VEGETARIAN DIETS ARE GOOD FOR YOU!

[Guest guest]

Vegetarian foods provide an effective method of reducing the dangers

of an over-rich diet; nutritionally, you have nothing to lose.

Recognition of vegetarianism as a part of health and longevity is

now spreading. The number of voluntary vegetarians in Europe and the

USA is estimated at several million. Teenage vegetarians is

comparatively a new phenomenon. In early 2003, market research

group Teenage Research unlimited reported that 1-in-4 teenagers

considers vegetarianism. Most gave varying degrees of moral and

ethical reasons for their vegetarianism, over health and weight

reasons alone. Irrespective of sex or age, some vegetarians are

motivated by aesthetic or moral ideas; they deplore the killing of

animals and some of the methods of raising them for food. Many

become vegetarians for hygienic reasons, spurning meat as a cause of

digestive problems and disease, and a source of unhealthy chemicals

and infectious organisms. Others simply believe that a vegetarian

diet is more healthy. The unprocessed vegetarian foods are low in

fat and cholesterol but are high in starchy carbohydrates and fiber,

and natural vitamins and minerals. The vegetable proteins can be as

satisfying as meat protein.

 

For centuries the hardiest, most long-lived people in the world have

thrived on these foods. President Thomas Jefferson, who lived to be

eighty-three, believed his longevity was due to his vegetarian

menus. He wrote, " I have lived temperately, eating little animal

food, and not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the

vegetables which constitute my principal diet. " Among other famous

vegetarians were George Bernard Shaw, Leonardo da Vinci, Ralph Waldo

Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Benjamin Franklin, Mahatma Gandhi,

Albert Schweitzer, Gloria Swanson, and Michael Jackson to name a few.

 

Vegetarian foods are not only healthy but are economical, so that

even the poorest can afford them. Meat, on the other hand, is an

expensive and inefficient nutrient. It is more efficient to use land

for growing food for humans directly than for feeding animals which

then are used as food. A 1,000 lb. steer eats 5,250 lbs. of plant

food. Its carcass weighs only 560 lb. and from this the consumer

will be able to buy only 280 lbs. of prime cuts of its meat, quite a

significant reduction in the amount of available food. Meat

industry representatives claim that livestock do not compete with

humans for edible food because they live on forage humans cannot

eat. In fact, 70% of all the grain produced in the US is fed to

livestock.

 

Meat contains practically no essential nutrients that cannot be

obtained directly from plant sources. By cycling grain through

livestock, we lose 90% of the protein, 96% of the calories, all of

its carbohydrates, and all of its nutritional fiber.

 

Approximately 1.3 billion cattle populate the earth at any one time.

They exist artificially in these vast numbers to satisfy the

excessive human demand for the meat and by-products they provide.

Their combined weight exceeds that of the entire human population.

By sheer numbers, their consequent appetite for the world's

resources, have made them a primary cause for the destruction of the

environment. In the US, feedlot cattle yield one pound of meat for

every 16 pounds of feed. And it takes an average of 2,500 gallons

of water to produce a single pound of meat. According to

Newsweek, " The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer could float

a destroyer. " In contrast, it takes only 25 gallons of water to

produce one pound of wheat.

 

The number of chickens raised worldwide for human consumption is

over 17.2 billion. Chicken feed is routinely laced with

antibiotics, sulfa drugs and other chemical substances. Only by

maintaining the birds on drugs, a practice which began about mid-

twentieth century, is agribusiness allowed the luxury and efficiency

of massive flocks and intensive confinement. Today's medicated feed

also pumps out market weight birds in half the time from two-thirds

the feed of 50 years ago. Why should it surprise, if part of these

chemicals in meat consumption affect human growth and weight leading

to modern day weight problems!

 

Fish are living magnets for toxic chemicals. According to Consumer

Reports (Feb, 92), a notable incidence of unacceptable levels of

PCBs and mercury were found in certain species of fish that were

tested. Ingesting PCBs is considered a chief cause of reduced sperm

count among American men--70% of what it was 30 years ago.

 

It is estimated that livestock production accounts for twice the

amount of pollution in the US as that produced by industrial

sources. Livestock in the US produce 20 times the excrement of the

entire US population. Since farm animals today spend much or all of

their lives in factory sheds or feedlots, their waste no longer

serves to fertilize pastures a little at a time. According to United

Poultry Concerns literature, " A one-million-hen complex will produce

125 tons of wet manure a day. " To responsibly store, disperse, or

degrade this amount of animal waste is simply not possible. Much of

the waste inevitably is flushed into rivers and streams. Becoming a

vegetarian does more to clean up our nation's water than any other

single action.

 

Methane is one of the four greenhouse gasses that contributes to the

environmental trend known as global warming. The 1.3 billion cattle

in the world produce one fifth of all the methane emitted into the

atmosphere.

