Meat: The New Cigarette: Patient Advocacy and the Plant-Based Diet

By Matthew A. King

In his eye-opening book, Matthew King, registered nurse and president and co-founder of the Christian Animal Rights Association, examines the harmful effects of consuming meat and animal products from a scientific and medical standpoint . . . and the startling similarities between the promotion of Big Tobacco and Big Meat, including marketing, industry-funded studies, lobbying, and government subsidies.

Fifty years ago, cigarettes were glamorized in advertising and even "doctor recommended." Now, of course, we know that cigarettes cause lung cancer, and they are banned in most public places, including hospitals. However, an equally detrimental threat to public health—the consumption of meat and animal products—remains unchecked, unacknowledged by healthcare professionals, and even served to hospital patients being treated for the very diseases a diet rich in meat causes.

Hoping to bridge the disconnect healthcare workers have between the diseases they are treating and the root cause of the disease, Meat: The New Cigarette incorporates an overview of the damages meat causes, compelling data supporting the adoption of a plant-based diet, and the critical role nurses and other healthcare practitioners play in reversing the current crisis that endangers not only the health of America, but the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781098398644

Book preview

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MEAT: THE NEW CIGARETTE

Patient Advocacy and the Plant-Based Diet

Copyright © 2021 Matthew A. King. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-09839-863-7 (Print)

ISBN 978-1-09839-864-4 (eBook)

Published and designed by BookBaby Publishing

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to my mother,

Lorraine,

who inspired me to become a nurse

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Role of the Nurse

2. The Greatest Evil: Cigarettes

3. Meat: A Public Health Disaster

4. Meat and Chronic Diseases

5. Meat and Acute Illnesses

6. Antibiotic Resistance

7. The Plant-Based Diet

8. Potential Objections to Plant-Based Diets

9. Being a Good Example

10. A Way Forward

Epilogue

References

Acknowledgments

I want to acknowledge several individuals who assisted me in this work. I first want to recognize my editor, Shana Murph, for her excellent work in fine-tuning this book. I want to also acknowledge Jen Weers for her outstanding indexing of this book. I additionally wanted to thank Deborah Dove for the exceptional blurb she wrote for the back of the book. I also would like to thank my brother-in-law Samuel Cowley for listening to the accuracy of the many citations. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Nina King, for always inspiring me. She took up veganism first and encouraged me to do the same, which has tremendously benefitted my health and well-being.

Introduction

Hospitals play a crucial role in healing and educating patients on optimizing health in the community. Most hospitals in the United States have strict anti-smoking policies as standardized by The Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO). This standard was created due to the obvious health hazards associated with smoking, as well as to prevent a possible fire (M. Lyons, personal communication, February 11, 2021). Although fire safety would not be a concern, the consumption of animal products also has ample evidence linking them to health risks. Thus, I argue that The Joint Commission should also consider banning animal products as a hospital standard, as the commission has done with smoking.

The Greek philosopher Plato spoke about a plant-based diet, stating, The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies… they are the trees and the plants and the seeds (A-Z Quotes, n.d.b.). Everyone knows that fruits and vegetables are better for the body than meat and dairy. An overwhelming amount of evidence points to plant-based diets being better for human health. Yet, modern humans seem to think they know better than common sense and ancient wisdom. When considering the achievements of vaccination, transplantation, and management of chronic disease, modern medicine has been extremely successful in conquering many of the past scourges of humankind. This is the primary reason that the worldwide human population has ballooned to over 7.8 billion (Worldometer, 2020). With this success, it is easy to think of modern medicine as infallible and ancient remedies as useless products of their time. This erroneous supposition is known as the appeal to novelty fallacy. This misconception declares modern knowledge better than ancient knowledge. The only reason for the newer information being asserted superior is because it is more contemporary to the old. This misjudgment is especially apparent in medicine. Even though humanity has made significant strides, we fail to listen to ancient wisdom. This ancient knowledge and application of plant-based diets would, without a doubt, lead to better patient health outcomes.

I felt the need to speak up about the abundance of scientific information showing the harmful effects of meat and other animal products. It would be a disgrace to my profession and a disservice to everyone harmed by the animal agriculture industries to keep silent. It would be like a nurse who spotted a patient in cardiac arrest and decided not to call a code. Within this text, I will focus on four objectives.

Highlight the failure of healthcare institutions to address diet.

Discuss the prevalence of animal agriculture’s contribution to disease processes.

Detail better patient health outcomes with the implementation of plant-based diets.

Provide methods of encouraging plant-based diets and banning animal products in healthcare institutions.

1.

The Role of

the Nurse

This book is mainly addressed to nurses working in hospitals because most start there before moving on to other settings. The vast majority of nurses share a similar experience of working in a hospital at some point in their careers. As you probably know, the role of the nurse in the acute setting is caregiving. Nurses manage patient needs, prevent disease, and attend to health disorders. We detect, track, and document information to assist in treatment decisions. Nurses administer medications and other therapeutic remedies. Nurses are also patient advocates. We are to support and act on behalf of the patient’s best interest. Nurses also have a duty to inform the patient about their health, especially upon discharge when the patient will be responsible for their own care (Smith, 2019). Beyond the acute setting, nurses also work in various facilities, such as long-term care, outpatient, case management, insurance, legal, and many others. This book is primarily addressed to nurses in the acute setting because I am voicing my concern and imploring The Joint Commission to ban animal products in hospitals. I hope that by focusing on the hospital setting, other settings will also take notice and similarly stigmatize animal products.

The Nursing Profession

Did you ever notice how families tend to have a common profession? Some families tend to be lawyers, doctors, or teachers. In my family, we tend to be nurses. I am a nurse and my mom, cousin, and even my wife are all nurses. My parents were also photographers when I was growing up, and family and friends would often ask if I would take over their family business. It was always an emphatic no because I never found any of their career stories very compelling, engaging, or exciting. My mom went back to school to be a nurse in her 40s after photography transitioned to digital in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, and everyone was gaining access and the know-how to operate a camera. My mom had a growing vocabulary of medical terms and fascinating concepts that intrigued me when she was in school. When I was in high school, during our nightly dinners, her stories about patients that suffered from chronic conditions caught my interest. Nursing attracted me because I was inspired by the thought of helping others and relieving the world of problems. However, I was naïve and disappointed to find that American healthcare does not focus on preventing disease as much as it does treating disease when it inevitably arises. I feel that this method is flawed and shortsighted.

The Problem

American healthcare could prevent many chronic illnesses by focusing on diet. The Standard American Diet (SAD) is appropriately named and is synonymous with the Western Pattern Diet (WPD). This diet is characterized by heavy intake of red meat, high-fat dairy, sugar, and processed and pre-packaged foods. This way of eating has an increased risk of chronic disease (Betsaida B. Laguipo, 2020). Ironically, healthcare and the general public have an almost blind and perhaps general disregard for how food influences our health.

In many states, nurses have to attend educational courses to obtain continuing education units (CEUs). I obtain these CEUs online now because it is much easier and faster than traveling and sitting in a classroom or symposium. I can do it from the comfort of my own home. However, when I worked in the hospital, I would go to the occasional class. Even then, the cognitive dissonance was concerning. I would go to seminars about chronic diseases, such as diabetes, coronary artery disease, and obesity and then, ironically, be served macaroni and cheese and deli meats. Sometimes there would be a salad. But once I got close, I discovered that the salad was smothered in cheese. My mom once went to a stroke symposium and later told me