Plant-Based Diets Mean Continual Hunger
by Clara P. Triane, M.D. and Sol Ta Triane
It is sometimes said that carbohydrates are addictive. If you eat one cookie you will likely want a second, a third, maybe the whole box. It's difficult to eat just a tiny piece of cake or only a few nuts.
Though there is an addictive component to plant foods, it's possible there may be, even more importantly, a physiological survival mechanism that makes you constantly ravenous when you eat plants.
Our ancestors preferentially ate meat whenever possible. When they were unable to obtain meat, they consumed plants as a backup.
Meat is very dense in the two essential macronutrients: fat and protein. Plants, on the other hand, have very little fat and protein, and the protein they do contain is much less usable and the fat less healthy than that from animal sources. In general, plants are high in carbohydrates, a non-essential nutrient. Carbohydrates are not essential because the body can make all the glucose that it needs without having to ingest it through the diet.
When you eat carbs the body may interpret that as a sign that the optimum human food, meat, is not available, and that you have been forced to eat low nutrient foods. Consuming carbohydrates triggers hunger hormones like grehlin. Eating carbs also triggers the release of insulin, a hormone that makes your body store fat. When you consume carbs the body tries to store as much energy as possible, in preparation for challenges such as the wintertime. Your body responds based on millions of years of evolution but does not know how to interpret your modern factory, industry-supporting food habits. Your body doesn't know that you have a cupboard full of cookies, chips, candy, muffins, cereals, crackers, granola bars, pasta, rice and bread.
When you eat meat—which is high in the right protein, the right fat and the right micronutrients—satiation hormones, such as leptin, are triggered.
Plants are comparatively low in nutrients, so if one is only going to eat plants, one has to consume an enormous quantity of them in order to sustain oneself, and your hunger hormones let you know you need to eat. They let you know again and again throughout the day. The Standard Modern Diet has created a snacking culture, an attempted survival mechanism. Therefore, it may be due to this very intelligent survival mechanism that, as you eat carbs, you continue in a state of hunger and need to eat many times a day.
Our ancestors occasionally ate small amounts of fruit at specific times of year when the hunt came up short. Fruit growing in the wild hundreds or thousands of years ago were not nearly as sweet as they are today. Today’s fruits have been developed by food industry to be very sugary and extra addictive, just as modern vegetables have been developed to be extra starchy. The sugar and starch content in today’s fruits and vegetables are much higher than in those that our ancestors consumed, if they even bothered. They didn’t have type 2 diabetes, and now we know why.
Veganism
Can one survive on plants only? Yes, for a period of time—but never optimally. Biologically, plants are emergency food for humans. Plants were our ancestors’ backup when they couldn’t get enough meat.
Some people claim their health improved when they became vegan. If they were originally eating a diet high in processed foods and industrial seed oils, they may have felt better eating more whole plant foods, but only for a brief period. The body structure built when one ate animal foods fares better and holds up for a while against the semi-starvation vegan diet. After a while, however, vegans likely will become weaker, lose muscle, lose skin thickness and elasticity, have frizzy and patchy hair, sunken eyes, brittler bones. Vegans tend to feel less energetic, more anxious and depressed. Vegans experience bloating, gas and gastrointestinal problems, and a host of other problems, arising not only from the lack of nutrition, but the onslaught of plant toxicity.
They say they’re doing it for the animals, but vegans don’t usually want to hear the facts about the deaths of sentient beings. Can Compassionate People Eat Meat?
Vegan Fuss and Semi-Starvation
Have you ever noticed how vegans tend to fuss about how delicious their food is? They are trying to convince themselves and others about the palatability of their food. It may also be because they are very nutrient deficient, and they are excited that they are about to eat something, anything, because their bodies are reading their nutritional state to be that of slow starvation.
When you eat meat you feel satisfied, often for hours. The Depths of Satisfaction that a meat-eater experiences cannot be experienced by a vegan. Why not give your body the ancestrally appropriate food that it needs to thrive?
Is Eating Meat More Expensive?
Why Some People Will Never Fix Their Diet
Read more articles and dining suggestions by Clara P. Triane, M.D. and Sol Ta Triane
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