Al Sears, MD
11905 Southern Blvd.
Royal Palm Beach, FL 33411
February 22, 2024
I remember staying at my grandparents’ farm when I was growing up. I’d wake up to the smell of steak and eggs and race down the stairs to be the first at the table.
Your grandparents most likely ate this way, too. But today, it’s a different story.
Big Agra, mainstream medicine, and the media have all declared war on traditional protein-rich foods.
As a result, you’ve been forced onto a radical, unhealthy, inflammatory, disease-producing diet without your consent.
Then in 2016, the war on traditional foods took a drastic new turn.
The vegan lifestyle was once again all the rage. Demand for plant-based meat and egg products soared with foods like the Impossible Burger, Beyond Burger, and Quorn “chicken” nuggets.
These fake foods began to appear on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus everywhere.
Big Agra wanted you to believe these “meat alternatives” were healthier than what nature provides.
But they’re not.
Clever marketing campaigns wanted you to believe that these meat mockeries taste just like the real thing.
But they don’t.
And the public knows it. Demand for these fake foods has plummeted.
So what are the manufacturers of these knockoff products doing now?
They’re adding animal fat back into them to get them to taste more like the real thing!
I’ve been warning my patients to avoid meat alternatives for almost a decade. By definition, plant-based “egg and meat products” are processed, unnatural fake foods.
They’re made from more than 50 ingredients that are decidedly unrelated to the animals they mimic.
Most plant-based products also contain soy and seitan, which gives them their “authentic” texture.
Despite the media and marketing hype around soy being a source of good health, the GMO frankenfood is one of the worst plant foods you can possibly consume.
Soy is loaded with estrogen mimickers that cause erectile dysfunction, “man boobs,” loss of bone and muscle mass, and at least half a dozen different types of cancer.
Soy also impairs insulin secretion and might actually cause diabetes. And new studies reveal that it may even be connected to dementia and mental illness.1,2
Meanwhile, seitan – also known as “wheat meat” – is a starchy, grain-based concoction made from gluten and is highly processed.
And as you know, I’ve been recommending that you avoid grain-based foods for more than 30 years. If you followed a grain-based diet like the USDA recommends you’d be diseased, overweight, and prematurely old in no time at all.
Unhealthy Ingredients Hiding In These Fake Foods
These products, despite clever marketing, are anything but good for you.
Soy and seitan, while horrible for your health, are at least real foods. The other ingredients hiding in your veggie burger are anything but…
To get these ultra-processed meat alternatives to look and taste like real meat means they have a whole lot of chemical additives. Here’s a small example of what’s hiding in your plant “burger:”
- Tertiary butylhydroquinone. This synthetic preservative is linked to cancer, vision loss, liver enlargement, and convulsions in lab animals. Research suggests that in humans it damages the immune system, leaving you vulnerable to disease.3
- Propylene glycol. This water-absorbing synthetic substance is often used in the cosmetic industry. But it’s also an ingredient in e-cigarettes and antifreeze.
- Magnesium carbonate. Used as a food additive to prevent caking and retain color, magnesium carbonate is also used in flooring, fireproofing, and fire-extinguishing compounds. Too much causes a laxative effect.
Makers of meat alternatives point to studies that declare these compounds are safe. But here’s what they fail to mention…
Independent research has discovered the “studies” have been funded or commissioned by the very same companies that manufacture these fake foods.
Of course, you’ll never hear from the FDA or the mainstream media that meat alternatives are an unhealthy choice. They’re still pushing the big lie that cholesterol is bad for your heart and your health.
As a regular reader, you know I consider the war on cholesterol one of the greatest health food cons of all time.
Despite misinformation repeated endlessly by mainstream doctors, the media, and Big Agra, trying to remove animal fats and cholesterol from your diet is a bad idea. A meat-based diet is what made us the humans we are today.
It’s grains, carbohydrates, and processed foods that cause excessive weight gain, inflammation, and chronic disease – not dietary fat.
Bring Back Real Beef
I consider grass-fed meat to be perhaps the healthiest food you can eat. Compared to grain-fed animals, products from grass-fed animals have 10 times more omega-3 fats, more vitamins B, E, D, and K2, more CoQ10 and zinc, and more antioxidants like glutathione and superoxide dismutase (SOD).4
But don’t be fooled by Big Food fakes. To make sure you’re getting the real deal, here’s what to look for:
- Search For These Keywords When Shopping. Next time you’re shopping, keep an eye out for key terms that show your food isn’t coming from Big Agra farm.
- “Grass-fed and grass-finished” ensures animals ate a natural diet their whole lives and were never “fattened up” with grain.
- “Organic” signifies avoidance of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.
- “Biodynamic” farming goes even further, treating farms as closed, self-nourishing systems.
- Order Your Food Online. For a list of farms that only raise grass-fed and finished meat, check out these two websites: American Grassfed, Eat Wild, and A Greener World. To order online, I suggest these sites:
✓ US Wellness Meats. I know the owner John Woods and I trust his products.
✓ Polyface Farms. The food from my friend Joel Salatin’s farm isn’t just healthier, it tastes a heck of a lot better.
✓ Okeechobee Farms. This farm is not too far from my clinic. They make and deliver the homemade bone broth I offer all my patients. - Look for third-party certification. Groups like AGA, A Greener World, or the Global Animal Partnership offer certification labels you can check to verify it is real grass-fed beef.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD, CNS
References:
- Lavigne C, et al. “Cod and soy proteins compared with casein improve glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in rats.” Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2000;278(3):E491-E500.
- Svensson T, et al. “Midlife Intakes of the Isoflavone Genistein and Soy and the Risk of Late-life Cognitive Impairment: The JPHC Saku Mental Health Study.” J Epidemiol. 2023;33(7):342-349.
- Naidenko OV, et al. “Investigating Molecular Mechanisms of Immunotoxicity and the Utility of ToxCast for Immunotoxicity Screening of Chemicals Added to Food.” Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021;18(7):3332. Published 2021 Mar 24.
- Nogoy KMC, et al. “Fatty Acid Composition of Grain- and Grass-Fed Beef and Their Nutritional Value and Health Implication.” Food Sci Anim Resour. 2022;42(1):18-33.
