead to a rise in pathological anger. This brings us once again to the point that eating less muscle meat less often as well as eating a wholefood based diet is wise.