Where can I find NON-EXTREMIST information about "factory farming"?

Question

This doesn't have to do with vegitarianism/veganism specifically, but I am asking this here because I assume that many of you have read a lot about this subject.

I'm doing a project on livestock farming practices in the United States and it seems like all the information I can find on the issue comes from either crazy leftists like PETA and the A.L.F. who loudly scream their crazy rhetoric about how meat eaters should be punched in the face... or from crazy rightists like the Center for Consumer Freedom and animalscam.com who loudly scream their crazy rhetoric about how PETA and the A.L.F. are nazi/communist/terrorists who want to punch you in the face.

Does anyone know where I can get some non-biased information regarding farming, livestock, eating meat, etc?

Summer, if you have health/environmental/ecological qualms with the farming practices in the United States then there must be legitimate (read unbiasted) scientific research on the matter... otherwise everyone who opposes it (or supports it for that matter) would be basing their opinion completly on speculation and hearsay. In other words, they are ALL illogical and crazy. I know there are a lot of crazy environmentalists out there but I refuse to believe that they are ALL illogical and crazy. Someone, sometime, somewhere MUST have some sort of empirical data that can give me an idea of the actual state of the majority of the livestock in the country..... not just a bunch of gory pictures from one farm...

In other words... I fail to believe that NOBODY who wonders about this subject knows the meaning of "hasty generalization"

Answer 1

What you are really looking for is called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation or CAFO.

http://www.nmenv.state.nm.us/swqb/cafoq_a.html

Most of what you're going to find on the web is

1. its evil and must be stopped at all costs (PETA or A.L.F)

2. what permits you need.


I posted a few link that might help.

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/permits/cafo/cafo_fs-public_comment.pdf

http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/permitting/water_quality/wastewater/cafo/cafo_definitions.html


Hoped it helped.

Answer 2

Useful sources of information:

Vegan Society (UK)
FactoryFarming.com
SustainableTable.org

These sources do err on the side of anti-factory farming, but I think they disseminate the information in a straightforward, fact-based way. Hopefully they'll fall in the middle of the extremists you've come across so far.

The "See Also" & "External links" sections at the end of the Wikipedia article may also provide the info you're looking for.

Answer 3

You're not going to find non-extremist information. Either you're totally for farming of animals because you directly benefit from it (financially) because after all, money drives people despite whether it's morally right or wrong. Or you are totally against farming because of the moral implications (as well as health, environment, etc, etc). You can't talk to the animal rights people, nor can you talk to the factory farmers, nor can you talk to the average consumer because they don't have a clue about where their product comes from. You're going to have to look at both extremes and decide for yourself.

Answer 4

I can't find my copy of "Fast Food Nation" to confirm, but I recall that the author had a pretty decent bibliography in there. It's also a good place to start, I think.

Answer 5

You're talking to the wrong people. Talk to Vermont farmers. There are many progressive-type farms here and in my town of Chester,there are two.

Answer 6

I concur with the recommendation to find a copy of "Fast Food Nation." It's a fairly enjoyable read, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Food_Nation

Answer 7

all factory farming is exetreme. good luck on that one.

go the source link and watch their videos.

Answer 8

You might also check out the American Veterinary Association as well.

Answer 9

In the official words of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), The Animal Welfare Act, as passed by the US Congress, "specifically excludes animals raised for food or fiber." With virtually no protection of farm animals (at either the federal, or on the state level), institutional cruelty and abuse have become the norm. In legal terms--which is where it counts in a for-profit environment--cruelty and abuse of farm animals is, for the most part, simply not against the law in the United States of America

Propped up with the aid of official government policy, farming in the US has been allowed, over the last generation, to grow into a grim corporate monstrosity, the scale of which is hard to comprehend, or even to be believed. Virtually all of the over 7 billion animals slaughtered for food in the US every year are today the product of a highly mechanized factory-like system, incorporating dangerous, unprecedented, and unsustainable methods of efficiency.

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. (Within the 12-year period preceding 1992, the number of chickens worldwide increased 132% to 17.2 billion.)

An animal-based diet is invariably high in cholesterol, animal protein (see #13), 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.

