I’ve been getting asked to write about vegetarianism for a long time. And for a long time, I’ve been avoiding it. Mostly because vegetarians just want confirmation that their choices are good, rather than to actually hear my opinion (oh damn… I started this article with the intention to play nice, but already blew it in the first paragraph. Oh well).
But today is the day I finally write about it. And yes, I have my own biases (I LOVE meat. Nothing like a good steak). And I have friends and clients who are vegetarians or vegans. But today, I’ll put both my biases and relationships to the side, and just explore what the science has to say. Fair?
Here are some big topics we’ll cover in this article:
- Is meat unhealthy?
- Can you get enough protein as a vegetarian?
- Can you get enough vitamin B12 as a vegetarian?
- Can you get enough iron as a vegetarian?
- What about The China Study?
Ready? Let’s go.
Original source: here.
Is Meat Unhealthy?
That’s the ultimate million dollar question. After all, you see headlines, like The War on Meat, Why Are Humans So Obsessed with Eating Meat?, and No Surprise: Meat is Bad For You. So you think “well, major media, like the Toronto Star, New York Times and Globe and Mail are saying it’s bad. So it must be bad.” But that’s a false conclusion.
You see, reporters and journalists are writers – not scientists. They want a good story. And unfortunately, much of the time a good story negates what science actually has to say.
But then, you might say that scientific studies have shown that meat is bad for you. People who eat meat have more heart disease, and cancer, and diabetes, and, and, and, ad nauseum.
However, most of those studies are observational studies. Meaning that the researchers don’t manipulate any variables. So cause-and-effect relationships can’t be established. It’s true that people who eat more meat have a correlation to more bad health. But does eating meat directly cause bad health? Don’t confuse correlation with causation. An example of this fallacy in thinking would be to say that ice cream sales cause drowning. Because if you were to measure both, you’d see that as ice cream sales rise, drowning also rises. So ice cream sales is correlated to drowning. Does that mean that ice cream causes drowning? Well, no. There’s a third variable that isn’t measured in our hypothetical study: temperature. When temperature goes up, more ice cream is sold, and when temperature goes up, more people go swimming. Logical, isn’t it?
So what other variables could explain the correlation between meat and poor health? Well, it could be the fact that researchers group “meat eaters” as one group, and don’t differentiate those who eat fast food meat, and farmers who grow their own chickens, and eat those.
Furthermore, could it also be that if a person is a vegetarian, s/he is also more health conscious than the average person, and besides their nutrition, probably also exercises, doesn’t smoke, and does some sort of stress-reduction practice. So is it the absence of meat, or the presence of more vegetables, exercise, and stress management strategies that causes the good health of vegetarians? Again, from observational studies, we just don’t know.
What if we took omnivores who exercised, ate lots of vegetables, didn’t smoke, and used certain stress management strategies? In those scenarios, do vegetarians out-perform omnivores in measures of health? Nope.
In one study, researchers compared nutrient deficiencies in vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores, and found each group to have their own deficiencies.
In another study, researchers compared death rates between vegetarians and healthy omnivores (as opposed to fast food-eating omnivores). The results: no difference in death rates between the two groups. What does this tell us? That it’s not the absence of meat that gives vegetarians greater health compared to the general public. It’s the other factors: the abundance of vegetables, the exercise, not smoking, etc. If a person does all the same stuff (eats lots of vegetables, exercises, doesn’t smoke, etc.), but also eats meat, his/her health doesn’t suffer.
These same results were echoed in another very large British study of over 60,000 people.
So again, I pose the question: is it the presence of meat that gives omnivores bad health? Or is it the absence of vegetables and exercise? The research clearly supports option B: the absence of vegetables and exercise.
Besides all the studies, let’s look out to the real world. Who are the longest living populations in the world? And not just longest living, but longest living in good health (as opposed to longest living, but diseased in the last 10 years). These are:
- The Japanese, specifically on the island of Okinawa
- Sardinians
- Citizens of Loma Linda, California
- People living on the Greek island of Ikaria
- People in Nicoya Peninsula, in Costa Rica
And you know what they all have in common? All of them eat meat and/or fish. None of them are vegetarians. All of them are very healthy well into old age (their 90s and beyond).
Can You Get Enough Protein as a Vegetarian?
The answer to this one is a clear “yes”, but you have to work much harder at it, than if you just ate meat. We know from my article on the best protein sources that the ones with the highest protein content are meat, fish and seafood. That’s it. Nothing else comes close. Not dairy, not nuts, not eggs, not tofu, not beans. These are all covered in my article, so if you want a deeper explanation, just go there and read it.
So how much protein do we need in a day? A sedentary person under 60 needs about 0.8 grams/kg/day. A sedentary person over 60 needs about 1.2 grams/kg/day. A person who does endurance exercise (cardio) will require 1.2-1.4 g/kg/day, and a person doing strength training will need about 1.6-1.8 g/kg/day. For those over 60, protein requirements are about 50% higher, because their ability to absorb protein is lower.
So let’s work with those numbers. Let’s you’re you’re an average person of 70 kg (154 pounds), and you’re under 60. And we’ll assume that you exercise 3-5 days per week, and your exercise is a combination of cardio and strength training. So you’ll need say 1.6 g/kg/day. That’s 112 grams of protein per day.
