Meat!
Down on the Pharm IV
by Dr. Lonnie Lowery


Usually in an exploration of functional foods, one hears a lot about vegetables, fruits, herbs, phytochemicals and such. That's all cool to learn, but most humans are after all omnivorous. That is, man does not generally live by plants alone.

Even a review of the anthropological literature suggests that we've been butchering animals for a very long time. I'm not sorry if that disturbs some people. I like my big brain and I like my smallish gut. But beyond evolutionary arguments, there are good things to know about meat... good things for bodybuilders who might be living exclusively on milk proteins.

With what I'm about to share in mind, it's almost disturbing that meat often gets slammed in public education efforts. Sure a clever, opinionated person can indeed manage to live without meat, but it takes far more planning than most people think. Let's take a look at why meat is so bloody helpful (pun intended!)...


The Obvious

Think about the food chain for a moment. Herbivores graze all day long on relatively nutrient-poor plants. They have huge guts (intestinal tracts) to extract as much of the nutrition as possible for their bodies. Day after day they spend nearly all of their time grazing. Then along comes a predator and aggressively pins down and eats one of the herbivores. Bam!

All of the nutrients that were so gradually and constantly accumulated in the tissues of the plant-eater become instant nutrition for the carnivore. It may be hard to witness, but the bloody feast is so rich in nutrients that the carnivore doesn't have to eat for a comparatively long time.

Now, the price of this lifestyle is that carnivores have to be cognizant and clever. They have evolved in more ways than just forward facing eyes toward this end. Bigger, often highly intelligent brains may be energetically costly to maintain, but they help plan attacks and score meaty meals. Such feasts allow for days or even weeks "off" to do other things... mate, take care of young, form complex social groups, learn, go bowling, etc.

What does this have to do with a modern bodybuilder? Well, meats remain very nutrient-rich. Sadly, with so much hoopla these days over nutrient density (you know, key nutrients divided by total kcal), this gets overlooked. A guy or gal looking for quality mass should not be swayed by talks of nutrient density that so often get promulgated to the over-fat public.

Broccoli, for example, is extremely nutrient dense, but despite its many merits, will not pack muscle tissue on an athlete when over-consumed. There are just too few calories (kcal) for it to be eaten a dozen times per day. I'm sure you see my mathematical point by now: Dividing a food's nutrient content by nearly zero kcal equals very high nutrient density (again, a ratio of vitamins, minerals, etc. to its kcal), but that's not total nutrient content.

Gross nutrient content is where meats shine. Look in almost any college textbook for sources of key vitamins and minerals. With a few exceptions, meat is near the top of the list! Makes you glad you're an apex predator, doesn't it?


The Not-So Obvious

I have absolutely nothing against fruits and vegetables. Beyond vitamins and minerals, they boast thousands of cool phytochemicals (phyto = plant) in complex combinations that help our health and physique. But researchers are increasingly coming back to meat — which I'll define loosely as animal muscle — because it's rich in "zoochemicals".

That's right. So, in addition to a rational intake of several servings of veggies per day, meat is getting recognized for special, almost pharmaceutical properties. Do the various sources of animal flesh differ metabolically or behaviorally come dinner time? Yes.(36) But we're talking about eating the muscles of critters in general. Here are some compounds and potential benefits:

• Quality protein (duh)

• Vitamin B12 (essential nutrient, red cell formation, energy)

• Heme Iron (readily absorbed form, fights fatigue in some persons)

• Zinc (readily absorbed, sub-par in most diets)

• n-3 fatty acids (potent EPA and DHA compared to the plant-based linolenic acid)

• Creatine (muscular power and cell volume)

• Carnosine (cellular buffering, antioxidant effects, longevity)

With all the recent attention given to beta-alanine as a necessary carnosine precursor, you may already be fretting about human carnosinase as a fault in my list but bear with me. To be sure, meat in realistic quantities cannot match a supplement (for creatine or carnosine dosage), but you may be surprised what researchers are saying. First, however, let's look at B12 and iron — stuff that meat provides like no other food.


Quality Protein

I won't dwell on the simplicities of complete versus incomplete proteins. Clearly, meat is a good, solid complete protein source. It contains all the essential amino acids. The biological value of beef is 75 (egg and milk are 100 and 93, respectively) and its PDCAAS is 0.92 (egg white and casein being 1.00). Although these numbers look a bit inferior to some of the other "bodybuilder proteins", there's more to it than that.

