Skinny Bastards. Chapter 4. Meat: Rotting, Decaying, Decomposing Flesh.

The High-Protein/Low-Carb Pile of Bullshit.

The Atkins diet. Hmm. Eat the flesh of dead cows, dead pigs, and dead chickens. Avoid fresh fruit. You are a total moron if you think the Atkins diet will get you ripped. Or, you are a gluttonous pig who wants to believe you can eat cheeseburgers all day long and lose weight. Perhaps you weren’t listening the first time: You need to get healthy if you want to get buff! Eating carcasses all day, while avoiding fresh fruit and whole grains is a recipe for disaster. Of course, if you stop eating refined carbohydrates, you will lose weight. That’s the part of the Atkins Diet that actually works. However, most of the weight you lose is water weight. You see, when our bodies metabolize protein (found in high amounts in meat and dairy), nitrogen waste is released in the form of urea. Urea is toxic and must be passed out of the body through urine. So the high-protein diet isn’t ridding your body of fat.

It’s just serving as a diuretic—making you pee more to flush out the toxic urea.

But whether you lose this piss weight initially is inconsequential. You will be a fat, unhealthy, smelly slob if you live this way.


Trendy diets like Atkins become popular for one reason: They hide behind scientific jargon that seems to make sense and allow you to eat unhealthy, fattening foods as long as you avoid carbs.

You believe in these diets because you want to. But eating a typical high-protein diet can increase your daily fat intake by about 8–18 grams, more than double your cholesterol intake, and reduce your fiber intake by approximately 500 percent! Losing weight is sup posed to make you healthier, not rob you of your vitality. Eating a high-protein diet is an inefficient, ineffective way to lose weight, and it increases risk for cancer, high blood pressure, gout, osteoporosis, muscular fatigue, depression, and some seriously bad ass breath.

Most Americans eat twice as much protein as necessary, which has sent obesity, heart disease, and cancer rates soaring over the past fifty years. When you eat large amounts of animal protein and saturated fats and do not eat whole grains, vegetables, and fresh fruits, there is no fiber to bind all of the toxins and fat together to be eliminated from your body. You will eventually do an incredible amount of harm to yourself. And you’re in jeopardy of developing kidney stones, one of the most painful conditions known to man. If you’re already at risk for reduced kidney function (tens of millions of Americans are and don’t even know it), you may be causing serious mayhem.

By the time your blood shows the effects, it will be too late to reverse the damage. Diabetics are in even worse trouble with a high-protein diet because they are already at a higher risk of kidney disease to begin with. In a study involving 1,500 patients with diabetes, most had lost more than half of their kidney function because of a high intake of animal protein.

A study commissioned by Dr. Atkins himself found his dieters suffering from constipation, halitosis, headaches, and hair loss! Who Wants to Live? Anybody? Bueller? Don’t care about your kidneys? What about your other organs? A study of more than 500 thousand individuals linked the consumption of meat to pancreatic cancer.

While pancreatic cancer is relatively uncommon, the survival statistics are very grim.

Another study of nearly 50 thousand men linked meat-eating to colon cancer.

People who eat red meat just once a week have a 38 percent greater risk; those who eat poultry just once a week have a 55 percent greater risk! Another recent study found meat-eaters at 67 percent higher risk for colorectal cancer, despite any genetic factors.

In terms of mortality, colorectal cancer is the United States’ second most common cancer (and the fourth most common, worldwide).

Unsurprisingly, studies showed the intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes to be preventative and protective for multiple cancers.

Don’t care about cancer and just want to lose weight? (Dumb ass.) The American Cancer Society conducted a study over a ten-year period with nearly 80 thousand people trying to lose weight.

Participants who ate meat three times a week or more gained substantially more weight than participants who avoided meat and consumed more vegetables.

Also, studies published in The Journal of Clinical Nutrition and The New England Journal of Medicine stated that meat eaters are much more likely to be over weight than vegetarians.

