In addition to the well-known reasons for becoming a vegetarian or vegan, namely: solving problems with excess weight, a healthy heart and blood vessels, a sharply reduced risk of cancer – there is another good reason. This was reported to its readers by the well-known news portal Natural News (“Natural News”).
Not everyone who eats meat knows about this reason – probably only the most interested and ideological vegans and vegetarians who scour the Internet in search of scientific information on nutrition. This reason is that vegans and vegetarians consume much less … toxic substances, including dioxin.
Of course you want to know the details. So, scientists from the American government organization EPA (US Environment Protection Agency) found that 95% of the dioxin that anyone in the world can come into contact with is found in meat, fish and seafood (including shellfish), as well as milk and dairy products. products. So the fact is that vegans get the least amount of dioxin, and vegetarians far less than meat eaters, pescatarians, and Mediterranean dieters.
Dioxins are a group of chemical elements that are environmental pollutants. They are recognized as highly toxic and are included in the so-called “dirty dozen” of the 12 most common harmful substances worldwide. What scientists know today about these substances can be briefly and easily summarized by the words “terrible poison.” The full name of the substance is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzoparadioxin (abbreviated as international labeling – TCDD) – agree, a very appropriate name for a poison!
The good news is that this highly toxic substance in microdoses is not harmful to human health. The bad news is that if you don’t watch your food sources (where and from whom you buy your food, where it comes from), you may very well be consuming more than microdoses. Consumed in dangerous amounts, dioxin causes a range of grim diseases, including cancer and diabetes.
Dioxins can appear naturally – for example, during forest fires, or when burning solid industrial and medical waste: these processes are far from always carried out in a controlled manner, and even more so – studied, affordable, but more expensive environmentally friendly methods of complete combustion are used even less often.
Today, dioxins are present almost everywhere on the planet. toxic waste from industrial waste incineration is inevitably distributed in nature. Nowadays, they have already covered the planet, as it were, with an “even layer”, and there’s nothing to be done about it – we can’t help but breathe, or drink water! More dangerous is that dioxins can accumulate, already in unsafe amounts – and most of all they accumulate in the adipose tissue of living organisms. Therefore, 90% of dioxins enter the human body through the consumption of meat, fish and shellfish (more precisely, their fat) – these are the most dangerous foods in terms of the consumption of toxins. Very small, insignificant amounts of dioxins are found in water, air and plant foods – these products, on the contrary, can be considered the safest.
Several cases have already been recorded when private companies (unknowingly) threw products containing deadly doses of dioxin onto the shelves. There were also several chemical releases due to the fault of chemical laboratories.
A few such cases, indicating the products that contained the toxic substance:
• Chicken, eggs, catfish meat, USA, 1997; • Milk, Germany, 1998; • Chicken and eggs, Belgium, 1999; • Milk, Netherlands, 2004; • Guar gum (a thickener widely used in the food industry), European Union, 2007; • Pork, Ireland, 2008 (the maximum dose was exceeded by 200 times, this is a “record”);
The first case of the appearance of dioxin in food was recorded in 1976, then dioxin was released into the air as a result of an accident at a chemical factory, which led to chemical contamination of a residential area of 15 square meters. km, and the resettlement of 37.000 people.
Interestingly, almost all recorded cases of dioxin releases were recorded in developed countries with a high standard of living.
Studies of the toxic effects of dioxin date back to the last decades, before that people simply did not know that it was dangerous. So, for example, the US Army sprayed dioxin in industrial quantities over the territory of Vietnam during an armed conflict in order to devegetate trees and more effectively fight the guerrillas.
Research into dioxin is currently ongoing, but it has already been established that this substance can cause cancer and diabetes. Scientists do not yet know how to neutralize this toxic chemical, and so far they suggest simply being more careful about what we eat. This means thinking twice before consuming meat, fish, seafood and even milk!