I have to start with asking something I have heard others ask vegans/vegetarians countless times before: There are essential amino-acids, there are essential fatty acids, so where are the essential carbohydrates? Right, they don’t exist. Vegetables are mostly carbohydrates and what little protein and fats they contain come nowhere close to “covering all the bases” in terms of essential nutrients. Sure, a vegan can get close to the recommended daily serving of protein if he/she is dedicated to self-education with regards to what they eat, but proteins are a macro-nutrient and as such you could eat 1,5-2g of protein per kg of bodyweight per day (and no one but a delusional vegan would claim you need less!) and still not get all the micro-nutrients (amino-acids) the body needs. Same thing with fats, cholesterol and I-don’t-know-what else. You might get the macro-nutrients you need but even if you get enough protein it doesn’t matter worth squat if you lack essential amino-acids! (You know.. there’s a reason it’s “essential”, e.g. “essential to health/survival”)

Also, as a Type 1 diabetic I know all too well the ways carbohydrates wreak havoc on the body. In a healthy person, intake of protein induces a small release of insulin needed to transport amino-acids and other nutrients into the cells, be it energy for muscle or fat storage. It’s all the same to the insulin. To avoid death by hypoglycemia (because insulin also stimulates uptake of glucose from the blood), glucagon is released at the same time, which makes the liver release glucose and stimulates breakdown of stored fat. Carbohydrates however stimulate a (comparatively) HUGE release of the fat-storing insulin and NO release of the insulin-countering glucagon. Dietary fat doesn’t cause either, as it is metabolized in a way that doesn’t introduce glucose into the blood, and thus negates the need for insulin. (I think, at least eating fat and protein without taking insulin doesn’t noticeably raise my blood sugar level).

Get why at roughly the same time governments and researchers started recommending high-carb/low-fat diets, obesity and cardiac disease virtually exploded..? “Why are they recommending this if it’s dangerous?” I hear you ask? Simple: decades ago, researchers saw that cardiac and vascular disease was linked to abdominal fat, overweight and fat in the veins, ergo dietary fat must be the culprit! (Dangers of observational studies, anyone..?) The simple, proven fact is that the body cannot store fat without insulin, and carbohydrates = huge, fast insulin release. Combined with a high calorie intake this results in overweight (especially adipose tissue, i.e. abdominal fat) which can in no way be said to be healthy!

That being said though, I firmly believe we are omnivores. Meat, eggs, fish and fowl are all needed (whatever your idealogical vegan friend tells you) to get good quality essential nutrients. The same can obviously be said regarding low-starch (starch=carbs=insulin), fresh or lightly cooked vegetables and berries. I am only “self-educated” in nutrition and so my voice might not carry any weight, but I will still readily claim that a diet with lots of whatever meat you feel like, eggs and fish, combined with root vegetables and berries will give you the best of both worlds, namely all the essential proteins and fats you need to keep your body from tearing itself apart, and all the delicious and equally essential vitamins and minerals you get from those slightly “malformed”, sun-ripened celeries, tomatoes, berries, salads as well as root vegetables, nuts and seeds.

A little side-tracking at the butt-end of my post..
I’d love to see an observational study where a few thousand rigorously dedicated (meaning: they claim to have reason and science behind their eating) long-term vegans, “carnivores” and omnivores were randomly selected from a database of people so huge there was no selection bias going on (i.e. selecting fitter individuals from whichever category you root for). Full physical work-ups for everyone, in addition to thorough tests of physical and (culturally independent) mental strength and aptitude.

The most likely outcome is that even though all three groups would have fit and unfit memgers, both the extremes (herbivores and carnivores) would come out behind the omnivores, with the herbivores finishing so far behind that the competition is already over by the time they cross the finish line.

There are always exceptions, but the herbivores among us have a tendency to fit the “skinny and pale”-clique all too well, while those who eat loads of protein and fat from meat, nuts, eggs and stay away from starchy, sugary fruits and vegetables tend to do so because they want muscles, strength and a low body fat percentage.

