healthy vegetarian

[i_am2bz]

There in lies the difference. Its vegans that have the hardest time. Vegetarians that do eat good eggs and cheese, and drink milk will usually fair quite well.

Glad you pointed that out, BB. I've been vegetarian 10+ years with no problems. (I "cheated" once about 7 years ago & had turkey gravy on mashed potatoes...& was so sick I almost threw up.) BUT...I eat lotsa cheese, butter, & eggs.

 

[big brown horse]

"herbivores put on weight like cows, allow themselves to be herded and act like good sheeples." eta the source: http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/kdaniel/

 

[savingdogs]

Good article, BBH.

 

[Beekissed]

My parents managed to remain quite healthy and thriving on a vegan diet for over 15 years. It all depends on how you manage it...it takes forethought and educating yourself on what to eat to remain in balance.

 

[big brown horse]

I also think it varries for different people Bee. I know my body reacts differently than other's as far as nutrition goes. My daughter and I the only one in my whole immediate family that can't handle gluten for example. Everyone else is peachy. Frustrating b/c I adore bread.

A lot of my vegan friends weren't paying as much attention to what they were eating as to what they weren't eating...then again they/(we, myself included) were very young.

I just couldn't do it bottom line. My body revolted the whole time, even when I tried it again about 5 years ago when I had better eating habits. Imo, each their own...one of Sam's nurses just couldn't stand the taste of meat. She had no other excuse for being vegan...she came from a family that hunted for most of their food too, and that didn't make her mad at all.

 

[Wifezilla]

The b12 issue alone is enough to be scary.
"Vitamin B-12 is unique among vitamins in that while it is found universally in foods of animal origin, where it is derived ultimately from bacteria, there is no active vitamin B-12 in anything which grows out of the ground. Where trace amounts of vitamin B-12 are found on plants it is there only fortuitously in bacterial contamination of the soil. And even that is lost if plants are washed thoroughly before eating them.

Bacteria in the human colon make prodigious amounts of vitamin B-12. Unfortunately, this is useless as it is not absorbed through the colon wall. Dr. Sheila Callender tells of treating vegans with severe vitamin B-12 deficiency by making water extracts of their stools which she fed to them, thus affecting a cure.[13] An Iranian vegan sect unwittingly also makes use of this fact. Investigators could not understand how members of this sect remained healthy, until their investigations showed that they grew their vegetables in human manure and then ate the vegetables without being too fussy about washing them first.[14]

To enable vegans to survive, vitamin B-12 is added artificially to breakfast cereals in Britain and may be bought in pill form. This is hardly a natural way to get food and in many cases it is self-defeating. Unlike most other vitamins, Vitamin B-12 occurs as a number of analogues, very few of which are active for humans. In collecting human stools for analysis Dr. Victor Herbert found that of each 100 micrograms of vitamin B-12 extracted, only 5 micrograms were analogues active for humans.[15] Thus even in this most prodigious source of the vitamin, 95% was composed of analogues which were useless.

Several fermented products such as tempeh, a soya bean product and spirulinas, used by strict vegans as a source of vitamin B-12, either do not contain significant amounts of the vitamin or contain analogues of the vitamin which are not active for humans.[16] Over half of the adults from a macrobiotic community tested in New England had low concentrations of vitamin B-12. Children were short in stature and low in weight. The community relied on sea vegetables for the vitamin.

This reliance on vegetables sources gives a false sense of security and could actually bring on the symptoms of B-12 deficiency more quickly.

The amount of vitamin B-12 we need is tiny: about 1 microgram per day. Eating more than this results in a reserve being built up in the body. When a person becomes a vegan, those stores are depleted but only gradually. Thus it can be several years before the onset of symptoms. In England a carefully conducted study carried out on vegans showed that they all got vitamin B-12 deficiency eventually.[17]
Brain shrinkage among vegetarians

But, getting back to brain size, the decline which started with the advent of agriculture and our greater reliance on foods of plant origin has now seen a dramatically greater decline in those who have adopted a 'healthy', vegetarian diet.

Scientists at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, recently discovered that changing to a vegetarian diet could be bad for our brains with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage.[18]

Using tests and brain scans on community-dwelling volunteers aged 61 to 87 years without cognitive impairment at enrolment, they measured the size of the participants' brains. When the volunteers were retested five years later the scientists found those with the lowest levels of vitamin B12 intake were the most likely to have brain shrinkage. Not surprisingly, vegans who eschew all foods of animal origin, suffered the most brain shrinkage. This confirms earlier research showing a link between brain atrophy and low levels of B12.

Vegans are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish.

There were two other worrying aspects to this trial. The first was at the start of the trial, the biggest brain in a vegan, at 1455 ml, was already smaller than smallest brain of someone on a normal diet, at 1456 ml.

