"How to Prevent the Next Pandemic" Infectious diseases are emerging
globally at an unprecedented rate. Literally hundreds of new pathogens
have emerged and re-remerged over the last few decades and
what we eat is responsible for most of the new diseases that
have jumped from animals to humans. In response to the torrent of emerging
zoonotic or animal-to-human diseases, three of the world’s leading authorities—
the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations, and the World Organization
for Animal Health, held a joint consultation to
determine the key underlying causes.
First on their list was the “Increasing
demand for animal protein.” The greatest swords of Damocles dangling are the H5 and H7 bird flu viruses
blanketing much of the earth. A bird flu pandemic could be devastating given their current upwards of
Ebola-like flip-of-the-coin death rates. Given that the emergence of
these deadly bird flu viruses, H5N1 and H7N9 are “linked to
intensification of the poultry sector,” there have been calls for the
“de-industrialization of animal production,” for example, as suggested
here in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,
“replacing large industrial units with smaller farms with
lower stocking densities,” potentially resulting in less stress,
less disease susceptibility, less intense infectious contact,
and smaller infectious loads. Maybe they’re the ones that could
use a little social distancing.
The American Public Health Association,
the largest and oldest association of public health professionals in
the world, has called for a moratorium on factory farming for
nearly two decades now. Maybe COVID-19 is the dry run we
needed, the fire drill to awake us from our complacency and reform
the food system before it’s too late. But if, as the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations visualized it, the next
pandemic starts with “increased demand for poultry
products,” before ending up with human-to-human transmission,
maybe we need to move beyond just giving these animals
some more breathing room. This editorial in the journal of
the American Public Health Association, goes beyond just calling
for a deintensification of poultry industry,
questioning the prudence of raising so many animals for
food in the first place.
It is curious, therefore,
given the pandemic threat, that changing the way
humans treat animals— most basically, ceasing to
eat them or, at the very least, radically limiting the quantity
of them that are eaten— is largely off the radar as a
significant preventive measure. Such a change, if sufficiently
adopted or imposed, could still reduce the chances
of the much-feared influenza epidemic. It would be even more likely to prevent unknown future diseases that,
in the absence of this change, may result from farming animals intensively and killing them for food. Yet, humanity doesn’t
even consider this option.
However, thanks to food
innovations, this may be changing. Have you looked in the dairy
case at the supermarket lately? Some of America’s largest
dairy producers have recently filed for bankruptcy due to the
constellation of new consumer choices. I was peripherally involved in the
largest meat recall in human history. Remember the footage of
the cows getting forklifted? A hidden-camera investigation at
a California slaughter plant for “spent” dairy cows led to a
recall of nearly 150 million pounds of beef for violations of food
safety rules meant to protect the public from mad cow disease. Downed dairy cows, too sick to even walk, were being dragged to
slaughter with chains into the federal school lunch program. You don’t have to worry about
contaminated cattle brains… in your oatmilk, though. Plant-based milks are a no-brainer. But, you can see what I’m saying.
Yes, you can pass public
health regulations to stop the cannibalistic feeding of
slaughterhouse waste to dairy cows —or you can just provide the public
better alternatives and let the market eliminate the risk entirely
because there’s no prions in plants. HIV/AIDS likely arose from
people slaughtering primates. 30 million people wouldn’t
be dead right now if we were eating meals from
bushes instead of bushmeat. We can’t get coronaviruses
from cauliflower. There is no flu in falafel
production no matter how tightly you crowd the balls together. What I'm saying, is our food choices don’t just affect our personal
health, but our global health. Not just in terms of climate change,
but in terms of stifling pandemic risk. There's been a tremendous surge in
interest in diversified protein sources, given the increasing consensus
that reduced meat consumption is critical for addressing
both the climate crisis and our burgeoning epidemics
of lifestyle diseases. Eating less meat may not
only help save the world, but could help prevent the loss of more than ten million
human lives a year.