From the Archives of Internal Medicine, 2001: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/161/13/1645

While your former Adventist friends’ observations of children and infants failing to thrive are interesting, there are several important pieces missing from his comments — 1. were the SDA’s he observed failing to thrive vegetarian or non-vegetarian (there are both), 2. were the numbers of SDA children and infants failing to thrive greater than or less than the number failing to thrive on other diets, 3. for myself, I would like to know whether whatever caused him to leave the community — presumably something negative — is colouring his recollections. The fact that his observations are contradicted by the largest scale health study of SDAs conducted in the United States lends me to think his analysis is lacking. Particularly since the study was controlled.

Involving 34,192 men and women from the SDA population and distinguishing between vegetarian and non-vegetarian portions of the population, the researchers comment: “Adventist vegetarian men and women have expected ages at death of 83.3 and 85.7 years, respectively. These are 9.5 and 6.1 years, respectively, greater than those of the 1985 California population in a univariate analysis. ”

And further state that “To our knowledge, the life expectancies of California Adventist men and women are higher than those of any other well-described natural population.”

Dr. Eades might point out that correlation of long lives with vegetarian diets does not prove vegetarianism caused the long life. I’m not trying to prove that however, I’m just showing that vegetarian diets are not “unhealthy.” If they were, we would have seen earlier death, and instead we see a population living longer than even the renowned Japanese.

Lierre Keith cites this study in The Vegetarian Myth, but in one of the book’s weakest moments claims to “refute” it by referencing a study showing Mormons live a year longer than the SDAs. I can’t find that study, but if we assume it is valid and has statistically significant results, it ignores the fact Mormon scripture discourages eating meat. And even if the Mormons had all meat diets, the better conclusion from the one year difference is that the diets produce such similar results that it would seem like a flip of the coin as to which you preferred.

Would a fair conclusion from the large SDA vegetarian study, and from the diets of high performance athletes most reasonably be something like “vegetarian diets are not unhealthy from the perspective of longevity and reduced disease for large populations of people, and do not seem to significantly impair the high level of athletic performance of some elite athletes.” I think on that basis that ordinary people like you or I, with average abilities, should experiment to see what diets are optimal for us as individuals, using experts like Dr. Eades for guidance, but keeping an open mind, trying new things, and acknowledging that the complexity in nutrition and values means others will advance different viewpoints.

Equally important, to the extent that experts like Dr. Eades feel vegetarians have done a better job with their “propaganda”, I would suggest that to promote his perspective he is better off being magnanimous and understanding, because villification sounds shrill and off-putting, and will leave people who want to promote meat as healthful in the margins on this debate. If it is an important message, frame it well and with dispassionate, generous reason. That’s just good public relations.

Having said all that, there are is a small number of people who very obviously do better as vegetarians, the problem is that the majority of the world population must have meat. They can’t follow the advice of healthy vegetarians as it would not work for them.

Dave Scott, Carl Lewis, and Michael Phelps the Olympic swimmer, are all genetic outliers. Go google Phelps 10,000 calorie daily diet–it’s a doozy! There is plenty of junk food involved–it didn’t hurt him any. As an ordinary person with little athletic ability and average reflexes, I would not take dietary advice from any of the three.

By this definition, vegetarian diets are healthful and provide all the nutrients you mention through eggs and milk. Vegan diets would require supplementation. On the other hand though, it may be worth looking at whether it is worthwhile for short term performance enhancement. Carl Lewis used a vegan diet for the eight months prior to, and during, the 1991 World Championships, which he describes as the peak performance of his entire career. On the other hand, if you’re not interested in breaking world records, or in need of the type of power it takes to dominate power sports like sprinting, it may not be worth the trouble.

Similarly, Dave Scott was only vegetarian when he was redefining the sport of triathlon with his record-setting six victories between 1980 and 1987, and resumed eating meat, as you mention, in 1992, at which point I think his athletic career was over.

