... an argument for the vegan diet ...

[Guest guest]

" We are primates, and primates are vegetarians with only rare meat

consumption by certain species. All the proteins, minerals, and vitamins

the human body needs are easily obtained from plant sources. The taste for

meats is like a substance abuse to which we are addicted early in life.

While we have been struggling- and failing- to cure heart diseases and

cancer, their primary causes are right under our noses on the dinner table. "

-Dr. Neal Barnard, President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

 

 

The fact is that our bodies are designed to be vegetarian and vegan. We are

not properly adapted to the consumption of flesh or the milk of other

animals.

 

I once watched a rotund botanist on a t.v. chat show spouting the typical

meat-eater's diatribe... stating that vegetarians and vegans have it all

wrong and that anyone can see that a horse's and cow's gutts are far

different from ours and one could not eat in a healthy manner without meat

and/or dairy. This was gross misinformation from one who ought to know

better and it is the typical brain-washing that happens far too regularly.

The meat and dairy myths are strong indeed when a scientist, watched by

millions, can get away with such rubbish.

 

It is true, however, that we are not like the herbivors.... as anyone can

see without having to slit one open to observe its copious entrails,

developed mainly for dealing with cellulose. Human beings were not meant to

live on a diet of grass. But far from being akin to nature's carnivors, the

pattern of organs in the human body and the composition of our blood are

identical to the larger tail-less primates such as the chimpanzees and

gorillas.

 

The origins of humanity have been brought up in these conversations, so I

feel that I should address that issue (briefly) here as well. It is far

more likely that we developed as frugivorous creatures and took to flesh-

eating only as the result of a migration to an inhospitable climate, or a

catastrophe like the ice age which would have removed plant cover. Or

perhaps it was the stress of territorial threat from other species which

made the early humans turn to violence and flesh-eating... as has been

observed with our cousins the chimpanzees who in rare instances (like

encroaching human settlements) have been found to kill to eat.

 

In any event- and for whatever reason early humans " broke the ancient

primate habit of vegetarianism " (J. Bronowski, 'The Ascent of Man' BBC

Publications 1973). And in light of what is known as comparative

physiology, and about early societies, the widely held assumptions about our

origins as being hunters is coming more and more into question. From teeth,

jaws, and saliva right through to the alimentary canal, our bodies are very

different from carnivors. We loosely call ourselves " omnivors " , but that is

through our own choice... NOT design. Actually, our bodies more closely

resemble frugivorous apes. We are quite different from nature's true

omnivors that eat a diet of meat, carrion, and plants. After digestion in

the intestines of humans, meat becomes infested with putractive bacteria in

the bowel; carnivors have a short and smooth bowel for quick release of

toxic wastes.... unlike the longer bowel found in humans.

 

Links have also been made in scientific studies carried out in Europe in

1991 by the Imperial Cancer Research fund that directly linked a diet high

in meat and dairy consumption to hightened risks for cancer... and found

that a diet high in fruit and vegetables to be very helpful in reducing risk

factors for cancer. Some of the most recent evidence of the dangers of a

diet that includes meat and dairy comes from work done by the researchers at

the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (reported in New

Scientist, 20 March 1993). Scientists have been able to adapt an

accelerator mass spectrometer, normally used by geochemists and

archeologists to date rocks, in order to measure genetic damage done by

chemcials and very low concentrations. Thus they have been able to measure

the effect of the powerful animal carcinogen methylimidazoquinoxaline as it

binds to the cells' of DNA material and causes lesions, which are the

beginnings of most mutations and tumours. Methylimidazoquinoxaline is

formed in tiny amounts during the cooking of meat; this new research shows

that its effect is potent in much smaller amounts than had previously been

measurable.

 

Other dangers of over-consumption of animal based protein have been suspect

for decades, though such unwelcome knowledge has been slow to filter

through. But by now, with the hight of meat consumption in the post-World

War Two world... it is becoming obvious that we are getting something very

wrong. The miraculous cleansing powers of our livers help to deal with the

poisonous substances formed in the intestines of meat-eaters (skatole,

indole, tryamine, phenylethylaline and deoxycholic acid) and an active life

in the fresh air helps too, but by the time that we reach middle age most

people are suffering to varying degrees from some chronic ailment.

Obviously many more factors than diet affect our health, and the quality of

the food in terms of soil fertility, chemical pollution, and factory

processing is very important as well as the type of diet itself. But why

work against the way our bodies were engineered? I hold the belief that

nature usually knows best. And of course there are the arguments for the

hormones and anti-biotics that are pumped into the animals. It has been

shown scientifically that those who eat meat have more anti-biotic resistant

bacteria in their systems than do vegetarians and vegans.

 

The 1986 report of the BMA's Board of Science and Education states that

" vegetarians have lower rates of obesity, coronary heart disease, high blood

pressure, large bowel disorders, cancers, and gallstones. " Many other

studies have confirmed the health risks of a meat based diet; the largest

survey ever undertaken into the links between diet and health is the first

report of the Chinese and American teams, published in 1990/1991. This

study found that some " degenerative " diseases, particularly heart disease

and some forms of cancer, are largely unheard of in vegetarian societies

('Diet, Lifestyle, and Mortality in China' reviewed in the New Scientist,

January 1991. The survey also shows that vegetarians and vegans show no

sign of aneamia, that vegans have average rates of osteoporosis and that a

high fiber diet does not inhibit iron intake).

 

And as for the consumption of milk, milk is primarily an infant food in

humans. Human beings are the only adult animal (apart from the DOMESTIC

cat) to take it. Milk, like blood, is a substance which in nature is meant

to be kept inside the body entirely. Milk is only naturally meant to pass

in airtight conditions from mother to baby. Outside the body it is subject

to immediate decay and contamination, as with meat, so that extreme

processes like pasteurisation have to be employed to keep it " safe. "

Properly speaking, an animal's milk should not really be seen... let alone

sold in bottles by the million.

 

After infancy, our bodies no longer manufacture the enzymes necessary to

digest milk sugar (lactose) and in fact the majority of the world's

population, who have been weened onto cow's milk, cannot really tolerate it.

" Four reports suggest that 20%-40% of patients aged 5-17 years with repeated

abdominal pains in childhood suffered from lactose-intolerance, which can

often be relieved by excluding dairy milk and derivatives from the diet "

(Gill Langley, 'Vegan Nutrition', Vegan Society 1988). Sir Douglas Black,

then president of the British Medical Association, is quoted in The Times of

12 June 1984 as saying " Milk is a major killer. It is nonsense to give it

to children in schools. " And incredibly, medics who have made the link

between cow's milk and jeuvenile diatetes.. rather than discouraging the

consumption of milk, are working on a vaccine! (New Scientist August 1992)

 

I hope this sheds a bit more light on where I am coming from and why a diet

that contains meat and dairy is in fact quite unhealthy... no matter what

your blood type.

 

=),

 

Anne-Louise.