Benefits of Vegetarianism

Factual Questions
21

Well, gosh, it all depends.

Certainly, occassional consumption of red meat is not harmful, unless the meat’s gone bad.

On the other hand, consuming fish (one of the “healthy”, “white” meats) that is contaminated with heavey metals or other Bad Things™ is NOT healthy.

One food, in and of itself, is not “bad” if eaten occassionally, and no food is “good” consumed in excess or if it’s contaminated.

You really have to look at diet in a larger context of the wholesomeness of the food and the physical requirements of the lifestyle lived by the eater

22

That’s what I thought.

I misread Lamia’s original comment as implying that cutting out red meat and replacing it with white would give some health benefits, which is apparently not what was intended.

23

This isn’t of course scientific, but my own observation. Although I’m not Vegan, I spent four months at two vegan health retreats, one in Colorado, and one in NSW, Australia. All the lifelong vegans I met not only looked healthier, they had more stamina, were stronger, more “vibrant”, never fat, and looked younger than their years. And second-hand, heal faster, even from traumatic injury. The owner of the Australian retreat had broken his back in a fall from a roof and was told he would never walk again. He went home, did his own thing, and today works his five acres of orchards, mowing grass and maintenance as well at the retreat, and gets around with a colostomy bag. His legs are still numb, but he has to tell you because you don’t know he isn’t perfectly healthy. He has more energy at 56 than I had at 20. Just my two cents. No, I’m still not vegan. I love the food, I just detest cooking. If you want to try the vegan diet, a Seventh-Day Adventist health retreat is a great place to try out the food and the lifestyle. They never pressed the religious aspect when I was there. There are also Buddhist retreats where they of course serve a vegan menu.

24

McStain - you might want to search the “Great Debates” board on this very website - the Vegetarianism debate comes up quite a bit there, and amongst all the rantings and ravings, you’ll find a lot of information.

25

Best thing about being a vegetarian (that I didn’t even think of before I stayed with a vegitarian friend): Washing up is a lot easier. You don’t have to worry about meat juice breeding bacteria in cutting boards, on plates, etc; a lot of the washing up he did didn’t even involve more than rinsing plates!

26

Attended a “drug dinner” a few years ago where the doctor giving the lecture spent some time going over a study comparing different groups of people and their rate of death due to heart problems. It was interesting to note that transplanted Indians who were life-long vegetarians weren’t doing any better than caucasian cow-killers - in fact they had higher rates. Absence of meat won’t take care of the problem if you still pour ghee on everything, or whatever your favorite fat is.

27

There have been several studies of lifespan among Seventh-Day Adventists, who neither smoke nor drink. Many, but not all, Seventh-Day Adventists are vegetarians. http://www.betterlivingstore.com/Longlife.htm

28

Thanks for the links!

29

Well, here’s a life expectancy calculator from NorthWestern Mutual: http://www.northwesternmutual.com/nmcom/NM/longevitygameintro/toolbox--calculator--longevitygameintro--longevity_intro

Not the most scientific of cites, but they are a life insurance agency. It contains this question:

  • Light user of saturated fats (1-2 times a week)
  • Average user of saturated fats (at least 4 times a week)
  • Indiscriminate user of saturated fats (7 or more times a week)
  • Non-user of saturated fats

I imagine that the only way you can be a non-user of saturated fats is to be a vegetarian. For me, the resultant ages for each of the above are 86, 84, 82, 87. So, from one extreme (vegetarian) to the other (it’s all about the beef, baby) the difference is 5 years. For lighter eating folks, the difference is much less substantial.

30

In a nutshell, eliminating meat from your diet will reduce or eliminate your risks for most cancers, heart disease, osteoporosis, Campylobacter/Salmonella/Listeria/E.Coli poisoning, high blood pressure, Diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, kidney disease, osteoarthritis, and our new friend Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (aka "Mad Cow.)

http://www.vegsource.com/articles/cancer_diet.htm

http://www.drmcdougall.com/science/implications.html

http://www.vegsource.com/articles/prostate_cancer_igf.htm

http://www.vegsource.com/articles/veg_definition.htm

Suggested reading:

John Robbins: The Food Revolution and Diet for a New America
http://www.foodrevolution.org/food_revolution.htm

Dr. John McDougall: The McDougall Plan

Howard Lyman: Mad Cowboy
http://www.madcowboy.com/

Dr. Dean Ornish: Program for Reversing Heart Disease and Eat More Weigh Less

31

voguevixen wrote

Don’t mean to be harsh, but I find that extremely hard to believe. Especially that word “most”, and double-especially that word “eliminate”.

