[liamona]

I take this to mean you haven't read my zillion other posts on this very subject. :..(.

Originally Posted by funchy

Sometimes I get busy and can visit this site as often, so perhaps I missed them?

I'm just joshing with ya.

I'm glad you've read whatever posts of mine you have, because I appreciate your arguments and especially the passion and intelligence you bring to them. We may disagree, but your posts always make me think!

Sure, healthy young people without problems like diabetes can convert ALA to small amounts of DHA and EPA, and beta-carotene to vitamin A. But what about babies or those who are old or have health issues that interfere with the conversions?

Originally Posted by funchy

Odd that there are old vegans out there then? Shouldn't they be dead? And I know vegans often raise their children to go meat-free. Why don't any of my vegan friends & their kids suffer from malnutrition? I think throwing in the "health issues" thing is a scare tactic.

My point is that foods containing nutrients are different (superior) than foods whose nutrients need to be converted by the body. And so many people have gut and digestive issues, which will definitely interfere with nutrient conversion.

Of course there's healthy vegans. There's also healthy SAD eaters too. The healthiest ones tend to be the ones whose parents and grandparents ate optimally.

However, those who show signs of physical degeneration (narrow face, narrow jaw, crooked teeth) may need to be more careful of their diet, especially women who want to conceive and/or have trouble conceiving.

Among my acquaintance the health-minded omnis and veg*ns tend to be the healthiest, followed by SAD vegetarians (who often dislike cooking) and SAD omnis and militant non-supplementing vegans (the latter and their kids seem to suffer from strange health issues).

In some of the online forums I belong to there are numerous former veg*ns with interesting stories. I appreciate the posts from Mothering.com's discussion forums, because the women tend to be intelligent and trying to live consciously:

Any ex-vegetarians/vegans here?

For ex-vegans

Support: Vegetarian going back to eating meat. (long)

One could argue that "elderly" and "those with health issues" are less likely to survive a bout of illness from E Coli, a common meat-based pathogen. Isn't it true elderly, babies, and those with weak immune systems can't eat undercooked meats? If meat is so good for them, why would it kill someone?

It's common because of factory farming, not because meat in itself is inherently bacteria-laden. In fact, grass-fed cows have virtually no pathogenic E. coli like E. coli O157.

Also keep in mind that the nutrients in plant foods are bound up in fiber, but the ones in meat are directly digested and absorbed.

Much of what we call fiber is cellulose, which makes up the outside of the cells. The nutrients are inside the cell wall. When you chew, cook, blend, digest, and/or cook plants, you break open those cells.

That's simplifying it quite a bit! It's pretty well-known that zinc and iron from meat is superior than what's in veggies, because of their bioavailability:

"There are two kinds of iron, heme and non-heme iron. In plant foods, iron exists in the less bioavailable non-heme form (2). Relative to heme iron, non-heme iron is far more sensitive to the enhancers and inhibitors of iron absorption, and also to physiological iron need (7, 8)."

"Bioavailability of non-heme iron and dietary zinc is greatly influenced by both dietary inhibitors and enhancers (7, 9). This may place certain segments of the vegetarian population at risk for iron and zinc deficiency."

From "Factors in Vegetarian Diets Influencing Iron and Zinc Bioavailability."

Here's something from the National Institutes of Health:

"Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Iron"

"Absorption of heme iron from meat proteins is efficient. Absorption of heme iron ranges from 15% to 35%, and is not significantly affected by diet [15]. In contrast, 2% to 20% of nonheme iron in plant foods such as rice, maize, black beans, soybeans and wheat is absorbed [16]. Nonheme iron absorption is significantly influenced by various food components [1,3,11-15]"

I disagree again. I can't speak for other cultures or coutries, but here everyone eats the SAD diet: commercially produced meats, usually red meat, chicken (mainly whitemeat), some turkey, ham, and a few popular seafoods. I can't think of a single person I know who eats organ meats. I know someone somewhere does, but organmeat and meat are not synonymous. When I see McDonald's offering a McLiver sandwich, then I'll reconsider. So when we speak of "meat" I feel it's important to speak of what's consumed in the real world.

What do you disagree with, the fact that meat contains the richest sources of theses nutrients? And what do these nutrients have to do with SAD meat?

Organ meats were commonly consumed up until the 70s, until the harmful low-fat dogma stemming from Ancel Keys' diet propaganda became common.

Even old La Leche League cookbooks contain recipes for organ meats—they were called "variety meats."

Expense is relevant.

Money is what makes livestock producers overcrowd their animals and pump them full of horomones. Money is what makes the processing plants run the lines at top speed, even know the faster you cut up the animal, the higher the risk of mixing in fecal matter, brain tissue, or intestinal contents (=pathogens). It's all about money.

What I meant is that just because modern methods are producing meat in unhealthy ways, doesn't mean that meat itself is the problem. if it were, there wouldn't be all the evidence that people have thrived on it for millions of years.

Again, a separate issue, whose answer is: make the industry more responsible.

How do you propose to do that? Every effort that's made is met with strong resistance, scare tactics, and intense lobbying to maintain the status quo. If we brainwash everyone to be convinced they need daily meat, now people are dependent in the meat industry, no matter how vile the industry becomes.

[...]

I argue with you from my personal experiences dealing with livestock producers and the livestock sales. Livestock auctions are not pretty places: sick and crippled animals are so much the norm, they're in every sale, and nobody gives them a second thought. Sick animals mean sick meat. Sick animals mean overuse of antibiotics and drugs, which gives you tainted meat.

That's true! I don't know. People were starting to finally buy the better foods, when the Greater Depression hit.

What I would like to see is people getting together locally and growing/raising their own foods, so that each community can be self-sufficient.

I don't think it's impossible to go back to farming the way it used to and should be:


(Image from Franklin Farmers Market. Other small farmers can be found at EatWild.com)

These kinds of farms are finally starting to become more known about, so that's a good sign. It took decades for us to get away from this method; it may take that long to go back to it.