To their credit, in 2016, the
Chinese government recommended its citizens cut their meat
consumption in half in part to reduce their growing
rates of chronic disease. A completely plant-based
diet might reap $30 trillion from the health benefits alone,
and that would be just from the lowered rates of chronic
diseases like cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, not even factoring in the decreased catastrophic pandemic risk. What we eat doesn’t just
affect our personal health, but our global health in
more ways than one.
Making healthier choices could also help
mediate the next coronavirus epidemic, not only at the source by
sidestepping wet markets, but by also decreasing the rates
of comorbidities found to increase the risk in all the deadly coronaviruses: SARS, MERS, and COVID-19. Consider the underlying risk factors
for COVID-19 severity and death— obesity, heart disease,
hypertension, type 2 diabetes and chronic pulmonary disease. In virtually all studies, vegetable
protein is superior to animal protein in terms of lower rates of heart
disease, and type 2 diabetes and lower blood pressure
than animal protein. Here’s a meta-analysis
published a few months ago on diabetes risk and animal
protein consumption. For hypertension, meat
including poultry may contribute to a higher risk of
high blood pressure. Meat may even be associated
with impaired lung function, increasing the risk of lung
diseases like emphysema.
The same diet that can help
you survive this pandemic can also help prevent the next. So instead of propping up the
meat industry to the tune a 100 million taxpayer dollars
a month, and forcing meat plants to stay open,
pandemic proof your diet. Thankfully, expanded options are
now hitting the meat case as well. No longer a niche market for
vegetarians, major meat producers have started blending in vegetable
proteins to make hybrid meat products like Perdue’s chicken plus nuggets
or Tyson’s “Whole Blends” sausage links. Smithfield, the world’s
largest pork producer, recently debuted an entire line
of plant-based products. Hormel, has a new plant-based line
too, the purveyors of SPAM… now believe in the power of plants. Check out this headline
from a few weeks ago: “KFC to roll out Cargill’s plant‐
based chicken across China.” Talk about a cultural revolution. And, we’re not talking
about Tofurkey. Cargill is America’s largest
private corporation, and one of the biggest meat
packers in the world.
How many fewer curly-tailed
viral mixing vessels are there now that Dunkin’ Donuts has a
meat-free breakfast sausage? How many fewer hens are packed beak-
to-beak now that egg-free mayo has taken the sandwich
spread sector by a storm? Quorn, a brand of meat-free meat
made from the mushroom kingdom, opened a single facility
that can produce the meat equivalent of twenty
million chickens per year. These products may not be the
healthiest from a personal standpoint— a doughnut sandwich without
pork is still a doughnut sandwich— but hey, swap in an egg-free
omelette from Tim Hortons and from a pandemic standpoint? Zero risk. Doesn’t necessarily have
to be plants, though. In this review on food systems
in the era of the coronavirus, they noted that “researchers are seeking alternative protein sources everywhere.” Can’t think of any possible
alternative to cow’s milk? How about cockroach milk? I mean, you think almond milk is nuts? How about some of this
on your corn flakes? Could be healthier than cow’s
milk, and hey no lactose, no dairy allergy problems.
An important alternative. I mean I can’t imagine anything
else you can make milk out of. And gluten-free too! The only downside,
evidently, was the flavor, but the researchers—
perhaps funded by Big Bug?— chalked this up to the fact that the
judges knew there were cockroaches in the bread; and so,
they were all just biased. Hmmm… I think I’ll stick with the plants. But if you’re like: “you’ll
have to pry that pork chop from my cold, dead hands,” we may be able to have
our meat and eat it too. An even more innovative
approach to pandemic prevention was suggested by
Winston Churchill in 1932. In an article in Popular
Mechanics entitled “Fifty Years Hence,”
he predicted that “We shall escape the
absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order
to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately
under a suitable medium.” And indeed, the prediction
is becoming a reality. Instead of taking a cutting from
a plant and growing vegetables you’re taking a sample from
an animal and growing meat.
