Edina asks, “I agree with an ancestral diet, but lately there’s a very strong push for a vegan plant-based diet in the alternative media lately, and they all cite evidence showing how animal protein and fat increase insulin resistance and increased IgF1 and cancer risk among other problems. I was very confused about this until I read your article last week about how methionine in the meat causes cancer, and we need to eat more glycine-rich foods. If someone doesn’t eat organ meats and bone broth, is it better then to avoid animal muscle meats?”
Chris: I wouldn’t say avoid, but I think it would be good to consider other sources of glycine. You could take glycine as a supplement. It’s pretty easy to do. You can take collagen peptides as a supplement. They provide glycine as well. There are other foods that provide glycine. If you just go to type in “glycine sources in food,” you’ll find some good stuff there. Then B12, folate, and B6 also help address the potential issues from excess methionine consumption in the absence of adequate glycine because as you’ll learn later in the course, if you don’t already know, B12, folate, and B6 are important in methylation. What can happen if you get too much methionine and you’re not able to methylate properly, that methionine will get converted into homocysteine, which can increase the risk of Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease, both of which, of course, would reduce lifespan. So, yes, we’ll be covering more issues in more detail as we go through the course. I’m very well aware of the push for vegan and plant-based diet, but unfortunately, based on a number of different misunderstandings both in terms of nutritional adequacy and also environmental and ecological impact, I’m doing my best to change that. If you miss my debate on Joe Rogan with Dr. Joel Kahn, a vegan advocate, you should check that out. It was a four-hour debate on this topic, a conversation that reached a lot of people. We can just keep doing the best we can to get the word out.