Is Meat Consumption Contributing to Global Obesity?

[00:03:29]   What led you to this point that you felt compelled to do this research?

• We wanted to see if the food that has been sustaining human life for the last 2 million years, which is mostly animal protein before the advent of agriculture, is also contributing to obesity.
• We found differences between 50 000 young males studied, depending on the level of enzyme that helps to digest the amino acids and their body mass index.
• Levels of the enzyme correlated with their body mass index.
• A Seventh Day Adventists study on 100 000 people found that vegans have lower body mass index than vegetarians and vegetarians have lower body mass index than people who eat everything.

[00:05:00]   Carl voices his opinion on BMI with which Dr Henneberg agrees but says that there is a reasonable and statistically significant correlation.

[00:07:08]   Are there some portions of populations that have more enzymatic persistence and be more capable of breaking down animal protein?

• The percentage of this population would it be very minor.

[00:07:52]   Carl explains that he thinks obesity is due to overeating of any type of food thereby consuming excess calories and not being active. Dr Henneberg voices his opinion:

• The caloric balance is an obvious cause of obesity if there is a big caloric surplus.
• We are trying to show that the order in which foods are eaten and consumption of specific types of food may add to the problem.
• When we equalized caloric intake of 174 nations in the world, that levels of prevalence of obesity still showed relationships to eating both sugar and meat.
• Equally, when we removed differences in caloric excess, there is still about 13% of variance in obesity prevalence that is explained by eating meat or eating sugar.
• The food we consume is not exactly the calories a body obtains from that food.
  • food has to be digested in our digestive tract,
  • our digestive tract is also full of various bacteria and other microbiota that interfere with processing of what is in the food, i.e., soluble fiber,
  • therefore, various kinds of food consumed, give us various calory gains.

[00:11:15]   You realize that your research flies in the face of actual clinical trial outcomes, where high protein, low carb, low fat diets proved a thermogenic effect and proved to be beneficial?

• They may be beneficial in particular food composition.
• However, in the sample of almost all countries of the world who obviously have people eating various levels of carbohydrates, fats, and protein: those with greater meat consumption have greater prevalence of obesity.
• It is not eating meat as such that contributes to obesity.

[00:13:03]   Except for fish all meats were included in this study amongst others luncheon meats, cold cuts, sausages, and hotdogs etc. These types of foods have biological effects that lead to obesity and chronic inflammation and does not seem fair to include them under the term meat.

[00:18:55]   Carl expresses his concern that taking into consideration the big Vegan movement in the US, the mainstream media is going to pull this study apart and asks the Dr Wenpeng to explain the study in his own words.

• Meat provides necessary amino acids.
• We only suggest that people minimize meat intake, not avoid it.

[00:20:24]   What people fail to realize is one of the greatest roles that amino acids play is the vocabulary and syntax for cellular communication that is produced by the endoplasmic reticulum of every single cell. Why don't scientists make that clearer?

• The body is a very dynamic system and saying that amino acids is only building blocks of protein in the body is not explaining the entire role.

[00:25:40]   Carl asks Dr Henneberg to tell people what they hope individuals will take away from this study.

• The composition of our daily diet.
• Adding meat on top of staple foods like carbohydrates.
• Meat is added as flavor with staple foods rather than being the staple food.
• The message is limit meat consumption to a much smaller quantities.

[00:28:05]   Astonishing results by eating just 1 type of food at 1 meal (not combining foods) – tune in!