I read the first of your cites, and it doesn’t back up your claim either. The meat of the article is:

Recommending switching to a more plants is not the same as recommending to go vegetarian. And this in a Vegetarian website.

32

Firstly that’s a calculator for the use of saturated fats, not for the use of various foods. Note that it says use, which is very, very different drom consumption. You use saturated fats when, for example, you deep fry using lard. Eating meat is not equivalent to using saturated fat by any stretch. The two extremes are not between vegetarian and beef, they’re between using vegetable ghee and coconut oil, and using fish oil and lard from pigs fed on unsaturated fats. That’s where your 5 years comes from and the vegetarian is going to die earlier.

Secondly animals fat =/= saturated and plant fat =/= unsaturated. Coconut is disgustingly high in staurated fats, while fish is exceptionally low. There are numerous other exceptions.

Saying that the only way you can be a non-user of saturated fats is to become vegetarian is out and out wrong. Eat a pure meat diet if you like. Just don’t use saturated fats. Like all dietary choices this is about being sensible.

33

Cecil sez:
Are humans meat eaters or vegetarians by nature?

34

Let’s see now.

The food poisoning microbes will all quite happily live in peanut butter.

Heart disease and high blod pressure may be related to high cholesterol levels in some cases but the corrlation is a long way from perfect and vegetarian =/= low cholesterol levels, nor does meatatarian = high cholesterol levels.

No one knows the cause of MS so to suggest that being a vegetarian will eliminate it is ludicrous.

Kidney disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and osteoarthritis is caused by so many factors (including poisoning by vegetables) that again suggesting that being a vegetarian will eliminate it is ridiculous, particularly diabetes.

CJD’s primary means of transmission is via inheritence form parents or from organ, tissue and related donations.

Can you provide one cite that states that a vegetarian diet will eliminate any one of those diseases? I read those links and not one of them comes close to suggesting anything of the sort.

35

i like http://www.vegweb.com. they have some tons of recipes, including one for vegetarian haggis, which i have yet to try (not that i would have the haggis-eating experience required to compare it to the real thing).

36

Similar thing happened to Benjamin Franklin, albeit more earthly. He was a vegetarian during his later teen years, until one day he was in the vicinity of some fish being cooked in a frying-pan, and noted that “It smelt admirably well.” That ended his vegetarian life style! Can’t blame him…

37

**
How do you figure that? Unless you stick a knife into a raw chicken and use that to make a peanut butter sandwich.

True, you need to maintain a low-fat/high-fiber and low-sodium vegetarian diet to treat or prevent heart disease and high-bloodpressure (you can’t eat peanut butter on white bread with potato chips for every meal) but you cannot treat or prevent either with a meat-based diet. High meat intake = high cholesterol level. You can find this info in most of the books I cited. According to Michael Debakey, MD, Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center, only about 5% of artherosclerosis and coronary heart disease patients have a hereditary form. (The Food Revolution Chapter 2, page 21.)
**

I’m not suggesting it, but Dr. McDougall is:
http://www.drmcdougall.com/science/ms.html
**

Again: http://www.drmcdougall.com/science/diabetes.html
http://www.drmcdougall.com/science/osteoporosis.html
http://www.drmcdougall.com/science/kidney.html
http://www.drmcdougall.com/science/arthritis.html

**

Say WHAT?

**

The books are more detailed, researched and fully annotated. I really encourage everyone to read at least one of them.

From the link: http://www.vegsource.com/articles/cancer_diet.htm

60-70 percent of cancers is “most”, right?

For Bill H.:
http://www.vegsource.com/articles/op_ed_colon.htm
This one makes it a little more cut & dried.

(Sorry it’s from a vegetarian source?!?!?! But they got it from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.)

As for my wording in my original statement, I didn’t mean to imply the word “eliminate” applied to all the items on the list. I still maintain if you don’t bring meat into your house you won’t have a risk of coming into contact with meat-borne bacteria. Obviously you’re taking your chances going to a restaurant, etc.

(Re: roast chicken hallucinations – the stuff that gets to me are the Jack-in-the-Box commercials where the burger is as big as the whole screen. Ditto the Round Table Pizza ads where they shove the big, meaty, greasy pizza right in front of the lens. Drooooooooooool.)

38

voguevixen wrote

I’ve read that article in it’s entirety. Plus, I’ve read the sources for the article. And frankly I’m astounded. The conclusions of the sources have nothing to do with vegetarianism. In fact, their conclusion is that eating extra fruits and vegetables DO NOT reduce the incidence of colon cancer. And somehow, vegsource came to the exact opposite conclusion. There is literally no other way to describe vegsource’s reporting than “flat-out lying”.

