I decided to continue writing about this topic, but I know I may provoke a lot of vegetarians and vegans. For health and justice sake, as well as revealing the truth, it doesn't stop me from sharing all the facts about vegetarians. A lot of discussion for this topic, may NOT directly related to nutrition and diet, but for reading purpose, you may find some facts interesting.
Now, let's start with a cow, an animal who has evolved to do one thing exquisitely, take cellulose, ubiquitous, non nutritional grass, and turn it into mass and motion. Like all members of a healthy biotic community, our cow is producing food for someone else. Her manure feeds soil, plants, insects, the mechanical action of her teeth and her hooves help the grasslands stay diverse, her digestive processes free up nutrients, and not just for her, but for the whole community and her body will become a meal for predators, scavengers and degraders of all sizes.
Guess what? She helps too, like we all do. Friendly bacteria fill her rumen to do the actual work of breaking down that cellulose. She gives them a home and then she eats them, And it's more than just bacteria she's nurturing. There are fungi, yeast and protozoans.Every gallon of rumen capacity can contain approximately 200 trillion bacteria and few billion protozoans, with fungi and yeast by the millions. Has she domesticated them, or have they colonized her? This is the only question that can arise, a culture saturated in power and hierachy and its defenders.
Observing our cow, observing across the long arc of evolution, can reveal both the complex dependencies of living communities and where human culture has gone so dreadfully wrong. All animals have evolved in an environment dense with microbes. Just as plants do the work of producing, bacteria do most of the work of degrading, and those activities, producing and degrading, are the only two functions necessary for life. What animals have done is figure out how to work with and around bacteria. Large populations of microorganisms inhabit the gastrointestinal tract of all animals and form a closely integrated ecological unit with the host. This complex mixed, microbial culture comprising bacteria, protozoa, anaerobic fungi as well as bacteriophage, can be considered as the most metabolically adaptable and rapidly renewable organ of the body which plays a vital role in the normal nutritional, physiological, immunological and protective functions of the host animal.
Now, you shoul also look at this from the bacteria prospective, as they discovered how to get locomoted, fed and protected by helping animals survive. Of course, bacteria might also want to eat their host, or they might want to eat their host;s food. So, animals have found couple of ways to handle that potential conflict.
First, it is the competition model used by carnivores. The animal's immune system keeps the microbes in the digestive tract from eating the animal. Antimicrobial acid is secreted by the animal's stomach, which prevents the bacteria from eating the carnivore's food. The host then uses digestive enzymes to further break down food. This process means quick transit through the stomach, accompanies by a slower rate of passage through the lower digestive tract, where the food now is absorbed. What this means, is a large number of microbes in the hind gut, as opposed to the stomach.
The cooperation model lets animals utilize the abundant cellulose of the plant world. Fifty percent of the carbon on our planet is cellulose. The carbohydrate polymers that make up plant cell walls are indigestible to most animals and all mammals. Cellulose can only be broken down by microbial fermentation.The whole point of the ruminant's digestion is to keep food in the vast fermentative vat of its rumen, so the bacteria have time to digest the cellulose. For instance, a cow, rechews her food about 500 times a day, for estimated 8 hours. What happen is the cow is sacrificing the dietary protein in the grass, letting the microbes eat it instead. In the end, however, she trades in that poor quality plant protein for good quality microbial protein. This is what's happening inside a cow, where she feeds grass to the bacteria and then she eats them.
Next model, is the combined competition coorperation model. This method is mainly used by horse, elephants, rodents, rabbits, etc. The host animal has enzymes that break down what is ingested, and the resulting enzymic products are absorbed before microbial fermentation.
This is very clever, because the host obtains not only the nutrients digested by its own enzymes but also fermentation products from materials its enzymes cannot digest. A disadvantage of the combination model is that, although the host absorbs the fermentation end-products, the microbial cells themselves cannot be used as a nutrient source. Some animals have overcome this deficiency by consuming the faeces content containing the microbes using a strategy termed coprophagy.
All these strategies are elegant ways of recycling the sun's energy, the true power source of life. Can't photosynthesize? Well, eat someone who can. Can't digest their cellulose body? Eat someone who can. Does anyone knows that nineteen billion metric tons of vegetation are produced by plants in savannas and grasslands and we can't eat them? We have to realize that humans and ruminants are not in competition with the same meal, this is where the political vegetarians have gone wrong.
Yes, industrial culture has been stuffing grain into as many animals as it can. But, the logic of industrial capitalism that's dictating that diet, not nature. Let me ask you, what happens when you take a cow, an animal filled with friendly bacteria hungry for cellulose, and feed her grain? Carnivore stomachs like ours are acidic to kill bacteria competing for our food. The cow's rumen, however, is neutral, because she encouraging bacteria, bacteria she depends on. But, grains turn her normally neutral rumen acid, which makes her sick. Bloating for instance, is caused by grain feeding. Rumination slows to a halt, and a layer of 'foam slime' traps the gas that is natural byproduct of fermentation. The rumen then swells until it suffocates the animal. Not only that, we have also acidosis. Heard of it? It can lead to diarheaa, bloat, ulcers, pneumonitis, liver disease, etc. It is part of a 'feedlot' disease, usually quite common in feedlot commercial animals. Hope you think twice before eating regular commercial meats.
