Why do vegetarians maintain that meat is unhealthy?

Question

I get not eating meat on ethical grounds, but pretending that eating fish/meat is unhealthy or unnatural?

Our European stone age ancestors were eating a diet that was 70% animal/fish (source of info bone mineral analysis, look up 'Trent woman') and were making it into their sixties with no medical care. How is that unhealthy?

Fair points Shelly P, but that's more an indictment of modern farming methods and pollution.

The modern Western diet isn't unhealthy because of the meat, it's the trans fats, artificial additives and low level of fruit and veg we eat that cause the problems. Although red meat's not that great for you in excess.

Vegetarians are healthier because they eat a lot of veg, not because they don't eat meat. Eating a lot of veg will lower your risks of cancer, heart disease, and just about every nasty disease of old and middle age their is, wether you eat meat or not. We shoudl be eating about 8 portions a day, not 5, and most people in the UK only get 3.

Source, of figures please dryheatdave.

Michael H, insulin resistance is the dominant metabolic type in some ethnic groups, it's hardly atypical. And it's very common in Europeans, a hang over from the stone age. MS is a side effect of low uric acid, which is made worse by vegetarianism. Low uric acid levels in the blood can cause fatigue on it's own. Uric acid is a powerful anti oxidant, not just a metabolic waste product.

There's been some interesting research that a low animal cholesterol 'healthy' diet will actuall raise LDL cholesterol in a section of the normally healthy population. It's the 'one diet fits all' attitude of preaching veggies that gets my goat.

http://www.drmyhill.co.uk/article.cfm?id=318

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2004/01/29/cholesterol_does_not_cause_coronary_heart_disease.htm

This article is calleed 'the big fat lie'.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E2D61F3EF934A35754C0A9649C8B63

A lot of you seem to assume that animal fat causes deaths from heart disease. This has never satisfactorily been shown, and quite a few very large studies show it has sod all effect. In one study the staturated fat eaters died at the same age as the the low fat group, the low fat group had a higher incidence of cancer.

This is an item from the New England Journal of Medicine about the nurses study. It shows that the 'bad diet' nurses had the same life expectancy. And that it didn't seem to adversely affect their blood lipids. Who do we believe?

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/355/19/1991

A lot of you seem to assume that animal fat causes deaths from heart disease. This has never satisfactorily been shown, and quite a few very large studies show it has sod all effect. In one study the staturated fat eaters died at the same age as the the low fat group, the low fat group had a higher incidence of cancer.

This is an item from the New England Journal of Medicine about the nurses study. It shows that the 'bad diet' nurses had the same life expectancy. And that it didn't seem to adversely affect their blood lipids. Who do we believe?

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/355/19/1991

And from the Epic Study..

The Epic study, published last night in the Journal of the International Cancer Institute, found that the risks of eating red meat were less in people who ate a lot of fibre from vegetables, fruit and wholegrain cereals. Eating any sort of fish on a regular basis - at least 80g every other day - had a protective effect, reducing the bowel cancer risk by 30% over those who ate fish less than once a week.

FM, an experiment would be where they take a group of insulin resistant people at risk of CHD and feed them various diets, studiously taking blood samples to study their cholesterol and triglycerides. Which has been done. And the high saturated fat diet caused no high LDL or triglcerides. The high GI diet did though. And it's been repeated a few times. I can't be arsed to post a link though.

So far I see a lot of statistics but none of you actually direct me to any reliable non partisan site for research into how veggies are healthier.

Answer 1

The unfortunate thing is, too many people get into such lifestyles with a fervor that matches that of religious cultists. They take a simple truth - that it's a good idea to eat of animal products sparingly - and go overboard with it. Some of them get into the "crusader" mode, saying anything they can think of, accurate or not, to suppress opposing ideas.
Eating fish, fowl and meat is not unhealthy. Eating them in excess is unwise, and removing a good bit of the fat prior to cooking makes these foodstuffs better for you. That means removing much of the visible fat from cuts of beef and pork, and the skin from fowl. Fish have very little harmful fat, and in fact, fish oil is one of the prescriptions given to help lower bad cholesterol. Attempting to remove ALL fat, especially from beef, is futile - and foolish, as it's the fat that gives beef desirable flavor and texture. The best cut of beef is "prime" beef, and that system of grading simply refers to the presence and distribution of fat in the meat.
Again, it is not that the flesh of animals is bad for you, it's overindulgence that's unwise. A steak so huge it hangs off the edges of a ten-inch dinner plate is almost irresistibly attractive, but the wise diner chooses a much smaller cut instead - seven or eight ounces at the most - and supplements that with at least two vegetables plus a serving of starch such as potato or rice.
It is entirely possible to find delicious and filling meals that are entirely vegetarian - but you don't have to feel guilty about including meat in your diet if you do it sensibly.

Answer 2

Generalize much.

Edit: You put far too much weight on studies and a few articles. You do understand the difference between studies and scientific experiments? A study only allows people to collect data and infer that A might have some influence on B. A scientific experiment is designed to determine if A causes B or does not cause B. The reason is because studies have far too many variables to monitor. Do all food and life based studies record the lifestyle (low stress/high stress, etc...), exercise (type and amount), geographic living location (proximity to pollution, radiation,etc...), exact amounts and types of foods consumed (calories, cholesterol content, nutrients, etc...) and distinguish between all their effects? This is not an exacting thing, which is why studies can only infer certain things and are not definitive. Additionally many don't have a large enough data set to necessarily show it applies to other groups of individuals.