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

Feeding the average meat-eating American requires 3-1/4 acres of land per year. Feeding a person who eats no food derived from animals requires only 1/6 acre per year. Recent marginal growth in animal protein consumption in increasingly affluent developing countries has led to huge increases in the need for feed grains. In 1995, quite suddenly, China went from being an exporter to an importer of grain. World shortages are predicted as both populations and meat consumption rise together--an unsustainable combination. Early in 1996, the world was down to a 48-day supply of grain. According to Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute, the world "may have crossed a threshold where even the best efforts of governments to build stocks may not be enough."

The passage of local laws favoring massive corporate pork operations in North Carolina recently propelled the state into the number two spot in national hog production, practically overnight. In terms of manure, the state might as well have grafted the human population of New York City onto its coastal plain, times two! Studies by North Carolina State University estimate that half of the some 2,500 open hog manure cesspools (euphemistically termed "lagoons"), now needed as part of hog productions there, are leaking contaminants such as nitrate--a chemical linked to blue-baby syndrome--into the ground water. In the summer of 1995, at least five lagoons actually broke open, letting loose tens of millions of gallons of hog waste into rivers and on to neighboring farm lands. No mechanical method of retrieval exists that cleans contaminants from groundwater. Only nature is able to purify things again; and that could take several generations

Worldwide demand for fish, along with advances in fishing methods--sonar, driftnets, floating refrigerated fish packing factories--is bringing ocean species, one after another, to the brink of extinction. In the Nov., '95 edition of Scientific American, Carl Safina writes, "For the past two decades, the fishing industry has had increasingly to face the result of extracting [fish] faster than fish populations [can] reproduce." Research reveals that the intended cure--aquaculture (fish farming)--actually hastens the trend toward fish extinction, while disrupting delicate coastal ecosystems at the same time.

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), dubbed Mad Cow Disease because of the apparent mental torture cows display before death, is an always-fatal neuro-degenerative cattle disease caused by incredibly virulent and mysterious infectious proteins called prions. An outbreak in Great Britain had by early 1996 stricken around 160,000 cows. Circumstantial evidence pointed to the British practice of mixing the remains of sheep, including brains and bones, into cows' feed as the cause of the outbreak. This apparent species-to-species inoculation is what makes all forms of spongiform encephalopathy (known to affect other mammals as well) so alarming. Are cow-eating humans the next victims? At press-time, evidence pointed to a certain strain of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD) as being the human variant of spongiform encephalopathy. Grim predictions tell of up to 500,000 Britons a year falling to this disease due to their past consumption of BSE-infected cows. Prion-based diseases often have incubation periods in terms of decades, so the saga is sure to continue. In the meantime, since using the remains of dead animals in feed has been integral to agricultural operations in the US for years, BSE, or the chance of some future American version of it, is one more reason to think twice before biting into that char-broiled burger.

Jim Mason and Peter Singer write in their book Animal Factories, "Instead of hired hands, the factory farmer employs pumps, fans, switches, slatted or wire floors, and automatic feeding and watering hardware." As with any other capital intensive system, managers will be concerned with the "cost of input and volume of output ... [T]he difference is that in animal factories the product is a living creature."

A scientist, reporting in the industry publication Confinement, calculated in 1976 that the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 13 years if the whole world were to take on the diet and technological methods of farming used in the US

Trees are being cut down at an alarming rate in the US, as well as around the world, for meat production. If tomorrow people in the US made a radical change away from their meat-centered diets, an area of land the size of all of Texas and most of Oklahoma could be returned to forest

So-called "redskins" are those chickens which--on the conveyer belts to their deaths--missed not only the brine-filled electrified stunning trough, but the knife that was to cut their throats. Their deaths occurred in the scald tank where feathers are loosened before plucking. Industry throws aside piles of them every day

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-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

Meat-centered diets are linked to many types of cancer, most notably cancer of the colon, breast, cervix, uterus, ovary, prostate, and lung

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. One poultry researcher, according to United Poultry Concerns literature, explains: "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

According to the Family Food Protection Act of 1995 (S.515), Section 2: "meat and meat food products, and poultry and poultry products, contaminated with pathogenic bacteria are a leading cause of foodborne illness." The bill also states that foodborne illnesses take approximately 9,000 lives, and cause between 6.5 and 80 million illnesses, each year. According to USDA Secretary Dan Glickman, 500 deaths a year are attributable to E.coli contamination in beef.