P. S. Studies show that those who consume diets high in saturated fat and cholesterol but low in fruits, veggies, and fiber are at higher risk for Alzheimer’s.

Common Sense, Bitches Before you start spouting off information you’ve been brain washed with about evolution and the food chain, read on. Yes, humans have a high level of intelligence. Yes, we created weapons for hunting and fire for cooking. Yes, we found a way to mass-pro duce animals for consumption. However, if you study animals in the wild, you will note that they do not rely on anything other than their natural hunting ability, speed, strength, claws, teeth, and jaws. They have no tools or weapons. Now look at yourself. Look at your flimsy fingernails in comparison to an eagle’s talons. Look at your flat, blunt, closely spaced teeth com pared to a lion’s sharp, knife-like, gap-spaced teeth. (The gaps ensure that meat doesn’t get stuck between the animals’ teeth.) Compare your speed and agility to that of a tiger. Compare the strength of your jaw to a wolf’s. Imagine yourself trying to run after an animal, catch it, and kill it using your bare hands, finger nails, teeth, and jaws. Don’t kid yourself: You’d get your ass kicked. And even if you were successful, envision yourself eating the kill without the aid of an oven and silverware.

Yes, the human brain allows us to stay removed from the process of hunting. But does this mean we are “evolved” and “intelligent” and should be eating animal flesh just because we can? Man’s brain and “intelligence” also created alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. Should we drink, smoke, and use just because we can? Many meat eaters credit eating meat for our evolution from cavemen into what we are now. Scientific evidence suggests it’s simply not true; many anthropologists believe we descended from vegetarian ancestors.

But even if eating meat did help us to evolve, look at what we evolved from. We looked like frigging apes and had massive heads, strong jaws, and brute strength. Man was a different animal then.

The second we put food in our mouths, the digestion process begins, thanks to our saliva. Guess what? Our alkaline saliva is not meant to break down animal flesh; carnivores have acid saliva, perfectly designed for the task.

And hydrochloric acid, essential for digesting carcass, is secreted in very small amounts in our stomachs.

However, the stomachs of carnivores have ten times more hydrochloric acid than ours.

Our enzymes, digestive tracts, and organs are all different from those found in carnivores. Like it or not, our kidneys, colon, and liver are ill-equipped to process animal flesh. Compared with carnivores, our intestines are very long, so food that doesn’t get adequately processed becomes clogged in our intestines. Animals quickly pass food through their digestive systems, but we have food rotting, decomposing, and fermenting in our intestinal tracts and colons; hence the need for colonics.

You don’t see many tigers getting colonics, do you? You do see them napping, though. Even though their bodies are designed to digest meat, animals generally sleep all day while doing so because it is such a taxing process. Genetically and structurally, we are designed to thrive on plant foods.

William C. Roberts, M.D., editor of the American Journal of Cardiology, said, “When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”77 Natural carnivores living in the wild do not suffer from heart disease, cancer, or diabetes—our biggest killers. And whether it is “lean meat” or a “skinless chicken breast,” animal fat is still animal fat. Don’t be fooled by terms coined by the meat industry. Your body can’t handle animal fat, so it settles like lumpy shit all over your body and sends you to an early grave.

Old MacDonald Had a Very Different Farm Of the ten billion land animals slaughtered each year in America for human consumption, nearly all of them come from factory farms. Factory farms that raise cattle, pigs, chickens, egg-laying hens, veal calves, or dairy cows have an enormous amount of animals in a very small space. There are no vast meadows or lush, green pastures. In the cases of chickens and egg-laying hens, the animals are confined inside buildings, where they are packed in on top of each other. Egg-laying hens are crammed into cages so small they are unable to spread their wings, and their feet and flesh get mangled against the wire mesh. This overcrowded, stressful environment causes chickens to peck at each other, so their beaks are chopped off their faces using a hot knife. Pigs and cows are imprisoned in stalls so small they are unable to turn around or lie down comfortably. Cattle are subject to third-degree branding burns and having their testicles and horns ripped out.