How would you get that if you’re an omnivore? Let’s say that for breakfast, you have an omelette with sausage, cheese, and vegetables. That’s about 30 grams. Lunch is a chicken breast, salad, and rice. That’s another 40 grams or so. Dinner is similar to lunch. Forty more grams. For a daily total of about what’s necessary – 110 grams.
In a vegetarian diet, we’ve automatically removed the best sources of protein – meat, fish and seafood. So now, we have to use the second best sources of protein – beans, lentils, tofu, quinoa and dairy.
Most beans have about 10-14 grams of protein per cup. Lentils have about 18-20 grams per cup. Tofu has about 8-10 grams per cup. Quinoa has about 8-10 grams per cup as well, and cheese (for instance) has 5-7 grams per serving.
So looking at those numbers, and comparing them to the numbers we see in things like chicken, turkey and say tuna, the vegetarian sources are about one quarter, to about one half (for lentils) of what we’d find in chicken, turkey or tuna.
So again, is it possible to get the necessary protein from vegetarian sources? Sure. Is it harder, and does it require more thought/planning? Yep.
Can You Get Enough Vitamin B12 As a Vegetarian?
What do we need vitamin B12 for? Quite a few things, including:
- Making red blood cells. And red blood cells carry oxygen in the body. So if your vitamin B12 levels are low, your energy levels will be low, too.
- Making DNA
- Making healthy nerve cells. So if your B12 levels are low, you could have poor memory
…and more.
So it seems like B12 is pretty important. And the best sources of B12 are liver, oysters, certain fish (like salmon, and tuna), crab, and beef. All non-vegetarian sources.
Now, yes, things like eggs and cheese are also sources of B12, but they are not as good.
So again, as with protein, yes, it’s possible to get the necessary amount of B12 on a vegetarian diet, but it takes more planning.
That’s on a vegetarian diet. On a vegan diet (where they don’t even eat dairy, or eggs), it is not possible to get the necessary B12, without supplementing, or eating fortified foods.
Now yes, a lot of vegan propaganda literature will tell you that you can get vitamin B12 out of plants like spirulina and chlorella. But that’s a lie. What spirulina and chlorella contain are analogues of B12. What are analogues? Without getting too complex, they are compounds, that chemically look very similar to B12. In fact, they are so similar, they are actually seen as B12 on a typical blood test. But they are not B12. That’s why the gold standard of B12 testing isn’t serum B12, but a different test called “methylmalonic acid”, which tells you how much B12 you actually have.
Can You Get Enough Iron As a Vegetarian?
Similar to the answer for protein and vitamin B12, yes, you can get enough iron as a vegetarian. But unlike protein and B12, it doesn’t take that much though/planning to get the right amount of iron on a vegetarian diet.
What are the best sources of iron? They are liver, clams, mussels and oysters. Other good sources would be beef, and other red meat.
How much iron do all of these foods contain? Somewhere in the 2.2-3.5 mg/serving range. Not bad.
Now, some vegetarians will be quick to point out that some vegetarian sources have much higher iron content. Foods like soybeans, lentils and spinach are much higher in iron. Soybeans have about 8-9 mg/serving, lentils are in the 5-6 mg/serving range, and spinach is similar to lentils.
And that is all correct.
The fact that is often omitted is that there are 2 types of iron: heme iron, and non-heme iron. Heme iron is found in animal products. Non-heme iron is found in non-animal products. And although there is debate about how much of heme iron is absorbed, and how much of non-heme iron is absorbed, there is no debate that heme iron is absorbed better. That’s very clear.
So all in all, even if non-heme iron has only 30-50% of the absorption rate of heme iron, it’s still fairly easy to get enough iron on a vegetarian diet.
What About the China Study?
For those of you who don’t know, you must be wondering “what is the China study?” The China Study is a book, written by T. Colin Campbell. It is his interpretation of a very long, multi-decade study of people living in China, and analyzing their diets, and much more than that. So the book The China Study is not the actual China study. It’s actually one man’s interpretation of it.
And that book is used as the bible to “prove” that vegetarianism/veganism is superior to eating an omnivorous diet.
Unfortunately, it’s loaded with false claims, and unscientific information. And there are legitimate scientists and clinicians all over the world, now trying to correct the widespread misconceptions that the author spread.
One of the best write-ups criticizing the China Study is by Denise Minger (a vegetarian herself, by the way, at the time of writing of her article). Since her criticism is so thorough, I won’t try to re-create it in this article. But if you’re curious, you can read about it here.
Conclusion
All this is not to say that vegetarianism is unhealthy. You can be an unhealthy vegetarian, just like you can be an unhealthy omnivore. After all, potato chips and french fries are a vegetarian food. But to call it “healthy” would be a stretch. So let’s compare healthy-eating omnivores, to healthy-eating vegetarians.
Vegetarianism works for some people, but not for others. It’s not the only way to good health. It’s not even necessary for good health. But it’s a choice that people make based on ideological reasons. As I see it, there are no good nutritional reasons to follow a vegetarian diet. If it appeals to you, great. Eat a vegetarian diet, and yes, if you mind proper protein intake, B12 and iron, you’ll be healthy. But again, it’s not the only way.