In the words of John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America, a dairy cow living in today's modern milk factory "is bred, fed, medicated, inseminated and manipulated to a single purpose--maximum milk production at minimum cost." She lives with an unnaturally swelled up and sensitive udder, is likely to be kept inside a stall her entire life, is milked up to 3 times a day, and is kept pregnant nearly all of her life with her young taken from her almost immediately after birth. "Contented" is the characteristic most often attributed to the cow. However, cows in today's factories have to be fed tranquilizers to calm their nerves

Calorie for calorie, spinach has 14 times the iron of sirloin steak. Iron requires vitamin C for absorption. Animal foods contain no vitamin C

Steers are castrated to make them more docile. Castration also promotes a fattier, more profitable, animal. Castration can be done radically, all at once, or over a longer period of time with a ring, causing the testicles to eventually fall away. Drugs are an integral part of today's agriculture, but in the US for this procedure, anesthetics are rarely used.

By concealing a hidden camera on his body, an employee of a Rapid City, SD slaughterhouse was able to obtain a videotape for CBS-TV's 48 Hours. The tape showed how a plant with over 300 employees that processes an average of 50 cows per hour with only 4 USDA inspectors "keeps the line moving." It showed workers taking dangerous shortcuts in cleaning up fluid that had broken out of an abscess from a piece of chuck beef, a severe violation of USDA rules that would require an extended clean-up procedure. Comments from a seasoned USDA veterinarian: "I can say from my experience of nine years and in talking to other food inspectors around the country, this probably goes on on a daily basis."

The National Cancer Research Institute found that women who eat meat on a daily basis are almost 4 times more likely to get breast cancer than those women who eat little or no meat

At the expense of their own hungry populations, producers in poor countries will choose to export luxury foods such as meat for sale to rich countries. Meat is much more profitable than subsistence crops such as rice, beans and vegetables

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 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

Two hundred years ago, American cropland had topsoil that averaged 21 inches in depth. Today, only about 6 inches remain. Every year in the US an area the size of Connecticut is lost to topsoil erosion--85% of this erosion is associated with livestock production

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 (see #85). Ingesting PCBs is considered a chief cause of reduced sperm count among American men--70% of what it was 30 years ago

Farm animals in our factory sheds today are supposed to have their drug intakes stopped at proscribed intervals prior to slaughter to avoid residues ending up in the final consumer product. Withdrawal schedules, however, are not always properly followed. With so many different drugs, the regimens can be complex, with written instructions often not very coherent. Due to the mechanized nature of today's conveyer belt feeding systems, troughs of old, drug-laden feed may not get cleaned away when withdrawal should begin. In addition, since farm animals are often fed animal waste as well as animal flesh, drug and pesticide residues continue to be recycled

Harvey Diamond, co-author of the Fit for Life books, writes, "the list of ailments that can be linked to dairy products is so extensive there is hardly a problem it doesn't at least contribute to." Consumption of cow's milk is linked to colitis, dysfunctions of the thyroid gland, and headaches--even Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Lou Gehrig's disease and Multiple Sclerosis. Parent advisor Dr. Benjamin Spock has said that cow's milk, "causes internal blood loss, allergies and indigestion, and contributes to some cases of childhood diabetes." Dr. Spock even linked milk to the risk for anemia in babies. The common cold, as well as allergies to dust, cats and pollen, are more likely to go away when cow's milk is taken out of the diet

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the Food and Nutrition Board recommend eating a mere 2.5% to 6% of one's calories as protein. Today's average American excessively eats 40% of his or her calories as protein--28% from animal protein, and 12% from non-animal protein

About 98% of all milk in the US is produced using factory methods. Part of factory life for a cow includes dangerous levels of drugs administered to boost milk output. Due to selective breeding, cows already produce at least two and a half times the amount of milk of yesterday's pastured counterpart. Then, as of February, 1994, farmers were given the go-ahead to use the genetically engineered hormone Bovine Somatotropin (BST) on their herds. Designed to boost milk output by an additional 15 percent, milk per cow statistics are already showing the effects nationwide. A cow naturally has at least a 20-year lifespan; today's stressed out cows, however, become hamburger in less than 4 years, as a cow's ability to give milk quickly diminishes under modern conditions

Factory-farmed animals contain as much as 30 times more saturated fat than yesterday's free-range, pasture-raised animals

Nearly half the fish tested in a 6-month investigation by Consumers Union were found to be contaminated by bacteria from human or animal feces, suspected to be the result of poor sanitation practices at one or more points along the fish handling process

Meat contains approximately 14 times more pesticides than plant foods; dairy products contain 5-1/2 times more pesticides than plant foods

Cruelty can be a regular occurrence at stockyards. Sick and crippled farm animals, called "downers," may lie suffering for days until dragged by chain to slaughter. The downer phenomenon would drastically be reduced if all stockyards refused to allow ranchers to make any money on them. (Slaughter of a living creature affords a rancher a better price than "dead-on-arrival" meat.)

