Meat Is the New Tobacco

Kathy Freston

Health and Wellness Activist, Author

3-5-12

For many years, tobacco companies were able to maintain a strong pro-tobacco façade. Smoking focuses the mind. It's good for you (doctors smoke!). It's great for weight loss. It's sexy. It's cool. The tobacco industry spent big bucks to keep these ideas in the mind of the public for as long as it could.

And for many years after the lethal effects were universally known and undeniable, some of our nation's smartest and most successful businessmen continued to believe, because it was in their interest to believe, that "nicotine is not addictive." (Watch the seven most powerful tobacco executives of 1994 make exactly that statement, under oath, to Congress -- not even two decades ago.)

I was reminded of how far tobacco has fallen reading the New York Times magazine interview with perhaps the most successful screenplay writer in history, Joe Eszterhas, who has lost 80 percent of his larynx to tobacco, and has apologized for his glamorization of smoking in such films as Basic Instinct.

When I think about the effect of animal products on human health, I'm reminded of how quickly we've done a national about face on tobacco, and I look forward to the day when the Timesmagazine has a similar apology from someone who promoted animal products -- because the evidence is in and it continues to grow: Animal products kill a lot more Americans than tobacco does.

The West's three biggest killers -- heart disease, cancer, and stroke -- are linked to excessive animal product consumption, and vegetarians have much lower risks of all three. Vegetarians also have afraction of the obesity and diabetes rates of the general population -- of course, both diseases are at epidemic levels and are only getting worse.

But much more important than the vegetarian community's general statistics are what can be done with the right vegetarian diet: For some years now, doctors have been not just preventing, but even reversing, heart disease using a low-fat vegetarian diet.

That's right -- the disease that kills almost as many Americans as everything else combined can be not just prevented, but reversed, with a low fat plant-based diet, as documented by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn in Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease.

There's a link from animal product consumption to our country's No. 2 killer, too: According to theAmerican Institute for Cancer Research, about as much cancer could be prevented by diet and exercise as is caused by smoking -- and you know what's causing all that cancer? It's not whole grains, legumes, fruits, or vegetables. Dr. T. Colin Campbell has documented the link between cancer and animal products.

There's a lot of money in the meat industry, just like there's a lot of money in big tobacco. For many years, the tobacco establishment pointed to elderly smokers like George Burns and millions of others as proof that their very-natural product could not be harmful. Even long-distance runners and members of the military could be found smoking a cigarette at the end of a long run or intense drill.

Similarly, today the meat industry points to the fact that there are an awful lot of old meat-eaters, conveniently ignoring our sky-high heart disease and cancer rates, as well as our ballooning rates of obesity and diabetes, all of which are linked to their products.

Bill Clinton went on what he was told was a healthy diet after his emergency quadruple-bypass in 2004, and yet he didn't lose weight or feel better, and he required follow-up surgery in 2010. After that surgery, he was introduced to the work of Dr. Esselystyn and Dr. Campbell, and he went vegan -- which allowed him to lose 24 pounds in a year and feel better than ever, as he discusses with Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

Eszterhas wrote in his tobacco mea culpa, "My hands are bloody; so are Hollywood's. My cancer has caused me to attempt to cleanse mine. I don't wish my fate upon anyone in Hollywood, but I beg that Hollywood stop imposing it upon millions of others."

He could just as easily have been writing about animal foods, which is why I was delighted to readMark Bittman's recent New York Times column in which he noted that meat consumption is down more than 10 percent since 2007. It seems that more and more people are catching on to the perils of animal foods.

In large part, that's thanks to the work of Doctors Esslestyn and Campbell, so I've also been delighted by the success of the film Forks Over Knives, an entertaining documentary that chronicles the success of their work. Ellen and Oprah have both plugged the movie, but perhaps even more importantly, Dr. Sanjay Gupta called Forks Over Knives "a great film," and Dr. Mehmet Oz said to his fans, "I loved it and I need all of you to see it."

It may be awhile before eating a chicken wing is seen, as it should be, as the heath equivalent of smoking a cigarette -- the meat industry is still more powerful than tobacco has ever been, and most of the medical establishment is not yet as nutrition-focused as progressive scientists and doctors like T. Colin Campbell and Dean Ornish.

But the best research clearly points in that direction, and more and more, I'm seeing cause for optimism. 

Happy Eating!