Pigs also suffer from castration, in addition to the mutilation of their ears, tails, and teeth. They all live in the filth of their own urine, feces, and vomit with infected, festering sores and wounds.

To keep animals alive in these unsanitary conditions, farmers must give them regular doses of antibiotics. Of the 50 million pounds of antibiotics made in the United States each year, percent are administered to farm animals, causing antibiotic resistance in the humans who eat them.

This Shit Is Crazy Eating meat has been linked to obesity; cancer; liver, kidney, lung, and reproductive disorders; birth defects; miscarriages; and nervous system disorders.

For shits and giggles, we’ve compiled a partial list of what’s in meat, poultry, seafood, and dairy: benzene hexachloride (BHC), chlordane, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), dieldrin, dioxin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene (HCB), and lindane.

American farmers started using chemical pesticides in the late 1800s and were initially thrilled with the results. However, it was eventually noticed that pesticides were killing those who were most exposed to them: farmers, field workers, and animals. In 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT.

But the pesticides that followed were even worse. BHC is 19 times more carcinogenic than DDT, chlordane 4 times more, dieldrin 47 to 85 times more, HCB 23 times more, and heptachlor 15 to 30 times more.

By the late 1980s, of the 450 endangered animal species, more than half were threatened with extinction.

The government finally called for a ban on the production and use of other pesticides.

But this didn’t stop these pesticides from reaching our food supply.

Companies were allowed to use up their enormous stockpiles of these pesticides by selling them to countries outside of America.

(Apparently, it was acceptable to poison people and animals, as long as they weren’t American.) These countries used the pesticides on their crops, which were then imported into the United States.

Brilliant, huh? And, banned or not, once they have entered the soil or water, pesticides can still poison for decades.

One widely used pesticide, glufosinate, whose residues have been found in U.S. waters and food supplies, causes hormonal and brain damage.

A University of Iowa study found that nearly 56 percent of children living on hog farms had asthma.

Pregnant women living in agricultural regions in California are more likely to have babies with severe birth defects.

Farmers who use large amounts of insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides (and their families) seem to have it worse than everyone: * In Nebraska, farmers had a higher mortality rate from leukemia than any other working group.

* Cotton farmers from Minnesota to Texas have steadily increasing leukemia rates.

* Farmers in Wisconsin and Iowa have increased risk of non Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

* Washington farmers have a higher incidence of soft-tissue sarcomas.

* Washington ranchers and Minnesota farmers have higher mortality rates from central nervous system diseases and brain cancer.

Sadly, the list goes on and on.

In his book, Diet for a Poisoned Planet, David Steinman reports that of all the toxic chemicals found in food, 95 to 99 percent come from meat, fish, dairy, and eggs.

He also reveals that many of the governmental safety tests performed don’t even detect many chemicals and pesticides. The Food and Drug Administration’s own Total Diet Study found that bacon had 124 different residues from pesticides, chemicals, and other industrial pollutants; bologna and other luncheon meats had 136; fast-food hamburgers had 285 residues; fast-food chicken nuggets had 184; hot dogs had 207; and ground beef had 180.

In butter, the residue of more than 384 pesticides and industrial pollutants was detected, 171 in cheddar cheese, 173 in cream cheese, 168 in processed American cheese, and 160 in Swiss cheese.

Sick, sick, sick! In comparison, meat contains 14 times more pesticides than plant foods; dairy has 5 times more pesticides than plant foods.

Based on his review of USDA meat inspection reports, Steinman also estimates that “50 percent of animal foods could easily be contaminated with carcinogenic pesticides.”98 The United States alone uses 1.5 billion pounds of pesticides every year! That, our pathetic contamination sampling process, and our use of growth hormones has caused the European Economic Community to reject our meat exportations on numerous occasions.

