vegetarian diets

[Meryl]

Kelda, I'm glad you bumped Bill's thread, since I recently started  a vegetarian routine. 

I went for a rare visit to my chiropractor last month, and he told me about a book that cast animal protein in a much less favorable light than we've been used to regarding it.  The book is "The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell, PhD, published by BenBella Books in 2006.  Campbell has strong credentials in nutrition research, and the China study of the book's title was a long-term (almost 30 years) study that produced literally thousands of significant factors between diet and disease.

The big finding?  Animal protein (particularly casein, which makes up 87% of cow's milk protein) was consistently found to be a significant contributor to the development of cancer and other diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes.  When plant protein was substituted for animal protein, disease was reduced significantly; even cancer growth was slowed.  Since I am at risk for all of these, I am taking his findings seriously and eliminating red meat and poultry from my diet, as well as cutting down on eggs and dairy products.  I highly recommend this book to everyone, since it is really difficult to find hard facts about the risks of an animal protein diet anywhere, what with the powerful meat and dairy industries working against the dissemination of this information.

For Christmas I bought myself a really wonderful cookbook that covers everything from A to Z about vegetarian cooking:  "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" by Mark Bittman, published in 2007 by Wiley Pubishing.  It's $35, but well worth it.  It's tremendously thorough, easy to use, and entertainingly written.

So far, I haven't missed meat much at all, but I'm still new at it.  However, I'm really enjoying trying new foods and restaurants and I've noticed I feel more energetic and am more regular.  Hooray for the veggies! 

[brokeplex]

I've read other studies corroborating the study you reference. In order to avoid the "longevity" diseases (diseases which seem to afflict those who live to late middle age and elderly ages) a strict vegetarian diet seems one of the most important keys. A vegan diet is difficult because of the struggles to balance the b vitamins and proteins. I try a middle of the road approach and have a diet with some poulty and fish, but no beef, pork, or lamb.

And, If you can boost your consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, you journey a long ways towards better health.

[BelAir]

hi all,

I ate strictly veggie for about 4 1/2 years (I ate lots of cheese and eggs though).  I started eating beef on occasion again as a result of all my Brokie-ness (and an accident at Taco Bell), and I will occasionally eat fish and chicken now...

Kelda - you know Taco Bell or no?

my accident - I ordered a bean burrito.  It was late at night.  I was STARVING.  I wolfed it down and was like "Wow, this is soooo good..."  Then I realized in my hunger/exhaustion I had ordered the wrong thing and it had beef in it!

I didn't miss the meat at all, but it was occasionally hard to order non-meat items at restaurants.  Even though I am eating more meat now, I still don't care for places that don't have a variety of non-meat options.

[Kelda]

hi all,

I ate strictly veggie for about 4 1/2 years (I ate lots of cheese and eggs though).  I started eating beef on occasion again as a result of all my Brokie-ness (and an accident at Taco Bell), and I will occasionally eat fish and chicken now...

Kelda - you know Taco Bell or no?

my accident - I ordered a bean burrito.  It was late at night.  I was STARVING.  I wolfed it down and was like "Wow, this is soooo good..."  Then I realized in my hunger/exhaustion I had ordered the wrong thing and it had beef in it!

I didn't miss the meat at all, but it was occasionally hard to order non-meat items at restaurants.  Even though I am eating more meat now, I still don't care for places that don't have a variety of non-meat options.

I know of taco bell - a mexican fast food restaurant - but its not something we have over here - just the brand products!

Well I've been a vegetarian since I was nine so 17 years. Although for the first four or five years I was made to eat fish and chicken.

I have since cut this out and I don't eat gelatine wither.

I have to say I'm not so strict as I once was - I do eat cheeses thats aren't strictly vegetarian now and again- and I probably accidently use some canned products that have elements in it - like maybe pesto sause or red wine (although I drink this very very rarely).

And I have been known to eat celebrations - and not all of them are veggie.

But I'm definitely more strict than a lot of other veggies I know.

[BelAir]

Kelda - did you decide on your own at 9 or did your family decide for you??

I'm not sure I knew that vegetarianism existed when I was nine, lol...

 

[Kelda]

i decided on my own - and pleaded with my mother for months- I was a right little activist as a kid!. My mum used to hide the local papers from me as they transported veal from a local airport. She used to think I'd try to get on the bus and get there! I remember in primary 6 (at about age 10) I did a show and tell on battery egg farming. All my classmates were aghast at the end!

[BelAir]

wow, I'm impressed!
 

[RedAzaelia]

I've been an ovo-lacto vegetarian since I was 12 (that's 8 years now!), mainly because I'd heard about how badly the animals I'd been eating had been treated. On the same day that I started to have those thoughts, we had a broasted chicken for dinner, and I realized suddenly that I could still see the bird it used to be. That was the end of that. Thankfully, my parents were very supportive of me, and my mom and I worked together to make sure I got enough protein and nutrients...

I like to think that my whole family eats healthier in general because of my decision. There's still meat on our table a lot of the time, but now there's a lot of really great stuff to go with it that I don't remember being there before. Everyone gets a more balanced diet now (except my brother who is nearly a carnivore--I guess he's the equal and opposite reaction for my action of becoming a veggie. lol).

I think that this diet has kept me a lot healthier than I would be otherwise (I kid you not, I am sick so rarely that it might as well be never), and in recent years, it's become so much easier to be a vegetarian than it was before. Nowadays, most places you can think of to go eat have at least a salad on the menu that doesn't have meat. I find that really interesting, since right when I started up, there were several restaraunts that we'd used to frequent that I couldn't eat at anymore.

Meat doesn't even smell good to me anymore. Has anyone else experienced that?

[serious crayons]

My son was a vegetarian for a year and a half, starting when he was 10. So strict that if you touched a spoon to something with meat in it and then to something vegetarian, he wouldn't eat the vegetarian thing. So strict that if he found out he'd accidentally eaten meat -- for example, anchovies in the Ceasar salad dressing at a restaurant -- he would dash into the bathroom and make himself throw up. So strict that he wouldn't wear shoes with leather and I had to special order him an expensive synthetic baseball glove.

Then very suddenly he started eating meat again a couple of months ago. I'm not sure why, but I think it was either because his older brother went through a growth spurt and he was worried it would affect his own growth or because he got a few bad grades and he was worried it was affecting his brain development.

On the one hand, I was sorry he gave it up, because I was proud of his self-discipline and ability to keep it up despite a LOT of pressure from his brother and father, who are avid carnivores (I can go either way -- I eat meat, but not a huge amount).

On the other hand, it makes life much easier for me because everyone in the family can now eat the same thing. Plus, he wouldn't eat soy because it's a phytoestrogen and he was afraid it would make him grow boobs, so I constantly worried he wasn't getting enough protein, and now I don't.

Plus, being really strict about avoiding meat is much harder than you might think. Besides the aforementioned anchovies in Caesar salad dressing, there's beef lard in lots of baked goods and gelatin in a lot of candy, for example. Last summer we went on vacation and kept talking the whole time about how we were going to stop for pie at this renowned pie shop, with all these kinds of really good pie. Finally, we got there and -- you guessed it -- almost all of the pie crust had lard in it. I think there were two kinds out of about 30 that didn't.

[BelAir]

during my true "not eating meat" stint, I was never bothered by the smell of meat...  I still don't like the look of it raw, and I still mostly don't "eat meat"... but for whatever reason, the smell has always been appetizing to me.