The facts and data do not support the propaganda whatsoever. The agenda is being pushed by the Food conglomerates who want to push their high processed, high sugar, highly addictive and unhealthy food products.
Meat is good for you. There are experts who might disagree with me, and many researchers continue to search for evidence linking meat to heart disease, for example.
But as a Harvard-trained, board-certified psychiatrist specializing in nutritional and metabolic psychiatry, I’ve long been curious about the relationship between food and brain health, as well as overall well-being. And in my research, I’ve yet to find a credible, plausible health argument against eating meat of any kind (including red meat, seafood, and poultry).
In fact, no other food group is nutritious enough, safe enough, or geographically accessible enough to recommend as the healthy foundation of the optimal human diet.
So if I could only afford to buy food from one food group, I’d prioritize meat.
Why meat is actually good for you
Meat is good for gut health because it’s non-irritating, easy to digest, and supports healthy insulin levels without promoting blood glucose spikes.
It also provides all of the macronutrients and micronutrients we need, including some that are difficult or impossible to obtain from plant foods. For instance, it’s an excellent source of every B vitamin, including B7, which plants contain very little of, and B12, which plants do not contain at all.
Only meat contains heme iron, a form of iron at least three times easier for us to absorb than the non-heme iron in plants. And only animal-source foods contain the MK‑4 form of vitamin K2, which is easier to absorb (and is the form used by the human brain).
Some scientists even argue that eating meat made us human — meaning that it allowed us to devote less energy and bodily real estate to the long intestinal tract needed to process high-fiber, high-plant diets, so that we could invest more energy in developing our uniquely oversized brains.
How to nourish, protect, and energize your brain with meat
Here’s how to incorporate meat in your diet the right way:
- Choose healthy meats. Whenever possible, choose meats from wild animals or animals that have been raised humanely, allowed ample access to the outdoors, and fed a species-appropriate diet.
- Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you can’t access or afford high-quality meat, just do the best you can.
- It doesn’t have to be red meat. Shellfish, fatty fish, duck, and poultry liver are all highly nutritious alternatives to red meat (meat of mammals).
- Eat fresh. Choose unprocessed fresh (or freshly frozen) meats whenever possible.
- Don’t fear natural animal fats. Fattier cuts of meat are more flavorful, more nutritious, and often less expensive. Unfortunately, pork and poultry fat from conventionally-raised animals can be high in linoleic acid, a fragile omega-6 fatty acid with a tendency to degrade into toxic byproducts that can cause damaging oxidative stress throughout the brain and the rest of the body.
- Cook gently. Don’t overcook meat, as this will damage nutrients and flavor. Trim away any burned or blackened areas of meats grilled or cooked at high temperatures.
Are Plant Proteins as good as Animal Proteins?
Finding nutrients that activate immune cells
Chen’s lab focuses on understanding how metabolites, nutrients and other molecules circulating in the blood influence the development of cancer and response to cancer treatments. For the new study, two postdoctoral fellows, Hao Fan, PhD and Siyuan Xia, PhD, both co-first authors, assembled a “blood nutrient” compound library consisting of 255 bioactive molecules derived from nutrients. They screened the compounds in this new library for their ability to influence anti-tumor immunity by activating CD8+ T cells, a group of immune cells critical for killing cancerous or virally infected cells.
After the scientists evaluated the top six candidates in both human and mouse cells, they saw that TVA performed the best. TVA is the most abundant trans fatty acid present in human milk, but the body cannot produce it on its own. Only about 20% of TVA is broken down into other byproducts, leaving 80% circulating in the blood. “That means there must be something else it does, so we started working on it more,” Chen said.
To see that a single nutrient like TVA has a very targeted mechanism on a targeted immune cell type … I find that really amazing and intriguing.
Jing Chen, PhD
The researchers then conducted a series of experiments with cells and mouse models of diverse tumor types. Feeding mice a diet enriched with TVA significantly reduced the tumor growth potential of melanoma and colon cancer cells compared to mice fed a control diet. The TVA diet also enhanced the ability of CD8+ T cells to infiltrate tumors.