Guess what? She helps too, like we all do. Friendly bacteria fill her rumen to do the actual work of breaking down that cellulose. She gives them a home and then she eats them, And it's more than just bacteria she's nurturing. There are fungi, yeast and protozoans.Every gallon of rumen capacity can contain approximately 200 trillion bacteria and few billion protozoans, with fungi and yeast by the millions. Has she domesticated them, or have they colonized her? This is the only question that can arise, a culture saturated in power and hierachy and its defenders.
Observing our cow, observing across the long arc of evolution, can reveal both the complex dependencies of living communities and where human culture has gone so dreadfully wrong. All animals have evolved in an environment dense with microbes. Just as plants do the work of producing, bacteria do most of the work of degrading, and those activities, producing and degrading, are the only two functions necessary for life. What animals have done is figure out how to work with and around bacteria. Large populations of microorganisms inhabit the gastrointestinal tract of all animals and form a closely integrated ecological unit with the host. This complex mixed, microbial culture comprising bacteria, protozoa, anaerobic fungi as well as bacteriophage, can be considered as the most metabolically adaptable and rapidly renewable organ of the body which plays a vital role in the normal nutritional, physiological, immunological and protective functions of the host animal.
Now, you shoul also look at this from the bacteria prospective, as they discovered how to get locomoted, fed and protected by helping animals survive. Of course, bacteria might also want to eat their host, or they might want to eat their host;s food. So, animals have found couple of ways to handle that potential conflict.
First, it is the competition model used by carnivores. The animal's immune system keeps the microbes in the digestive tract from eating the animal. Antimicrobial acid is secreted by the animal's stomach, which prevents the bacteria from eating the carnivore's food. The host then uses digestive enzymes to further break down food. This process means quick transit through the stomach, accompanies by a slower rate of passage through the lower digestive tract, where the food now is absorbed. What this means, is a large number of microbes in the hind gut, as opposed to the stomach.
The cooperation model lets animals utilize the abundant cellulose of the plant world. Fifty percent of the carbon on our planet is cellulose. The carbohydrate polymers that make up plant cell walls are indigestible to most animals and all mammals. Cellulose can only be broken down by microbial fermentation.The whole point of the ruminant's digestion is to keep food in the vast fermentative vat of its rumen, so the bacteria have time to digest the cellulose. For instance, a cow, rechews her food about 500 times a day, for estimated 8 hours. What happen is the cow is sacrificing the dietary protein in the grass, letting the microbes eat it instead. In the end, however, she trades in that poor quality plant protein for good quality microbial protein. This is what's happening inside a cow, where she feeds grass to the bacteria and then she eats them.
Next model, is the combined competition coorperation model. This method is mainly used by horse, elephants, rodents, rabbits, etc. The host animal has enzymes that break down what is ingested, and the resulting enzymic products are absorbed before microbial fermentation.
This is very clever, because the host obtains not only the nutrients digested by its own enzymes but also fermentation products from materials its enzymes cannot digest. A disadvantage of the combination model is that, although the host absorbs the fermentation end-products, the microbial cells themselves cannot be used as a nutrient source. Some animals have overcome this deficiency by consuming the faeces content containing the microbes using a strategy termed coprophagy.
All these strategies are elegant ways of recycling the sun's energy, the true power source of life. Can't photosynthesize? Well, eat someone who can. Can't digest their cellulose body? Eat someone who can. Does anyone knows that nineteen billion metric tons of vegetation are produced by plants in savannas and grasslands and we can't eat them? We have to realize that humans and ruminants are not in competition with the same meal, this is where the political vegetarians have gone wrong.
Yes, industrial culture has been stuffing grain into as many animals as it can. But, the logic of industrial capitalism that's dictating that diet, not nature. Let me ask you, what happens when you take a cow, an animal filled with friendly bacteria hungry for cellulose, and feed her grain? Carnivore stomachs like ours are acidic to kill bacteria competing for our food. The cow's rumen, however, is neutral, because she encouraging bacteria, bacteria she depends on. But, grains turn her normally neutral rumen acid, which makes her sick. Bloating for instance, is caused by grain feeding. Rumination slows to a halt, and a layer of 'foam slime' traps the gas that is natural byproduct of fermentation. The rumen then swells until it suffocates the animal. Not only that, we have also acidosis. Heard of it? It can lead to diarheaa, bloat, ulcers, pneumonitis, liver disease, etc. It is part of a 'feedlot' disease, usually quite common in feedlot commercial animals. Hope you think twice before eating regular commercial meats.
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