I think a lot of people could safely eat less of the animal foods and would benefit from including more fruits and vegetables in their diet. This is why a vegan diet can feel like a great improvement at first. Most certainly don't need a 12 oz steak (or meat portion) every day. I eat 1-4 ounces at a time of cheese, eggs or grass-fed beef.
I think a lot of people get fat off of too many empty carbs.
And because so much packaged food is nutrient deficient, the appetite keeps saying to eat more and more. The low-fat craze has been a real detriment to health because what goes in place of the fat? Carbs! There seems to be a link between low-fat diets and Alzheimers because the brain and nervous system is composed of a large percentage of fat.
Many have health problems because of too large of a consumption of Omega-6 vegetable oils and far too low of Omega-3.
The natural diet of cows is not soy and corn. It is pasture. Corn and soy feed beef is bad for your health as the Omega 3/6 ratio, CLA and other nutrients are thrown out of natural balance.
In the 1930's Weston A. Price studied pockets of isolated people eating their natural diets, that had almost perfect health - no matter if they were the Masai that ate little but beef, blood and milk, the Inuit eating very high fat and meat, or the Swiss that had mostly milk - they were superbly healthy until they started eating the processed, devitalized, and canned foods of "civilization" and modern commerce.
Then they got all kinds of tooth decay, the children were born with crooked and crowded teeth, (see pictures in previous posts) there were deformed children, retarded children, and miscarried pregnancies because of this malnutrition.
There was even a study of modern people who lived to be over 100 - they were all omnivores. They ate meat. Meat, poultry and fish has carnosine. Carnosine has anti-aging properties.
The rest is a quote from:
http://www.smart-publications.com/an.../carnosine.php
Although carnosine's other benefits have not been extensively researched, based on preliminary studies done in Russia, it has also been shown to be beneficial for its ability to:
* boost immunity and reduce inflammation
* exert anticancer effects
* promote wound healing, protect against radiation damage and reverse post-radiation syndrome. Laboratory animals treated with carnosine were found to have faster and better wound healing rates compared to controls. This has potential applications to treating burns, wounds following surgery, or during nutritional preparation for surgery. 8
* protect against the formation of gastric ulcers, and help heal existing ulcers 9,10
* help eradicate Helicobacter pylori, an organism that has been linked to peptic ulcer and stomach cancer 11
* reduce or completely prevent cell damage caused by beta amyloid 12, the substance found in the brain of Alzheimer's disease patients
* help protect against cataract formation
* protect against the effect of glucose damage and protein oxidation
* inhibit (or reverse) glycosylation and therefore slow the damaging - and pro-aging - effects of carbohydrate consumption
* increase muscle strength and endurance
* improve appearance