Vegetarians Less Healthy, Lower Quality Of Life Than Meat-Ea

[Julie]

Absolutely agree with you ZCP about politics, etc., but I don't see it as quite the same thing... thanks anyhow.

[BlackSpinner]

In a word, BOLLOCKS!

Simple facts: Eating meat leads to congested arteries and heart attacks. Eating eggs leads to unacceptably higher levels of the wrong kinds of cholesterol. Drinking cow's milk as an adult gives some people indigestion and acid reflux, among health problems. It is also high in sugars, leading to weight and blood glucose problems.

Debunking a few myths:

"Man evolved to be the smartest being on the planet because of a high protein diet." False. If flesh were necessary, the lion would be the most intelligent creature on the planet.



"Where do you get your protein from?" An adult human only needs about 3% of his diet to be protein -- and you can get that from iceberg lettuce. Consider this: There are few more powerful beings than mountain gorillas. They have LONG fangs, massive muscular bodies, a plethora of hair, and eat leaves and the incidental bug that's on those leaves. Elephants? Tough hide, huge mass, lots of power.. another vegetarian, and both quite bright. Vegans do just fine eating black beans, nuts, etc. for protein.

Nope we need meat/fish. It is the only dietary source of real B12 which feeds our brains. Neither gorillas nor elephants are typing on the internet or doing research on B12.
The egg and cholesterol myth was debunked a decade ago.

http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot. ... 0BwS9evgb8

[quote]A change in diet, incorporating a higher amount of animal food, must have been one of the keys to this phenomenon. The quality leap in Homo's diet, through a greater intake in animal proteins, fats and certain olio-elements, is essential for a correct working and maintenance of the brain. On a similar note, a larger brain allows greater social and cultural development, which, at that time, led to the achievement of important technological innovations.
[/quote]

We evolved as hunter-gatherers. Bunk. Consider this: with today's computer-designed bows and perfectly straight arrows, we are still relatively unsuccessful in hunting with that weapon. Early man had arrows which were far less straight, bows far less accurate or powerful. It's far more likely that we started eating carrion. We most certainly are not physically equipped with weapons for flesh. Our nails and "canines" can't even get through a rabbit's thin skin very well. Gatherers? Sure. But the notion of man as a great hunter? Even the picts on cave walls were not an accurate rendition, but brags, most likely of a prowess we did not actually possess.

It is not the tools but the actual hunter, how ever hunting tools go back well over 2 million years. Don't be trapped by the myth of the lone noble savage hunter, humans worked in packs. Even today northern aboriginal peoples still live by hunting.

To eat healthy takes a bit of work and thought. We didn't eat much bread until 100 years or so ago, because milling the flour was a lot of work. A family might have one loaf of bread a week.

The Egyptians fed the pyramid workers with bread. If you are going to quote history get it right.

What does a veg*n eat? EVERYTHING else. What we're leaving off the menu is really very little. We don't eat cow, pig, chicken or fish. Most people in the States don't eat fish much anyway. Lamb and goat are even less common. So most of you have already been eating a lot of vegetarian food already.

http://www.truthaboutabs.com/vegan-conf ... blems.html

http://chriskresser.com/why-you-should- ... egan-diets

Vegan diets, in particular, are almost completely devoid of certain nutrients that are crucial for physiological function. Several studies have shown that both vegetarians and vegans are prone to deficiencies in B12, calcium, iron, zinc, the long-chain fatty acids EPA & DHA, and fat-soluble vitamins like A & D.

B12 in the diet

B12 is the only vitamin that contains a trace element (cobalt), which is why it’s called cobalamin. Cobalamin is produced in the gut of animals. It’s the only vitamin we can’t obtain from plants or sunlight. Plants don’t need B12 so they don’t store it. B12 is found exclusively in animal foods, such as liver, clams, oysters, mussels, fish eggs, octopus, fish, crab and lobster, beef, lamb, cheese and eggs.

A common myth amongst vegetarians and vegans is that it’s possible to get B12 from plant sources like seaweed, fermented soy, spirulina and brewers yeast. But plant foods said to contain B12 actually contain B12 analogs called cobamides that block intake of and increase the need for true B12.

[SpectreWriter]

Not true either. It used to be claimed that B12 comes ONLY from animal flesh. That has since been disproved as well. It is a byproduct of bacterial growth, which happens quite readily outside of a living being's body, so we don't need animals for anything anymore.

Quite the contrary, this is EXACTLY the diet we were "designed" for. We don't have the necessary anatomy to be carnivores, nor true omnivores. It's no different than feeding a cow or parrot flesh and claiming that as proof that cattle are omnivores. Just because we CAN doesn't mean we should, nor that we're built for it.

If you're truly after the TRUTH, I'll help by providing the facts to back this up. If, like many, you're just after some slim excuse for not going vegetarian or vegan yourself, I'll leave you to it and not waste my time and energy.

EDIT: We get ample vitamins and minerals from the same place that the animals get it. Fact. Don't go quoting some nonsense article found on the Internet, please. I've been without flesh for SEVERAL years, and I'm far from unhealthy, anemic, or any of those other stereotypes that arose from people eating junk that didn't come from meat, without concern for a balanced vegetarian/vegan diet.

As to the ethics, when you eat YOUR flesh, I'll agree "to each his own," but so long as you're eating the body of another living, thinking, feeling, caring, socially complex individual, I'm going to have a problem with that, because "your" "choice" is causing other such beings to suffer in ways that are unimaginable to us, before being scared shitless and killed, unnecessarily. One day we'll all be better than that, when we bother to care about our fellow earthlings instead of thinking of non-humans as having no purpose but that which we put to them.