 

Meat contains approximately 14 times more pesticides than plant

foods; dairy products contain 5-1/2 times more pesticides than plant

foods.

 

In view of the world-wide population explosion, our protein must

come more and more from non-meat sources. Highly populated

countries, such as China and India, for centuries have used more

vegetable protein than animal protein. Less populated countries are

now beginning to face the same problem. In the future, vegetable

protein foods, such as soybean products, are likely to become more

important in our diet because they are cheaper to produce than

animal protein. The ever increasing demand for protein can never be

solved through meat, because the world's resources are too limited

to squander on the uneconomical conversion of plant to animal to

human protein. Increasingly, people all over the world will have to

rely on vegetable proteins. If we all increased the use of vegetable

proteins, food would be cheaper and more abundant.

 

Even if we are not concerned about the world food problem, dealing

every day with the steadily rising cost of food, especially of meat

and fish, is a good enough reason to learn about utilization of

plant proteins. Ounce for ounce, the protein in bologna costs four

times as much as the protein in peanut butter. The protein in bacon

is about five times, in beef about seven times and in lamb chops

about nine times as expensive as the same amount of protein from

kidney beans.

 

If you are not convinced by animal, pollution, or economical

concerns, there are health benefits of adopting a vegetarian diet.

 

An animal-based diet is invariably high in cholesterol, animal

protein, and saturated fat, which combine to raise the level of

cholesterol in the blood--the warning signal for heart disease and

stroke. Due mainly to the meat-centered diet of most Americans,

these two diseases account for nearly 50% of all deaths in the US.

 

Meat-centered diets are linked to many types of cancer, most notably

cancer of the colon, breast, cervix, uterus, ovary, prostate, and

lung.

 

Non-vegetarian diet is generally heavy for stomach and produces

acidity, which in turn can cause many diseases of gastrointestinal

system.

 

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group of 3,000

physicians, estimated the annual health care costs directly

resulting from the nation's meat-centered diet to be between $23.6

billion and $61.4 billion--comparable to similar health cost

estimates associated with cigarette smoking.

 

Vegetarian foods provide an additional advantage of " eating low on

the food chain. " The higher on the food chain you eat, the greater

your chances of accumulating large amounts of toxic materials

present in tiny amounts in foods at the bottom of the chain. Meat

protein, in fact, is called second-hand protein because the animal

eats the vegetation, a primary source of protein, to build up its

own protein which is then utilized by the meat eater who eats the

animal. The carnivorous animal protein is thus third hand and is

often toxic to consume, and this is the reason that the meat people

eat usually comes from vegetarian animals (for example, grain fed

beef). Although fish appears to be an exception, health conscious

people prefer small fish such as sardines, which are lower on the

food chain, to bigger fish such as tuna. The reason is that big fish

eat smaller fish, each with some pollutants or other toxins stored

in its body, and therefore small fish at the lower end of the food

chain are less likely to contain any pollutants or other toxic

substances. This is, in fact, what has happened to birds of prey

like falcons, ospreys, and eagles who eat big fish. These birds at

the top of the food chain end up taking in such a large amount of

pesticides such as DDT (banned now in many countries but replaced

with other pesticides) that their reproductive ability is severely

damaged. The advantages of eating at the lower end of the food

chains has been substantiated by the data published in Pesticides

Monitoring Journal; the plant foods at the lower end of the food

chain contain less pesticide residues than foods of animal origin.

Vegetarians go right to the beginning of the food chain and from

nuts, seeds, beans, grains, and vegetables, they get protein first-

hand from nature.

 

One could cite numerous reasons for eating vegetarian foods, but the

one we would emphasize in this guide is simply that vegetarian food

is good for you to enjoy the best of health. I would quote the

common responses of many vegetarian people who refer to their

personal experience rather than any nutritional aspects: (1)

although the main requirement for being a vegetarian is not eating

meat, vegetarianism is more like an entire relationship with the

world-a sensitive vibration; it is a spiritual position that we have

arrived at-as our place here on earth, (2) there is something

violent about meat-eating; you are constantly slaughtering animals

for your gastronomic pleasure, (3) there is something nice and clean

about eating grains; they are good for your body, (4) meat-eaters

tend to " break " because they are not as adaptable; meat-eating

leaves one feeling very heavy and sluggish; it also makes people

more aggressive, (5) vegetarians have high levels of endurance and

can work for longer hours. (6) Vegetarian foods protect us from the

possibility of mad cow disease, E. coli contamination and other

problems associated with meat consumption. (7) Animals for meat are

raised as a product in animal factories and not as living creatures.

 

dr. DLN

 

This information is taken from a book " A NEW LOOK AT

VEGETARIANISM: It's positive Effects on Health and Disease

Control. "

http://napublishing.com/learn_earn.html#guidelist

http://napublishing.com/new_look_veg.html

 

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