Of all the antibiotics administered in the US to people or farm animals, farm animals receive over 95% of them--not so much to treat infection, but to make the animals grow faster on less feed

Meat industry apologists 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

A US Congressional committee report, published in 1985, charged that there were 20-30 thousand animal drugs in use at the time, and that as many as 90% had not been approved by the FDA

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine came out in 1991 with the "New Four Food Groups." They are: fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes (beans and peas). Meat, poultry, and fish were termed "optional" foods, not considered necessary for health. Referring to the USDA's "Food Pyramid," Marion Nestle, the chair of New York University's Department of Nutrition, said: "Why do we have a milk group? Because we have a National Dairy Council. Why do we have a meat group? Because we have an extremely powerful meat lobby."

With an annual injury and illness incidence rate of 23.2 per 100 full-time workers, poultry processing is ranked as the nation's 11th most dangerous industry, nearly twice that of coal mining and construction. The high illness incidence exists because workers actually contract diseases from the sick animals in their midst. Workers in the meat packing industry suffer injuries in the workplace at 10 times the national average, primarily due to damage to tendons and nerves from repeating the same motion up to 8,000 times an hour

At least 95% of all toxic chemical residues in the American diet come from meat, fish, dairy products and eggs. This is because such residues are stored in fat. Each step up the food chain serves to amplify the consumption of toxins. Fish, especially, have very long food chains. Avoiding fish to avoid toxic residue may not be a sufficient preventative measure, however, as one third of the world's fish catch is fed to livestock. Due to the excessive use of pesticides, insecticides and petrochemical fertilizers on cropland, the injection of hormones and antibiotics into farm animals, and the abundance of PCBs and mercury in our oceans, there is toxicity in the flesh of all animals people eat. More than ever, it is wise to eat "low on the food chain," with plant food being the lowest and safest.

A major part of the horror of a pig or chicken farm is the noise. Inside a hog barn of a thousand animals, workers wear ear protection against the din of squealing animals banging against their metal cages. To hear what this sounds like, call: 919-549-5100 x4647

A male calf born to a cow--what does the farmer do with this useless by-product of the dairy industry? After the calf's birth, if he is not immediately slaughtered, more than likely he'll be taken to a veal factory. There, he will be locked up in a stall and chained by his head to prevent him from turning around for his entire life. He'll be fed a special diet without iron or roughage. He will be injected with antibiotics and hormones to keep him alive and to make him grow. He will be kept in darkness except for feeding time. The result? A nearly full-grown animal with flesh as tender and milky white as a newborn's. The beauty of the system from the standpoint of the veal industry is that meat from today's so called "crate" veal will still fetch the premium price it always did when such flesh came only from a baby calf, just a lot more of it

Agricultural engineers have compared the energy costs of producing poultry, pork and other meats with the energy costs of producing a number of plant foods. It was found that even the least efficient plant food was nearly 10 times as efficient in returning food energy as the most energy efficient animal food

Referring to the book The Jungle, Jeremy Rifkin, author of Beyond Beef, writes, "Little has changed in the meat packing industry since Upton Sinclair's telling account." Plant conditions are so intolerable and dangerous that even exploited workers with few choices for other employment leave the industry. Along with the high turnover, the array of languages spoken by immigrant employees, serves to minimize meat inspection, the job done more and more by meat packer employees and less and less by USDA inspectors.

Food originating from animal sources, including milk, unlike most foods derived from plants, makes the blood acidic. When this happens, the body withdraws calcium from the bones to make the blood more alkaline. This process balances the pH of the blood, but consequently becomes one of the factors which leads to osteoporosis.

