Transcript of William C Clifford's dialog in the video:
(1) Plants have zero cholesterol; we should minimize dietary cholesterol intake by eliminating animal products completely; this includes meat, fish, eggs and dairy.
"Cholesterol comes exclusively from animals and their products. And then in the USA, the majority of the cholesterol we take in comes from cows and their flesh which we call beef to be nice, but it's actually bovine muscle. It's muscle we're eating. Or milk or butter or cheese, and then eggs."
"So if we don't eat animals and their products, we don't take in any cholesterol. And actually, most Americans now, at least those living in the USA, we average about 300 or 400 mg cholesterol every day. It does an awful lot of damage."
(2) TC < 150 and LDL < 70 are good targets to aim for.
"Not eating flesh keeps cholesterol levels down. Now the biggest determinant of how long we're going to live, in my view, is our cholesterol level and our blood pressure. And it's important for each of us to know those levels and keep them down. In the US, it's been said for a long time that a normal total cholesterol level is less than 200. The average total cholesterol in adults in USA is now 196. And yet 45% of the population is dying from cardiovascular diseases. We need to get our cholesterol levels: total less than 150, and our bad choleserol - LDL cholesterol (I think of the L to mean Lousy) less than about 70 at least, or 60. When we are born, our LDL cholesterol is 40. That maybe where we should go."
(3) Keep blood pressure down: "if we don't eat salt, our blood pressure stays down."
"The second thing is to keep our blood pressure down. Now in societies that eat no salt, blood pressure is generally about 90 over 60 their entire lives! But in US, we eat about 10 grams of salt a day. If we don't eat salt, our blood pressure stays down. Our canned foods are loaded with salt. Everybody in the USA eats too much salt. I never have salt at the table But that's only about 15% of the salt we take in; most of it is already put in the foods."
(4) Saturated fatty acids are bad for us; "I worry more about saturated fatty acid intake than I do cholesterol."
"Fat is awful for us because so much of that fat is saturated fat. There are three types of fats. They're really called fatty acids. They're the saturated fatty acids, the monounsaturated fatty acids, and the polyunsaturated fatty acids. And all these fatty acids are carbon chains with hydrogen atoms attached to them. And these chains may be 13 carbon atoms long, 27, 33 or whatever. It turns out that the saturated ones are the ones that are bad for us. And they are the ones where every carbon atom has a hydrogen atom attached to it. There are no double bonds. If there is one double bond, that means one carbon has no hydrogen atom — that's monounsaturated. And if it's more than one, it's polyunsaturated. And it turns out that the monounsaturated fatty acids and the polyunsaturated fatty acids are not bad for us. Indeed, they are good for us. Whereas if every carbon atom is covered by a hydrogen atom, it means it's saturated — that's very bad for us. In actuality, I worry more about the saturated fatty acids than I do cholesterol."
(5) Control our weight for diabetes prevention:
"Now diabetes mellitus is skyrocketing in the USA because so many of us are gaining weight. Therea are two types of diabetes. One is the genetic form that we get under 20 years of life, or at least under 30, often in teenage, seven to eight (years of age). And then there is the acquired form after age 50. Now the acquired form is an obesity-related problem. So if we keep our weight down, we don't develop diabetes later in life. Diabetes is an expensive disease. The number of diabetes who go blind, who need hemodialysis because their kidneys are no longer functioning, who are losing a toe, and then another toe, and then the lower leg, upper leg, amputations. Half the people in this country with chronic kidney disease have it because of diabetes mellitus. Diabetes is preventible in 90% of us. We have to control our weight."
(6) Exercise is helpful:
"I know a lot of people say, "Well, I need to lose some weight, I got to do some more exercise." You have to remember: you've got to walk miles to lose one pound. In actually, you have to do a lot of exercise to lose weight. But exercise has many wonderful things. Number one, those who exercise go to sleep pretty quickly. They sleep better. Their mind is clearer as a rule. They don't go to the psychiatrist as much as non-exercisers. Their body weight tends to stay down. Exercise is particularly good for maintaining an ideal body weight once you've reached it."
(7) Adopt healthy eating early! In childhood:
"When a little child goes off to school, and hollers back in the house, 'Mommy, what are we having for dinner tonight?' Well that means, 'are we having chicken, steak, turkey?' If mommy hollered back, 'we're having okra tonight', the little child may not come home! So we have to start early in life. I think the young people are going to be the ones to change. It's very difficult to convince a 60 year old to change their eating habits."
(8) Eating plant-based is good for us, good for the animals and good for the planet:
"We kill the cows, and then they kill us. That's how the system actually works. When we send grain, soybean, wheat to Russia, for example, as we've done in the past when their crops are low, mot of that is to feed their cattle, not for human beings. There is great abundance of potential food on planet Earth to feed the 6.3 or 6.4 billion without any problem. But 80% of that oat crop in this country and the USA - 80% of the wheat crop approximately are used for the cattle. It's a major problem, and what it does is produce the atmosphere of killing, killing, killing."
"So, in my view, the easiest way to stay healthy is to be a vegetarian fruit eater. It's the most civilized way to be healthy because we're treating our animals decently. We're treating our planet decently. We're not eroding the topsoil to feed tee animals. So what is good for human health is good for non-human animal health, an
d it's also food for the planet."
"I would say that my philosophy is similar to yours. Be veg, go green, save the planet."