If a person stops eating meat for a significant period of time, say, 1 year, does his/her body stop producing the enzymes that are necessary to digest it? If not after 1 year, will a longer period of time cause the body to stop making these enzymes? Shorter? I remember hearing this somewhere. Is all of this nonsense?
Yep. Complete baloney. The enzymes you use to digest meat are used to break down any protein. Even if your body shut down production due to lack of anything to work on, you’d have to stop taking in all protein. After much less than a year of this you’d be dead.
-LabRat
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed.
What about fat breakdown? Generally meats are not just high protein, but high fat as well. Surely if one goes vegan, fat consumption declines. Is bile and lipase production decreased over time to match the diminished intake of fat.
Also, LabRat, I think you are 100% correct in saying that production of proteolytic digestive enzymes would continue since even a meatless diet contains protein. However, I wonder if production may diminish anyway. I think that the level of protein intake is likely to drop with a switch to a non-meat diet. If that occurred, production of GI tract proteases would likely diminish.
Well…sometimes I get the menstrual cramps real hard–Raising Arizona
Even if they did (which I don’t think happens anyway), our bodies are smart enough to say “hey, look, real food! no more tofu/tempeh crap!” and start cranking out those enzymes quickly.
S
I know a few long time vegetarians who ate meat and ended up sick (One chose hot dogs as the first meat he ever ate…yuck). I won’t go so far as to say it is an enzyme thing, but something is probably going on somewhere. It might be the same concept of getting sick when you travel (different bacteria etc.)
I know a few long time vegetarians who ate meat and ended up sick (One chose hot dogs as the first meat he ever ate…yuck). I won’t go so far as to say it is an enzyme thing, but something is probably going on somewhere. It might be the same concept of getting sick when you travel (different bacteria etc.) And not to start a debate but it is not necessarily true that vegetarians do mnot get enough protein.
I am a vegetarian, but have no first hand knowlege of this, having not eaten meat since I went veggie. However, even sven brings up a good point:
Hell, I get broken out and peckish when I drink different water than what I am used to. I also have always had a “delicate stomach”, too much fat makes me ill. I would guess that a fatty meaty meal would really do a number on me. (Not that I plan on finding out first-hand.)
Also, when you are a veggie for a long time, your taste changes. Meat smells different now. It looks different. Ewww. The gross factor alone would be enough for me to toss my cookies (if I actually had to eat some meat!)