The other aspect was even more worrying. It was that all participants had Vit B-12 which was within the 'normal' range. This suggests that the normal range is too low - and by quite large margin. I understand that, based on this study, the Japanese have raised their normal level.

Confirmation of the above study was provided the following year by another study by the Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing, the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, UK.[19] Noting that vitamin B-12 deficiency is often associated with cognitive deficits, they reviewed evidence that cognition in the elderly may also be adversely affected at concentrations of vitamin B-12 above the traditional cutoffs for deficiency. Their suggestion is that the elderly in particular should be encouraged to maintain a good, rather than just an adequate, vitamin B-12 status by dietary means.
Conclusion

It is obvious that we need to be eating more, not less, meat and animal-sourced foods.

If vegetarians and vegans in particular berate you for 'murdering' and eating animals, please be kind to them. They are almost certainly suffering from self-inflicted brain atrophy, and have little recognition of both the damage they are doing to themselves and the harm that are doing to others who follow their advice. "
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/vegetarians-have-smaller-brains.html

Then you get to the increase in heart disease issue...

"People who follow a vegan lifestyle -- strict vegetarians who try to eat no meat or animal products of any kind -- may increase their risk of developing blood clots and atherosclerosis or "hardening of the arteries," which are conditions that can lead to heart attacks and stroke. That's the conclusion of a review of dozens of articles published on the biochemistry of vegetarianism during the past 30 years.
The article appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Duo Li notes in the review that meat eaters are known for having a significantly higher combination of cardiovascular risk factors than vegetarians. Lower-risk vegans, however, may not be immune. Their diets tend to be lacking several key nutrients -- including iron, zinc, vitamin B12, and omega-3 fatty acids. While a balanced vegetarian diet can provide enough protein, this isn't always the case when it comes to fat and fatty acids. As a result, vegans tend to have elevated blood levels of homocysteine and decreased levels of HDL, the "good" form of cholesterol. Both are risk factors for heart disease.

It concludes that there is a strong scientific basis for vegetarians and vegans to increase their dietary omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin B12 to help contend with those risks. Good sources of omega-3s include salmon and other oily fish, walnuts and certain other nuts. Good sources of vitamin B12 include seafood, eggs, and fortified milk. Dietary supplements also can supply these nutrients."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110202082307.htm

Can a vegan diet be truly healthy? I say the odds are slim. Can a vegetarian diet be healthy? Yes, with a lot of work. Are the odds good of someone doing it "right"? Nope.

 

[freemotion]

I could swear Bee said her folks ate wild turkeys once a year.

 

[Wifezilla]

My "vegetarian" niece eats bacon and chicken nuggets

 

[freemotion]

There in lies the difference. Its vegans that have the hardest time. Vegetarians that do eat good eggs and cheese, and drink milk will usually fair quite well.

Glad you pointed that out, BB. I've been vegetarian 10+ years with no problems. (I "cheated" once about 7 years ago & had turkey gravy on mashed potatoes...& was so sick I almost threw up.) BUT...I eat lotsa cheese, butter, & eggs.

If I ate what passes for turkey gravy on what passes as potatoes, I would get quite sick, too. MSG, sprout retardants, and herbicides all heavily contaminate modern gravy and potatoes. I can eat it if I make it and grow it myself, however. Minus the toxins.

Yes, you need good animal fats to be a healthy vegetarian, preferably from pastured organic animals.

 

[Beekissed]

Yep, they did. If anyone could look at my mother and determine she is unhealthy, I could get them admittance to the School for the Blind!

She is 77 and can work and live circles around most anyone I know. She works hard around her place, line dances 2-3 times a week and has just took up square dancing as well. She bounces on her rebounder every day, uses her treadclimber daily, walks half a mile to the mailbox twice a day at a fast clip and uses her own chainsaw ad lib...as well as carries her own firewood into the house with ease. She can run a weedeater on rough brush all day long and not have an ounce of soreness and she has no bone or joint pain at all. Every year on her birthday she turns cartwheels across the yard...has been doing this for many years.

She has had nine children and has helped raise countless grandchildren, my three boys in particular, learned to drive at the age of 75 and zips across the state at the drop of a hat. She does her own home maintenance~electrical wiring, plumbing, roofing, calking, painting, etc. She is 5 ft. tall and weighs 115 lbs. She has a remarkable and almost photographical memory, can keep beat anyone at Spades, adapts to learning any new concept and is great at fixing appliances, furnaces, hotwater tanks, etc. She is a fair hand at lawnmower repair and has often diagnosed my automobiles correctly.

Yeah....you could say that being a vegan has really kept her an invalid...a cripple, really.

Before she started that lifestyle change, she had biliary atresia, liver stones, hiatal hernia, frequent pancreatitis, inflammatory hepatitis, congestive heart failure and cholesterol over 1000. She has no evident health problems at this time.