Potentially lots of meat, like maybe
a billion pounds from a single sample. Indeed, in terms of efficiency,
growing meat straight from muscle cells could reduce greenhouse gas emissions
and water use by as much as 96%, and lower land use by as much as 99%,
but when you factor in pandemic risk, the benefits to human health
of a slaughter-free harvest could arguably rival
those to planetary health. Food safety has been
considered the primary human health benefit
of such an approach. There has been a six-fold
increase in food poisoning over the last few decades, sickening
tens of millions of Americans every year, and contaminated meats and animal
products are the most common cause. So, when the cultivated meat industry
calls its product “clean meat,” that’s not just a nod to clean energy. Food-poisoning pathogens
like E. coli, Campylobacter, and Salmonella are
due to fecal residue, traces of which are found on most
poultry sampled in the United States and about half of retail
ground beef and pork chops. They’re intestinal bugs; so, you
don’t have to worry about them if you’re producing meat
without intestines.
You don’t have to cook the crap out of
meat, if there’s no crap to begin with, just like you don’t have to worry
about brewing up new respiratory viruses that could kill millions of people if
you’re making meat without the lungs. “A culinary choice in south China
led to a fatal infection in Hong Kong, and subsequently to 8000 cases of
severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and nearly 1000 deaths in 30
countries on six continents.” If only we had learned our lesson then. We may be one bushmeat meal away from the next HIV, one
pangolin plate away from the next killer coronavirus,
and one factory farm away from the next deadly flu. Tragically, it may take a
pandemic with a virus like H5N1 before the world realizes
the true cost of cheap chicken. "How to Survive a Pandemic: Book Trailer" Many people think "How Not to Die"
was my first book, but it’s actually my 4th.
Before I started NutritionFacts.org, I had a career in public health specializing
in emerging infectious diseases. That’s how I got to defend Oprah Winfrey, and got invited on the Colbert Report, and testified before congress. In 2006, I wrote a book on pandemic
prevention and preparedness that had an entire
pandemic preparedness, planning checklist for families
where you have the masks ready, the hand sanitizer, and
the disposable gloves, the food, the water, the toilet paper –
I went through the whole thing. Of course, back then few
people paid much attention to the coming pandemic threat, but finally I'm able to put
that expertise to use. The current coronavirus
crisis provided the impetus and time for me to revisit
that body of work. I was in the midst of a 200-city
speaking tour for "How Not to Diet", my last book, before COVID-19
started spreading around the globe.
I was sadly disappointed that my
lectures and travel had to be suspended, I only made it to about 40 of those cities, but it enabled me to seize
this opportunity to once again dive deep into the pandemic
preparedness literature and bring you the latest science amidst all the prevailing noise
and nonsense out there. The time is not for panic,
but for common-sense measures to protect yourself and your family both now and in the future
against emergent outbreaks. The current COVID-19 pandemic,
as deadly as it may be, may just be a dress rehearsal
for the coming plague. Decades ago, a flu virus was
discovered in chickens that would forever change our
understanding on how bad pandemics could potentially get.
It was named H5N1 and
appeared capable of killing more than half the people it infected. Half. Imagine if a virus like that
started spreading explosively human to human. Consider a pandemic a hundred
times worse than COVID-19, not the fatality rate one in 200,
but more like one in two. A coin toss. Thankfully, H5N1 has so far remained a virus more poultry than people. But, it and other new, deadly
animal viruses like H7N9 are still out there, still
mutating, with an eye on that eight billion–strong
buffet of human hosts. With pandemics, it’s always
a matter of when, not if. A universal outbreak with more
than just a few percent mortality wouldn’t just threaten financial markets, but civilization itself as we know it. My new book "How
to Survive a Pandemic" contains everything you
need to help protect yourself and your family
from the current threat, but also digs deeper
into the roots of the problem and tackles the fundamental
question: How can we stop the emergence of pandemic
viruses in the first place? If there is one thing I learned
from my work on preventing and reversing chronic disease, is that whenever possible—
we should treat the cause.
"How to Survive a Pandemic" will be
out in physical copies this Fall, but the audiobook and e-book
versions are going to be fast-tracked and out next month, May 2020. You can pre-order it at Nutritionfacts.org/COVID-19 And of course, all proceeds I receive
from the book will be donated to charity. I hope "How to Survive a Pandemic" is
useful to protect you and your family, the community, and this great,
big, wonderful, happy, human family..