We are what we eat
I’ve been re-reading Dr. Gundry’s book, The Plant Paradox, and am gaining a better understanding of why it’s so important to eat only grass-fed beef and pastured poultry and eggs. I had forgotten how widespread the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics use is in the US among commercial livestock industry, especially cattle and pigs.
According to a December 2025 Food Animal Concerns Trust article, the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals increased 16% between 2023 and 2024, the largest spike in antibiotics use since 2009.
According to the article, “The overuse of antibiotics, whether in agriculture or human medicine, leads to the spread of antibiotic-resistant superbugs – pathogens that are difficult to treat. More than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur in the United States each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result.”
And the antibiotics aren’t used only in cattle and pigs. They are used in chicken and turkeys, as well, throughout the herd and flock. Every time you purchase beef, pork, chicken or turkey at the store, if you don’t buy organic chicken or turkey, or grass-fed beef, or humanely-raised pork, you are ultimately ingesting antibiotics in your food.
So why does this matter?
Have you had a urinary tract or other bacterial infection that won’t go away with the use of Cipro or some other broad-spectrum antibiotic? The culprit is likely due to all the antibiotics you’ve been ingesting through your food!
According to Dr. Gundry in his Plant Paradox book, “the urology team at my hospital has found that at least 50 percent of all women with urinary-tract infections carry bugs that are resistant to Cipro.” He goes on to say that these antibiotics are used because they make the animals grow faster, larger, and fatter.
What do you think that does to you when you eat the meat of those animals injected with these antibiotics?
The same thing happens. You get fat because your gut biome is storing fat to fight the ongoing battle in your gut against these bad bacteria invaders.
“A single dose of antibiotics taken by a woman during pregnancy can make her children fat. A single round of antibiotics given a child can make him or her obese,” according to Dr. Gundry in his book The Plant Paradox.
It’s not just the lectins from corn, soy, oats, and other plants that are causing obesity in this country, it’s also the antibiotics and other fillers US manufacturers add to the animal feed to make the animals bigger, fatter, and grow faster. That’s economically more cost-effective since they can get the animals to market faster and recover the costs of raising them. It’s just not “healthy” for the humans who consume them!
Guess what else?
The food these animals are fed – corn, soybeans, and oats – are also estrogen-like substances, according to Dr. Gundry, “the equivalent of one birth control pill’s worth of estrogenic substances” in every chicken breast.
In women, this leads to weight gain, severe PMS, bloating, uterine fibroids, endometriosis, and certain cancers, according to an article in The Well. In men, excessive estrogen can enlarge breast tissue, lower sex drive, and even lead to erectile dysfunction or infertility!
How do we counteract this?
We start reading labels, buying pasture-raised and grass-fed animals. They may not be as fat and large as the conventional products you are used to, but your gut biome will be happier in the long run, and you will be healthier and disease-free.
Homegrown, organic meat on a Keto diet
I had a conversation with a friend recently about why I won’t eat the home-grown beef his children have raised in 4-H. The animals are fed organic food which contains corn, soy, and oats because it isn’t economically feasible to just feed them alfalfa. It takes months longer to grow the steer and doesn’t get it fat enough to bring a decent price at auction. While I understand his reasoning, I just shake my head at this. He sees the results I’ve gotten with my change to The Plant Paradox program. He’s going through his own battle to lose more than 100 pounds on a Keto diet with a very slow weight loss of 1 pound a week. While he’s reducing carb intake from vegetables and avoiding breads, he’s eating commercially-raised pork and home-grown beef, chicken, and eggs from animals fed corn, soy and oats. He’s getting the carbs anyway and he doesn’t realize it!
Monitoring his carb intake in the vegies he eats isn’t enough. It may help, but as Gundry says, if you keep “dropping napalm on the gut rain forest”, with the other foods, your body continues to fight this war and you remain overweight, dealing with diabetes, cholesterol, joint pain, and other issues. It’s like burning the rain forest and then re-seeding it expecting it to grow back strong and healthy within a matter of days or weeks …. until you drop another dose of napalm to burn it down again.
Invest in health and lifestyle
I only hope that over time, more and more animal producers will invest in more pasture-raised animals and stop the use of antibiotics in the herds. Over time, it may become more economical, making it possible for the average family to afford these better foods.
Other countries, especially in Southern Europe, are smarter about how they raise their animals. The animals are pasture-raised and “the EU (European Union) led this initiative in 2006 by banning antibiotics growth promoters in 2006, and further restricting routine preventative use in 2022,” according to a Jan 28, 2022 World Animal Protection article.
Perhaps we need to take a look at where else we’re spending our family dollars, and cut back in some of those areas so we can spend more wisely on food at the store. Invest in our own and our family’s health rather than continue down this current path of disease, pain, and obesity caused by our current diets and ingestion of drugs to counteract the symptoms.
It’s a challenge, but one I’m willing to take on and continue with.