Gradually eliminating all meat intake

[crisology]

After cutting out all meat intake, I never went back to consume
it again. I then excluded dairy, abruptly. For a few months I
experienced more cravings for dairy than meat. Excluding dairy seemed
relatively challenging as I was also phasing out caffeine, grains,
beer, beans and HFCS, too. I never went back to consume dairy again
and I really lost the taste for it. I used attentional retraining
techniques to replace dairy with walnuts, avocado, coconut and hemp
seed milk, which I later eliminated/minimized. At times, I would go
back and consume some beans. Less often, I resorted to whole grains.
Following each meal that I went back to consume beans or grains, I
noticed the differences in digestion were more obvious (during both
the relapse and recovery).

If you look at the Figure 1 graphs (http://archinte.ama-assn.org/
cgi/content/full/archinternmed.2011.2287#IOI110027T2) in this recent
study, there is clearly a linear hazard ratio for meat intake (Pan,
2012). This is as one would expect since the exclusion of meat and
foods digested with similar difficulty, gradually result in improved
digestion and increased energy. A little meat (or dairy) intake may
only be experienced as relatively slight or temporary discomfort/
anxiety with some lasting or less obvious effects of compromised plant
nutrient absorption (depending on the level of resistance, tolerance
or discrimination capability). Even though one may only notice slight
differences in digestion (if at all), this wouldn't guarantee that one
is not hastening a more insidious or chronic condition with the intake
of excess protein, fat, cooked food chemicals, etc. Who notices the
moment of cancer initiation or cumulative affects of diet compromises
without eliminating (gradually or abruptly) the diet related factors
to experience contrast? Although digestive improvements from eating
mucous cleansing/alkaline foods can be experienced remarkably quickly,
who can notice pivotal points that functional foods (berries/sprouts,
etc) impact recovery of chronic conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer,
CHD, etc? Digestion compromises parallel (comorbidities) other
preventable diseases that are less obvious or develop more gradually.
Conversely, monitoring healthy modifications during detox provides
opportunity to habilitate and move into more awareness of the effects
of various foods on digestion (interoreception), like shifting from
type 1 blindsight to type 2. Eventually, one can develop trust for
internal feedback. Until then, there is research available to verify
the gradual affects that can be experienced with diet modification.

Even orthodox dietitians generally admit that heavy meat
consumption poses greater risks for the onset of degenerative diseases
but that some assumed lower meat intake could in some way offer a
"balanced diet". This would be like randomly throwing away dimes
(instead of dollars) without counting the money and assuming a
profitable budget is being balanced through the process. But with all
the obvious research of health conditions associated with meat intake,
there’s no logical reason to believe humans could benefit from any
small amount of meat intake as the evidence of decreased health
expectancy associated with varying amounts of meat intake continues to
accumulate:

"[T]he association between red meat intake and risk of total
mortality was linear... When treating red
meat intake as a continuous variable, the elevated risk of total
mortality in the pooled analysis for a 1-
serving-per-day increase was 12% (HR, 1.12; 95% CI, 1.09-1.15)
for total red meat, 13% (HR, 1.13;
95% CI, 1.07-1.20) for unprocessed red meat" (Pan, 2012).


References:

Pan, A. Sun, Q, Bernstein, A. M., Schulze, M. B., Manson, J. E.,
Stampfer, M. J., Willett, W. C., Hu, F. B. Red Meat Consumption and
Mortality. Arch Intern Med 2012;0:archinternmed.2011.2287v1-9.
Retrieved online March 16, from
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/archinternmed.2011.2287#IOI110027T2

Chris