FYI, here are the original sources. You can find these in the first paragraph in the vegsource article.

http://jnci.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/92/21/1740
The conclusion from this site is (in it’s entirety):

The headline for this one reads “Study: Fruits and vegetables do not protect against colon cancer”. The first paragraph reads

voguevixen, you can see in my first post that I suspect there is some health benefit to being vegetarian. (I am not one). Cites like these make me doubt it.

39

Bill, I was under the impression that the report stated there was no benefit to increasing your fruit & vegetable intake in a standard meat-based diet; however, to read the whole article from the JNCI you have to be a subscriber, which I’m not. I’m not sure why the veg site would bother putting it up at all if it refuted their point. Hmm…curious!

They do provide this cite to other studies that back up a vegetarian diet as preventitive, but they have no link to it.

I believe this may be the report they’re citing:

which states:

40

Campylobacter: can be spread person to person or pet-person via contaminated peanut butter. Contaminated water remains the largest source of campylobacter infections, so rinsing a knife in water and sticking it into your peanut butter will work just fine.

Salmonella and E. coli: so widespread in such a huge range of animals that a list of all possible sources of contamination is impossible. For God’s sake they’re commonly found in the human gut and transmitted via the feacal-oral route.

Listeria: Also a common resident in asymptomatic humans. Also found in a masive range of animal species but most importantly is a common soil microbe found throughout the world.

Voguevixen your lack of knowledge of basic food hygeine is terrifying. You don’t need meat to have a serious source of food poisoning. All of these bugs are either common soil microbes or resident in the gut of yourself or a freind, family memeber or pet. Contamination occurs due to lack of proper food hygeine. Suggesting that avoiding meat products will eliminate or even significantly reduce the risk of any of these infection is dangerous in the extreme, not to mention ignorant.
So a vegetarian diet won’t elimanate any of these diseases.

So we need a sensible balanced vegetarian or meatatarian diet to minimise (but not by any stretch elimate) our risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.
**So a vegetarian diet won’t eliminate this disease. **

Voguevixen you did suggest it. You said that a vegetarian diet would elimate the diseases listed. Can you provide a cite that says that MS will be leimiated by a vegetarian diet?

As for what Dr. McDougal says I don’t know. What he does not however say in the link you provided is that a vegetarian diet will eliminate MS. He implies there is no evidence that it can’t help: “when I have asked… doctors… to support their contention that diet has nothing to do with the cause or cure of the disease, they have consistently been unable to give me a scientifically supported answer.”
So a vegetarian diet won’t eliminate this disease.

McDougall on diabetes: “forms of diabetes… are rare in parts of the world where people’s meals are based on starches.” Not elimated, rare.
So a vegetarian diet won’t eliminate this disease.

McDougall on osteoporosis: “people in countries who consume small amounts of animal proteins have… little osteoporosis.” Not none, little.
So a vegetarian diet won’t eliminate this disease.

McDougall on kidney disease: “There are many causes of kidney damage… Fats and cholesterol in the diet promote atherosclerosis in the kidney arteries” Fats are common in plants material (duh). Cholesterol levels are largely uncorrelated with cholesterol intake.
So a vegetarian diet won’t eliminate this disease.

McDougall on arthritis: “There are many known and unknown causes for the more severe forms of arthritis. gout (is) due to the consumption of foods (rich in purines) by susceptible persons. … rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, and systemic lupus, are grouped together as “inflammatory arthritis”. Their cause is generally held to be unknown.” So one from of arthritis is acused by eating foods high in purines. The highest levels of purines of all the foods are found in fungi, happily eaten by vegetarians. High levels are found in grains and grai products, particularly whole grain, legumes and spinach. Wheat germ is notably high in purines. By his own admission the other forms of arthritis result from causes unknown and complely unlinked to diet in even the most tangential manner.
So a vegetarian diet won’t eliminate this disease.

I said “CJD’S PRIMARY MEANS OF TRANSMISSION IS VIA INHERITEANCE FROM PARENTS OR FROM ORGAN< TISSUE AND RELATED DONATIONS”

Hope you heard me. :slight_smile:
So a vegetarian diet won’t eliminate this disease.

So a vegetarian diet won’t eliminate this disease.

Can you provide a cite that a vegetarian diet will prevent even one type of cancer?

So there we have it folks. The claims that any of the diseases listed can be eliminated by a vegetarian diet are pure bollocks. Completely unsupported, contraty to all medical knowledge and based apparently on the writing of vegetarians.

I’d rant now, but Manny doesn’t seem to want a debate.

'Nuff said