Bacteria in meat and poultry processing is a constant concern, and a very big business. The proliferation of antibacterial rinses (chlorine and saline) and sprays (for cow udders), as well as steam pasteurization (beef), ammonia neutralizers (poultry litter) and contaminant vacuums--just to name a few, all serve to allow the meat and poultry industries the luxury of cheap and filthy operations. A USDA-approved pilot test of a chemical de-hairing process went into effect in early 1996. The procedure--which will give stunned cattle a burning, bacteria-eliminating shave before slaughter--will probably prove effective in the pilot test. In practice, however, the chance for a percentage of still-sentient animals being chemically burned will most certainly exist

Farming today is fully concentrated in the hands of a few. In the US, eight firms control half (approximately 3.5 billion birds) of the poultry industry, and four meat packers control 90 percent of meat processing. The so-called Freedom to Farm bill, which came into law in early 1996, schedules $36 billion to be given over 7 years, in essence, to the wealthiest of America's agribusinessmen--regardless of prices in the market, nor with requirements to farm anything at all. The law will ultimately act to shake out small and moderate sized farms once and for all

Our dwindling supply of good water is directly tied to meat consumption. Over half of the total amount of water consumed in the US goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock

Since so much fossil fuel is needed to produce it, beef could be considered a petroleum product. With factory housing, irrigation, trucking, and refrigeration, as well as petrochemical fertilizer production requiring vast amounts of energy, approximately one gallon of gasoline goes into every pound of grain-fed beef

The Allied naval blockade during World War I of German-occupied territories in 1917 forced Denmark most dramatically into nationwide vegetarianism. The death rate there from disease during the period dropped by 34%.

In a March, 1984 cover story, Time magazine reported findings regarding cholesterol and heart disease. It noted that "in regions where ... meat is scarce, cardiovascular disease is unknown

There are no laws to regulate transport of animals for food consumption, specifically via truck--so this is the meat industry's preferred method of transport. That many of the animals are dead after their brutal trip is calculated as a cost of doing business

Late in 1995, the FDA put into place new rules pertaining to the regulation of fish processing. The rules require the FDA to inspect each of the nation's 6,000 processing plants, at most once per year and as little as once every three years, at which time a few samples may be taken for later evaluation. Individual fish will continue to not be inspected by any US agency. Though every fish processor will be required to keep ongoing records of safety procedures peculiar to its operation, no regulations whatsoever will pertain to the 100,000 fishing vessels that bring seafood to market. The new system is considered an improvement--from the standpoint of the consumer--over the previous one

According to John Robbins book, Diet for a New America, "The world's cattle alone, not to mention pigs and chickens, consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people." Hundreds of millions of tons of grain go to animals while only 5 million tons of grain could adequately feed the approximately 15 million children throughout the world who starve to death every year

The USDA does not inspect for trichinosis in pork. It is widely known that pork must be thoroughly cooked before eating. Still, about 4% of Americans have trichinella worms in their muscles which can periodically cause flu-like symptoms and even death.

Hens are starved for 30 hours before their slaughter. Any food given during this time would not be converted into flesh.

According to the United Nations, "slight, moderate or severe desertification" affects 29% of the Earth's landmass. The destruction is largely due to the demands of livestock raising around the world. With two-thirds of the earth's population subsisting primarily on a vegetarian diet, it is the meat-eating rich countries, such as the US, which are driving this trend with their imports of beef. To supply demand, Third World exporters drive indigenous populations, who have tilled the soil sustainably for generations, off their land. The uprooted rural refugees are currently flooding overburdened urban centers all around the world

Trade in animal food puts needless pressure on world governments straining to get along. For instance, the US allows the implantation of hormones into beef cattle. For this reason, since the late 1980s, the European Union has banned all imports of US beef. With the advent of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the USDA has vowed to step up pressure on the EU to force it to accept US beef. The controversy could possibly even have to be settled by the Geneva-based World Trade Organization's dispute settlement body. A similar scenario between the US and Russia with respect to poultry was being played out at press-time. Intense pressure from the poultry industry was put on the USDA and even Vice President Gore to intervene when all poultry imports were rejected outright by Russia due to safety concerns

More than a third of the veal calves tested in a 1995 undercover investigation done by the Humane Farming Association came up positive for clenbuterol--an acutely toxic and illegal animal drug. Subsequently it was found that many veal producers in the US had knowingly purchased and used the drug for their herds over a five-year period. This in itself is frightening; but worse is the revelation that the FDA and the USDA worked to protect the veal industry from scandal by maintaining a coverup about the clenbuterol use of which it became aware

