"I don't eat red meat, so I'm okay. We know that it's more complicated than that. It's not just red meat. It's not just the fat. For nearly 50 years, we were told that the primary cause of heart disease was saturated fat and cholesterol, and that leaner meats, lower-fat dairy products, and egg whites were the solution. But the research now shows that the other inflammatory compounds in animal foods, like those that can impair athletic recovery, also play a significant role in the development of heart disease. We're gonna do a whole lot better by just getting rid of the animal products, and there are really good biochemical reasons for that. Heme iron is one of them, for example. Heme iron is from an animal source, right? So, most commonly, you think red meat, even though poultry have it, fish has it. They did a meta-analysis looking over six prospective dietary studies, over 130,000 patients, and they came to the conclusion that one milligram a day of heme iron is associated with a 27% increasing risk of coronary heart disease. To put that in perspective, an average hamburger patty has about two to three milligrams. And it isn't just the iron in animal foods that can cause problems. It's actually the animal protein itself. It's not just red meat, not just chicken, not just eggs, not just milk. It's the ingestion of any animal protein. At that moment in time, a process begins."