This is reminding me of how the Lipid Hypothesis proponents like to call the healthful, high fat diet of the French a “paradox.” And the high fat Mediterranean diet “paradox.” I’m curious how we can explain the High Performance Athlete Paradox — vegan and vegetarian diets followed by not just elite athletes, but the record-setting elite within the elite. Then there is the “Long-living Vegetarian Populations Paradox” of Seventh Day Adventists outliving the American average by nearly a decade.

The sons of my friend do not eat fish, or meat (in the conventional sense). They do eat dairy and eggs.

The broader point here is simply that nutrition cannot be as specifically prescribed as “experts” like to suggest. There is incredible variation in needs between people, and it remains plausible that diets excluding meat (conventionally defined) can be healthful and fuel high performance athletics.

I agree with you that the need for corporate farming to be overhauled extends to other corporations. Those in the pharmaceutical and banking industries come to mind.

There are at least five nutrients in beef and other red meats that have no substitutes in plant food. Taurine, creatine, carnitine, vitamin B12 and alpha-lipoic acid. The list doesn’t end with these. Please don’t tell me you can get B12 in fermented soy products like miso soup. What that contains is a B12 analogue that creates a deficiency of the real vitamin. Not to mention that soy products have other anti-nutrients that wreak havoc with the human endocrine system.

I just found out that Dave Scott eats fish–that’s meat. The sons of your friend, do they eat fish and maybe eggs? Eggs are meat and are nearly a perfect food–they also contain nutrients that can’t be found in plant food.

I’m with you for the ethical treatment of the animals we eat. Corporate farming needs a complete ethical makeover like many, many corporate entities do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22steiner.html

The subtext of the article seems to be an implicit suggestion that what we evolved from is how we should be.

To answer that question though, much more interesting and challenging evidence would need to be considered. Why do we have vegan athletes participating in the Iron Man, such as Brendan Brazier, Dave Scott winning the Iron Man while vegetarian (six times, tied for the all-time record), and very long-lived and healthful vegetarian populations, such as the Seventh Day Adventists? This all suggests that vegetarian diets can be very healthy.

As a vegetarian you can run the Iron Man and live to be 100. As a meat eater you can run the Iron Man and live to be 100. Clearly the nutrition must be much more nuanced. Is either diet unhealthy for specific individuals due to the presence or absence of enzymes as a result of genetic or environmental factors? Do some people need meat, and others do better without it? If so, what are the individual differences that determine this? My friend’s kids were raised vegetarian and had vegetarian nutrition in-utero yet one of them was 6′4″ and about 230lbs at 17 — the biggest and strongest kid in his grade by far, in the cattle country of Southern Alberta where every other kid would have been eating meat their whole lives. Now 19 he just finished climbing Aconcagua. The other is about 6′ and 190 and a great athlete.

You tackled some nutritionally unsophisticated arguments — what about the nutritionally sophisticated ones? Vegetarians could also write posts (and I’m sure some do, though who would want to follow their example?) about the weakest arguments of meat-eaters, and we would learn little from it. Why not elevate the debate and respectuflly consider the strongest positions of our opposition?

Similarly, for some people there is more to life and to nutrition than “optimal” performance, or “optimal” health. What motivates many vegetarians is an interest in the humane treatment of animals. Although this blog seems to be about nutrition, I would be interested to learn more about your take on the ethics of our modern meat supply, and perhaps on the relative nutritional value of range fed meat, versus confined animal feeding operations. Perhaps this could go under the “anything else that strikes my fancy” category.

For myself, I would like to see animals’ interests and well-being be given more consideration. The archaeological record and anthropological evidence suggests that such reverence and compassion typified our ancestors as well (see Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth for instance), although their killing methods often produced great suffering due to lack of technological sophistication (persistence hunting, poisoning, etc). If we can avoid such suffering, even if eating meat, should we not do so? Is it more noble to aspire to shaving milliseconds from a sprint, or protecting the weak under our dominion? Do we want to learn from the past, keep the good and get rid of the bad? What is good and what is bad? These are value questions of course, but also where the true heart of this debate lies.