Many animals are even given drugs laced with the most toxic form of arsenic.

Arsenic! Chemical pesticides are often sprayed directly onto the skin of animals to ward off parasites, insects, rodents, and fungi. In addition, these animals are given food treated with pesticides. On factory farms, bigger is better. More meat, milk, and eggs mean more money for the farmers. So to grow them larger or produce more, animals are given steroids and growth hormones.

But what is happening to the people who eat these fattened animals? Young girls are experiencing early onset of puberty at epidemic proportions. Many scientists attribute this to all of the hormones in chicken, meat, and milk that are forced upon children.

Basically, every time you consume factory-farmed chicken, beef, veal, pork, eggs, or dairy, you are eating antibiotics, pesticides, steroids, and hormones. This is worth repeating: Every time you consume factory-farmed chicken, beef, veal, pork, eggs, or dairy, you are eating antibiotics, pesticides, steroids, and hormones.

Now you might be thinking, “Who cares about all this pesticide-cancer shit? I just want to get buff!” Ever heard women complaining about gaining weight from going on The Pill or from having fertility treatments? Well, eating animals that are given hormones has the same effect as if you were taking these directly.

According to Dr. Paula Baillie-Hamilton, author of The Body Restoration Plan, antibiotics alone can account for weight gain in animals.

She also states that the toxic chemicals used in food production are fattening. Whether it’s the pesticides used for growing crops or the chemicals given to animals to fatten them up, they alter the body’s metabolism in a way that causes weight gain.

Having studied animals and humans, she discovered that low doses of toxic chemicals increased appetite, slowed metabolism, decreased ability to burn stored fat, and reduced ability to exercise.

The FDA lists approximately 1,700 drugs approved for use in animal feed. Of these approved drugs, approximately 300 include “weight gain” in their description.

However, in Animal Factories, Jim Mason and Peter Singer disclose an estimate of 10 thousand to 30 thousand different drugs actually being used.

We constantly hear gym-rats bragging, “I don’t eat any red meat. I just eat chicken.” Well now you know: Chicken is just as bad for you as cow or pig. In fact, it might even be worse.

According to a survey by the National Research Council, one chicken manufacturing plant had 90 percent of its poultry contaminated with salmonellosis.

Ninety fucking percent! Nasty. And according to the American Journal of Epidemiology, eating chicken (and fish) is linked to colon cancer. Researchers examined the eating habits of 32 thousand men and women over a six-year period and then monitored emerging cancer cases for the next six years.

“Among participants who generally avoided red meat but who ate white meat less than once per week, colon cancer risk was 55 per cent higher than for those who avoided both kinds of meat. Those who had white meat at least once per week had more than three fold higher colon cancer risk.”107 Researchers at the National Cancer Institute found grilled chicken to have high levels of heterocyclic amines (HCA), carcinogens that are formed when animal proteins are heated. With 480 nano grams of heterocyclic amines per gram, grilled chicken registered 15 times higher than beef.

But don’t go trading your chicken for beef. HCAs can form from cooking chicken, beef, pork, and fish, and whether you’re grilling, frying, or broiling. Grilling or broiling over a flame also produces polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), more carcinogens.

So don’t think cooking dead animals over an open flame makes you the grill-master; it makes you the cancer-master.

And don’t be lulled into a false sense of security that our government keeps food safe. News of the avian influenza epidemic came and went, but this disease is very real and can run rampant in poultry flocks.


Unfortunately, our waters aren’t any better than our land. Yes, some fish contain essential fatty acids and vitamins, minerals, and protein. But you can easily get all these nutrients from flaxseeds; pumpkin, sesame, and sunflower seeds; nuts; soybeans; fruits; vegetables (especially leafy greens); soy products; and whole grains.

Fish and other seafood contain high levels of contaminants from industrial and environmental pollutants, waste products, and pesticide residues from farms. Also present in fish and seafood are high levels of mercury and PCBs, which are well absorbed by the body.