First of all, the comparatively solid nature of meat as it enters the stomach slows gastric emptying, providing a nice controlled anti-catabolic stream of amino acids over time (handy at bedtime).

And if we get a bit more speculative, it's interesting to note that cod protein may have special bodybuilding-friendly qualities.(40) Even fishmeal compares very favorably to plant proteins, particularly when livestock are put on anabolic agents.(4, 30) In humans, some researchers have reported superior muscle growth using meat versus lacto-ovo-vegetarian sources.(7)

That would echo the anecdotes from many competitive bodybuilders who swear that tons of meat are the key to massive growth. Of course, the latter findings should be read in light of somewhat contradictory follow-up data and a consideration of which non-animal sources were available.(17) Nonetheless, the quality proteins do add nicely to the very rich combination of other nutrients in beef, chicken, and fish.


B12

Vitamin B12, cyanocobalamin, has long enjoyed interest among athletes beyond its essential role in the body. Thousands of persons swear by its fatigue-fighting effects and its coenzyme has even been sold as an anabolic agent. (Anyone get huge on dibencozide yet?) Now, whether or not you buy into such things, B12 is clearly an essential nutrient as evidenced by those with untreated pernicious anemia.

Sadly, such individuals may have their condition masked to some extent by the folate fortification that's now law, but the nerve degeneration that still develops clearly shows how the body needs B12. And where does a healthy person get this vitamin? You guessed it: meat!


Heme Iron

Yep, I am the one who wrote about the dangers of excess iron in men. They are real. But there are also risks for some of us regarding low iron status as well. So I'll relate a cautionary tail. As someone with a family history of "thick blood" (polycythemia), my own bimonthly blood donations — plus an over-reliance on skim milk, whey and casein and a very high fiber diet — actually left me low in this important nutrient.

Did you know there's an old school term called "milk anemia"? It has to do with factors in dairy that interfere with iron absorption, including calcium. Did you know that hard frequent training and even (otherwise) healthful eating can cause iron problems too? Here are a few quotes:

"In a study of men aged 19 to 29 years, resistance (strength) training was associated with a significant reduction in serum ferritin and other iron indices."(National Cattlemen's Beef Assoc.).

"...whole body iron loss was significantly greater during exercise... than rest... and the average iron loss was significantly greater in males (0.09 mg.m-2.h-1) than females (0.04 mg.m-2.h-1)." (Waller & Haymes, 1996)

"High doses of fish oil concentrates (5 mL/kg/d) reduced serum iron [in rats]". (Rabbani, 2001)

"Coffee and tea are widely consumed as beverages with meals or directly after meals. These beverages have a high content of phenolic compounds and have been shown to strongly inhibit the absorption of nonheme iron. A cup of tea (200 mL) reduces iron absorption by ~75 — 80%. Variations in the results of different studies are probably related to the different amounts of phenolic compounds in the tea resulting from differences in the amounts, brands, and steeping time of teas used. A cup of coffee (150 mL) reduces iron absorption by ~60%." (Hallberg & Hulthen, 2000)

I won't go on. There are certainly other types of interference from whole wheat (e.g. phytates) to high total fiber intake to egg consumption. Many bodybuilders fit — or at least approximate - one or more of these scenarios. Should they be supplementing iron? Almost certainly not.

Most guys don't donate blood (or otherwise profusely bleed) very often and the majority of men have excess rather than inadequate iron status. There are, however, a fair number of athletic men who could sure use the robust boost from meats! Not only do meats provide heme iron that is robust to other dietary influences, but flesh foods also bolster the non-heme iron that constitutes most of one's daily intake. Getting in 8-30 mg of iron per day from meats is not a bad thing. But back to my little story...

Crushing fatigue hit me to the point that I asked an endocrinologist to check my thyroid function. Negative. I thought that I may have chronic fatigue syndrome. Not likely. Then my lab results came back. My transferrin saturation levels were down near 10% (30-40% is normal).

Surely, the blood donations (each draining about 250 mg of iron) were the primary cause, but that's when I noticed I was also living nearly exclusively on whey-casein powders and bars. The clear benefits of these proteins (anabolism, anti-catabolism, immune bolstering, even sleep quality) are beyond the scope of this article, but my own lack of time left me relying on their convenience - at the expense of iron-rich lean meats.

Fortunately now six months and many pounds of chicken, beef and fish later, my transferrin saturation is normal and my fatigue is vastly reduced. I've learned my lesson that one does not have to be anemic to have performance drops from low-iron status!(12)