chewing is essential to production of IgA in saliva which is the gut’s first message of which foods are on the way with which enzyme production is triggered to fully digest those foods… no chewing = very poorly digested foods and that can mean progressive functional malnutrition, high toxicity, oxidative stress, a systemic inflammatory state and associated imbalanced brain chemistry when undigested proteins cross and inflamed blood brain barrier and and a degree of brain starvation with reduced digestion meaning poorer nutrition reaching the brain… all in all bad news, chewing is essential…

the docs taught me that in my 20s, they were appalled that I would barely chew food, swallowed most whole or drank it or at mushy things… I felt everything was getting stuck in my throat… I have poor movement down there… it’s not constricted, it’s a muscle feedback thing… I have a degree of hypotonia and I just get hiccups easy or food just sits there back logging… so I used to regurgitate things like bread, meat, anything that required chewing.

But that doesn’t change that LEARNING to chew is essential. A good low salicylate toxin free chewing gum is a good start. There’s one here called Sweet Life Dental Gum which isn’t as scary as most gum.

If someone had a severe functional B12 deficiency and went off meat, they might experience enough cognitive difficulty and anxiety to become non-verbal, yeah. And those with iron deficiency (one problem I haven’t had – yay!) would also have to be careful they got enough iron off meat.

Maybe it’s finally something you, me, and Temple Grandin can all agree on.

I don’t have as restricted a diet as yours, but I still can’t handle vegetarian or vegan. I’ve tried both. The moment I started eating meat, I started feeling better.

I don’t like a lot of meat. I’m an incredibly picky eater when it comes to meat, I gag on many kinds of it if they’re not made to my own idosyncratic specifications.

I’ve also had a chronic illness that fluctuates in severity (whatever it is seems to run in my family). It involves, at its worst, muscles that just plain give out. It seems (and I know how dangerous it is to trust ’seems’ in something that fluctuates to begin with) to respond really well to meat, and to some meat-based supplements. If it does work, it doesn’t make me get over it, it just makes it less severe. But given what the most severe form of it is like, I’ll take any less severe I can get.

I used to know a woman who became non-verbal if she didn’t eat enough red meat.

And Temple Grandin can’t function without meat either. (She tried vegetarianism too.)

I always hear from vegetarians that I didn’t do vegetarianism ‘right’ or I would have been fine. But I did do it right, I toko all the supplements and everything. I just can’t seem to stay healthy (or as healthy as I get) without meat, and I think the conflict there is a matter of reality (the reality of my life) conflicting with ideology (the belief that eating no meat is healthy for everyone, and/or the only ethical way to be).

I don’t see anything wrong with cutting down meat eating to a sustainable level.

And I agree that while producing meat can contribute to unsustainable living and global warming, there are a lot of other factors to consider. So even if we all just cut out red meat, walked or used public transportation, etc., that would help so much.