Other notables are BHC, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, heptachlor, and dioxin.

These chemicals can cause neurotoxicity, which impairs a person’s mental state and ability. The human body contains acetylcholine, a naturally occurring chemical that helps impulses pass from nerve to nerve. Once the impulse is passed, the chemical is no longer needed and is actually harmful if it remains.

So our bodies produce an enzyme, cholinesterase, which rids us of the unwanted acetylcholine. Pesticides inhibit our ability to pro duce cholinesterase, which causes a buildup of the now-dangerous acetylcholine.

Mercury, a suspected carcinogen, can alter immune function, raise blood pressure, cause blindness or paralysis, increase the chance of cardiac mortality, and is known to reduce virility.

It can also inflict permanent brain damage on fetuses, infants, and children.


Appetizing, huh? Have some mercury poisoning with your ahi tuna. How about some trichinosis with your pork? Don’t forget a side of salmonella with your eggs or chicken! We certainly don’t want to leave out an order of mad cow disease! Think about what you’ve been eating. What we call salmon, hamburger, steak, chick en, bacon, sausage, ham, roast beef, salami, bologna, turkey, hot dog, and duck are actually decomposing, rotting animal carcass.

Bon appétit! .

Man Up.

Closing your eyes to the problem will not make it go away. You don’t want to see it, but you’ll eat it? So, yeah, if you want to be a Skinny Bastard, you’ve got to be a vegetarian—someone who doesn’t eat dead animals or seafood. Quit whining. We weren’t raised by hippie-crunchy-granola parents on vegetarian communes.

Growing up, we both ate meat all day, every day. We scoffed at tofu and spit on vegetables. Really. Kim’s addictions included such delicacies as corned beef hash, canned Vienna sausages, and daily Big Macs. Every single day in 1992, Rory ate a ham, egg, and cheese sandwich for breakfast, followed by a bacon double cheese burger, fries, and a soda for lunch. Dinner was always a dead chicken, fish, cow, or pig. So before you say, “I could never give up meat,” realize that nearly every single vegetarian on the planet said those same words. So shut it, pussy. And know that there are a ton of strong, manly, ass-kicking warriors who are vegetarians and professional athletes. (We list a few on pages 106–108, but don’t skip ahead—wait for it.).

Now, some of you may be ready to explode. Certainly, when you bought this book, the last thing you expected was to be told that you should stop eating animals. But just because you didn’t expect it or because it goes against what you’ve believed your whole life, it doesn’t make the information any less accurate or valuable. Simmer down. Step back for a second. Ask yourself why you’re angry. Wait sixty seconds. Now ask yourself again—usually the first time you’re not able to see the truth. Chances are you’re angry because we’ve revealed a huge pile of shit that you didn’t want to see. You were perfectly happy eating burgers and chicken and bacon, and the last thing you wanted was to know exactly what you were eating all these years. You were perfectly happy thinking these foods were healthy, or at least “okay in moderation.” Now that you know all this, you won’t be able to look at food the same way. Now that you know all this, you might actually have to change! And some of you would rather numb out, hate us, or hold on to your old, unhealthy ways than change. Well, we hope you’ll take on the challenge of change. Because we both know from experience that abstaining from animal products is the best thing you can do for yourself. But don’t take it from us, take it from the American Dietetic Association, the world’s largest organization of nutrition professionals. After extensively reviewing all the scientific studies on vegetarian diets, they found that vegetarians have lower rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and cancer (all the top killers) than meat-eaters.

In other words, just so we’re clear: vegetarians are healthier than meat eaters.

If you absolutely cannot, will not, dare not believe what we’re saying about meat, or you simply don’t want to stop eating these foods—fine. Just don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater! You know there’s other useful information in this book. So don’t use this as an excuse to dismiss everything else you’ve learned since you started reading it. Just ignore the stuff you simply can’t abide by and incorporate what you can. No need to be a drama queen about the whole thing.