In a seven-year study of washed-up marine debris at Padre Island National Seashore (located on the southeastern coast of Texas), the US Department of the Interior found that the shrimping industry was far and away the biggest contributor of ocean litter

Poultry processors are not required by the USDA to check for salmonella bacteria in poultry. A 1978 USDA rule still in effect accepts a "chill tank" bath for bird carcasses as a sufficient counter-measure. Dunking a chicken carcass through this bath, now known as the "fecal soup," has been likened to a rinse in your toilet. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 25% of all chicken sold in the US carry the salmonella bacteria--a conservative estimate. The USDA says that salmonella poisoning may be responsible for as many as 4 million illnesses and 3 thousand deaths per year.

According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, cardiovascular diseases caused 954,000 deaths (42% of all deaths) in 1993. Total direct cost to sufferers added up to $126.4 billion. Seventy-two percent of the deaths were due to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), a disease strongly linked to a meat-based diet


fighting diabetes
Eating a low-fat vegan diet may be better at managing type 2 diabetes than traditional diets, according to a new study.

Researchers found 43 percent of people with type 2 diabetes who followed a low-fat vegan diet for 22 weeks reduced their need to take medications to manage their disease compared with 26 percent of those who followed the diet recommended by the American Diabetes Association (ADA).

In addition, participants who followed the vegan diet experienced greater reductions in cholesterol levels and weight loss than those on the other diet.

A vegan diet is plant-based and consists of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes and avoids animal products, such as meat and dairy. People who are on a vegan diet are at risk for vitamin B12 deficiency, and so B12 vitamins were given to the participants on that diet.

"The diet appears remarkably effective, and all the side effects are good ones -- especially weight loss and lower cholesterol," says researcher Neal D. Barnard, MD, adjunct associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University, in a news release. "I hope this study will rekindle interest in using diet changes first, rather than prescription drugs."

Barnard is also president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit health organization that opposes animal research and advocates a vegan diet.


Vegan Vs. ADA Diet For Diabetes

In the study, published in the journal Diabetes Care, researchers compared the effects of following a low-fat vegan diet and the ADA diet on reducing the need for drugs to manage diabetes, kidney function, cholesterol levels, and weight loss in 99 adults with type 2 diabetes. Meals were not provided, but participants met a dietitian to come up with a diet plan and then met regularly each week for nutrition and cooking instruction.

Forty-nine of the participants followed a low-fat vegan diet consisting of about 10 percent of daily calories from fat, 15 percent protein, and 75 percent carbohydrates. They were asked to avoid animal products and added fats and instead favor foods like beans and green vegetables, but portion sizes and total daily calories or food intake were unrestricted.

The other 50 participants followed the dietary guidelines recommended by the ADA, including 15-20 percent protein, 60-70 percent carbohydrates and monosaturated fats (such as olive oil), and less than 7 percent saturated fats (such as animal fats and butter). Total cholesterol was also limited to 200 milligrams or less per day.

Overweight participants in the ADA diet group were also advised to reduce daily calorie intake by 500-1,000 calories per day.

The results showed that both diets improved diabetes management and reduced unhealthy cholesterol levels, but some improvements were greater with the low-fat vegan diet.

For example:


43 percent of those on the vegan diet reduced their need to take drugs to manage their diabetes compared with 26 percent of the ADA diet group.


Weight loss averaged more than 14 pounds in the vegan diet group vs. less than 7 pounds in the other group.


LDL "bad" cholesterol dropped by an average of 21 percent in the vegan group compared with 11 percent in the ADA diet group who did not change their cholesterol drug use.


Measures of blood sugar control also improved more significantly among those who followed the low-fat vegan diet than among those who followed the ADA diet and who did not change their diabetes drug use.

Researchers say the vegan diet represents a major change from current diabetes diets because there are no limits on calories, carbohydrates, and portions, which may make it easier for some people to follow. Talk to your doctor about what diet changes you might consider to help with diabetes or other medical conditions.

SOURCES:Barnard, N. Diabetes Care, August 2006; vol 29: pp 1777-1783. News release, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

By Jennifer Warner
Reviewed by Louise Chang, M.D.
© 2006, WebMD Inc. All rights reserved.

unbiased sites
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