I could go on, but again, no sense in wasting keystrokes by teaching a sow to sing if the sow doesn't care to learn. If any of you DO want to know the truth (compiled by personal experience, a LOT of ongoing study and research over several years, not just some cites pulled up to "win" an Internet argument), send a PM and I'll provide the info to you.

People tend to get so opinionated about diet yet we really know so little still at this point. We do know that vegans need to supplement a couple vitamins so it would appear to me it isn't the diet we were designed for, but in this day and age they do have the opportunity to use supplements and eat that diet if it appeals to them. To each his own. I think every nutritionist agrees on one thing though, vegetables are really important to health and most of us don't eat enough of them. And we can probably all agree that sugar leads to a whole host of problems.

[BlackSpinner]

Quite the contrary, this is EXACTLY the diet we were "designed" for. We don't have the necessary anatomy to be carnivores, nor true omnivores. It's no different than feeding a cow or parrot flesh and claiming that as proof that cattle are omnivores. Just because we CAN doesn't mean we should, nor that we're built for it.

Wrong by several million years.

No you can't get B12 and all the other stuff from vegetation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12_deficiency

It is important for vegans, who possess limited food sources of B12, and anyone else wishing to obtain B12 from food sources other than animals, to consume foods that contain little or no pseudovitamin-B12 and are high in biologically active B12. However, there have been no significant human trials of sufficient size to demonstrate enzymatic activity of B12 from nonbacterial sources, such as Chlorella and edible sea algae (seaweeds, such as lavers), although chemically some of these sources have been reported to contain B12 that seems chemically identical to active vitamin.[33][34] However, among these sources, only fresh sea algea such as Susabi-nori (Porphyra yezoensis)[36][37] have been reported to demonstrated vitamin B12 activity in B12 deficient rats. This has yet to be demonstrated for Chlorella, and no study in rats of any algal B12 source has yet to be confirmed by a second independent study. The possibility of algae-derived active forms of B12 presently remains an active topic of research, with no results that have yet reached consensus in the nutritional community.

Maybe this internet link will seem more real to you.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3137939/

Vitamin B12 deficiency beyond infancy

Studies examining plasma vitamin B12 concentrations among preschool children and adolescents have suggested that vitamin B12 deficiency early in life compromises children’s subsequent growth and development. In a study in Boston, 42 preschoolers (median age, 3.9 years) who had been breastfed by vegetarian mothers and weaned to a macrobiotic diet were weighed and measured [40]. Approximately one-third (32%, 11/34) of the children were stunted (below the 5th percentile of height) and 15% (6/41) were wasted (below the 5th percentile of weight). Over half the children (55%) had high urinary methylmalonic acid concentrations, particularly those who had consumed a vegetarian diet throughout their lives. In a study conducted among adolescents in the Netherlands, cognitive assessments were conducted on 48 adolescents who had been raised on macrobiotic diets for the first 6 years of life followed by lacto-vegetarian or omnivorous diets, and 24 adolescents raised on omnivorous diets [41]. The children raised on omnivorous diets from birth obtained better scores on most cognitive assessments than children raised on macrobiotic diets, regardless of their cobalamin status during adolescence. Many of the adolescents raised on a macrobiotic diet early in life had poor cobalamin status during adolescence, even if they were consuming an omnivorous diet later in life, illustrating the difficulty in restoring cobalamin status following early vitamin B12 deficiency [42]. These studies are particularly important because they suggest that early cobalamin deficiency can have lasting consequences for children’s growth and cognitive development, and they raise questions about the possibility of mild cobalamin deficiency among the millions of children in developing countries breastfed by mothers who may be cobalamin-deficient due to low intake of animal-source foods and the nutritional demands of pregnancy and lactation.

Yeast is a living complex thing too - don't eat bread or drink beer.

[Captain_Midnight]

SW writes...Simple facts: Eating meat leads to congested arteries and heart attacks. Eating eggs leads to unacceptably higher levels of the wrong kinds of cholesterol.

As a carnivore (okay, "omnivore") myself, I wish all the fine folks here could have my triglyceride, HDL, LDL, and blood glucose levels (paraphrasing my doc, "perfect".) It's not about meat, or eggs, it's about avoiding certain carbohydrates. Wheat and corn and sugar are artery-clogging killers.

I have known militant vegetarians who are so unhealthy, you would not want to write them a life-insurance policy. (I also know carnivores that might peg the meters in the doc's office, but I suspect that they also eat the wrong carbos.)

Carbohydrate. That a the central diet issue that I believe needs more (calm and rational) examination and discussion.

My hope? Vegetarians and Carnivores might find a common ground... wheat, corn, sugar equals bad.

Gotta go, time for dinner.


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[chunkyfrog]

One interesting thing: Adventists are ahead of many others in their research of nutrition, which goes back surprisingly far.
Their flavor of vegetarian diet, when done properly, is about as healthy and delicious as one could possibly eat.
We could all benefit from their nutritional knowledge and recipe collection, even while enjoying tasty creatures.
Note: amphibians are noted for their funky taste, which no sauce can disguise.

[deerslayer]

One interesting thing: while enjoying tasty creatures.
Note: amphibians are noted for their funky taste, which no sauce can disguise.

O Those Tasty Legs , season floured & pan fried . . . .slobber ....jus sayin

[JDS74]

The OP might have been better if the title was:
"Poor quality diets in terms of essential nutrients tend to poorer health outcomes."

Just a thought.