The team also performed a series of molecular and genetic analyses to understand how TVA was affecting the T cells. These included a new technique for monitoring transcription of single-stranded DNA called kethoxal-assisted single-stranded DNA sequencing, or KAS-seq, developed by Chuan He, PhD, the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at UChicago and another senior author of the study. These additional assays, done by both the Chen and He labs, showed that TVA inactivates a receptor on the cell surface called GPR43 which is usually activated by short-chain fatty acids often produced by gut microbiota. TVA overpowers these short-chain fatty acids and activates a cellular signaling process known as the CREB pathway, which is involved in a variety of functions including cellular growth, survival, and differentiation. The team also showed that mouse models where the GPR43 receptor was exclusively removed from CD8+ T cells also lacked their improved tumor fighting ability.
Finally, the team also worked with Justin Kline, MD, Professor of Medicine at UChicago, to analyze blood samples taken from patients undergoing CAR-T cell immunotherapy treatment for lymphoma. They saw that patients with higher levels of TVA tended to respond to treatment better than those with lower levels. They also tested cell lines from leukemia by working with Wendy Stock, MD, the Anjuli Seth Nayak Professor of Medicine, and saw that TVA enhanced the ability of an immunotherapy drug to kill leukemia cells.
Focus on the nutrients, not the food
The study suggests that TVA could be used as a dietary supplement to help various T cell-based cancer treatments, although Chen points out that it is important to determine the optimized amount of the nutrient itself, not the food source. There is a growing body of evidence about the detrimental health effects of consuming too much red meat and dairy, so this study shouldn’t be taken as an excuse to eat more cheeseburgers and pizza; rather, it indicates that nutrient supplements such as TVA could be used to promote T cell activity. Chen thinks there may be other nutrients that can do the same.
“There is early data showing that other fatty acids from plants signal through a similar receptor, so we believe there is a high possibility that nutrients from plants can do the same thing by activating the CREB pathway as well,” he said.
The new research also highlights the promise of this “metabolomic” approach to understanding how the building blocks of diet affect our health. Chen said his team hopes to build a comprehensive library of nutrients circulating in the blood to understand their impact on immunity and other biological processes like aging.
“After millions of years of evolution, there are only a couple hundred metabolites derived from food that end up circulating in the blood, so that means they could have some importance in our biology,” Chen said. “To see that a single nutrient like TVA has a very targeted mechanism on a targeted immune cell type, with a very profound physiological response at the whole organism level—I find that really amazing and intriguing.”
The study, “Trans-vaccenic acid reprograms CD8+ T cells and anti-tumor immunity,” was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants CA140515, CA174786, CA276568, 1375 HG006827, K99ES034084), a UChicago Biological Sciences Division Pilot Project Award, the Ludwig Center at UChicago, the Sigal Fellowship in Immuno-oncology, the Margaret E. Early Medical Research Trust, the AASLD Foundation a Harborview Foundation Gift Fund, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Nutrient Found in Meat and Dairy Improves Cancer Defense.
Remember they started telling us that the red meat, humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and what made our brain develop to its level today, was bad for you? The same people told us to stop using natural animal fats and butter and instead use seed oils (turned out seed oils are cancer causing nightmares).
Scientists at University of Chicago discover that trans-vaccenic acid (TVA), a fatty acid found in beef, lamb, and dairy products, improves the ability of immune cells to fight tumors.
Trans-vaccenic acid (TVA), a long-chain fatty acid found in meat and dairy products from grazing animals such as cows and sheep, improves the ability of CD8+ T cells to infiltrate tumors and kill cancer cells, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Chicago.
The research, published this week in Nature, also shows that patients with higher levels of TVA circulating in the blood responded better to immunotherapy, suggesting that it could have potential as a nutritional supplement to complement clinical treatments for cancer.
“There are many studies trying to decipher the link between diet and human health, and it’s very difficult to understand the underlying mechanisms because of the wide variety of foods people eat. But if we focus on just the nutrients and metabolites derived from food, we begin to see how they influence physiology and pathology,” said Jing Chen, PhD, the Janet Davison Rowley Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine at UChicago and one of the senior authors of the new study. “By focusing on nutrients that can activate T cell responses, we found one that actually enhances anti-tumor immunity by activating an important immune pathway.”
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