More and more people in the US are getting angioplasty to clear up the cholesterol in their systems. The numbers are increasing year after year. This is real physical evidence of too much cholesterol.
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2005/09_08_05.html

The American Heart Association recommends only 6 oz of meat (lean and skinless) per day. Why would an association dedicated to improving the heart health of people recommend this if "meet is healthy." In fact, many Americans will eat more than this at breakfast alone, but if you say it is not unhealthy then it should be okay to eat bacon and sausage at breakfast everyday, despite the fact they are the highest in fat.

You reference stone age people, who lived a far different life than people today. People who really had to work physically hard to survive would actually use the food items they ate, whereas people today sit around and the fat and cholesterol is not used due to lack of activity so it collects.

Answer 3

That's nice, someone else trying to not be a vegetarian...first of all, being a vegetarian is NOT unhealthy, you haven't even explained why you think being one is. You hate beans? Well there are other ways to get protein like from nuts and avacados, but you probably hate them too. What's so healthy about eating dead flesh? It's like you people think that meat has magical healing powers. Well think about what the poor animals have to go through just so that you can lose some weight. P.S. learn how to spell.

Answer 4

As a general principle, food from the body of an animal is not necessarily unhealthy, but it is hard to obtain in good condition because pollutants tend to accumulate in consumers more than producers. It is possible to eat animal products which are healthy, but wild animals tend to be better than domesticated ones and certain organ meats better than muscle meat. From a practical perspective, leaving aside the ethical angle, it is actually quite difficult to get hold of good meat. The biggest problem for vegetarians is fatty acids, because good sources of those high in fish and organ meat are hard to find, but fish tends to be contaminated by heavy metals. River fish from a long way upstream would seem to be one answer to this.

Eating meat in the sense of anything from the body of an animal is not unhealthy, but in practical terms most people in this culture eat muscle meat from domesticated animals which live in polluted environments. It would probably be feasible to eat well in the Scottish highlands (assuming you're in Britain) and ate a lot of game and fish which was taken from the wild or as roadkill, and i imagine (though i don't know) that insects, snails and worms would be OK too, but the kind of diet one would be eating would be very different than that of most omnivorous people in the West, as would palaeolithic diets in Wurm glaciation Britain.

There's also the issue of living in a part of the world where vegetarianism is less viable than somewhere like the Med.

Answer 5

Who else do you like to make generalizations of?

Black people, Jewish people, Gay people?

I'm vegan and sorry, but I've never said that eating some meat is unhealthy.

I think that you have gotten lost at some point. What do low fat diets have to do with vegetarianism? Fats don't just come from meat or other animal products.

I do not eat animals because I don't believe that they are property, not because I'm trying to live to be 120.

Answer 6

#1 Meat before the 1900's was VERY different than the meat today. The animals were allowed to graze/eat food that was natural to them. Cows were not fed ground up cows, causing Mad COw disease. They were not pumped full of hormones.. The water was not polluted, so fish was not contaminated with all kinds of heavy metals, etc.. Anyone who thinks that these common practices today DON'T affect the animal's health and that disease is not passed on to the person who consumes the meat is laughably deceiving themself.

#2. I don't know about the stone age, but in past recorded centuries people ate much less meat than they do today. Even if their diet was mostly meat.. they simply didn't eat as much quanitiy.. period.. But unless you were wealthy.. your diet was mostly vegetation in most all ancient civilizations or past centuries.

#3 It is a well known fact that doctors today are practically BEGGING people to cut down on red meat. It has been scientifically proven to increase the risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancer, and many other illnesses.. How is that healthy? Everyone EDUCATED knows this..

A PROPERLY DONE vegetarian diet has been scientifically proven to prolong life. The longest-living people in the world are vegetarian or almost vegetarian.

It's all about how meat is produced today. If I lived a couple hundred years ago, where cattle were healthy and happily spending their days grazing, and humanely slaughtered (Relatively humanely) I too would eat some meat on occasion.

NO ONE with any education or brains today would claim that the typical western high-meat diet is healthy. NO one...


EDIT: Yes, it is more the fault of commercial meat-producing methods and pollution. I never said that meat in theory was unhealthy.. But TODAY it is practically impossible to find meat that is "safe" Because of all the things done to the cows and the hormones, disease, etc.. I see it as unsafe. I never said it WASN'T only a modern problem. I said if I lived 200 years ago I probably wouln't have a problem with eating meat.

BUT that aside the fact remains that today's average westerner eats way too much meat. More than they need. Too much protien in the diet causes health problems, and most westerners eat way too much. So part of the "unhealtiness" of the western diet IS the over-consumption of meat, especially red meat. Not just fats (though I'm not denying those are a problem)..

I read something somewhere about ancient Egypt. THe main population ate not very much meat, but the pharoahs and wealthy had a rich diet with alot of meat and alot more food PERIOD than the commoner ate. The interesting thing is they're finding that the pharoahs (by studying mummies) suffered and died from many of the same problems as today (heart disease, etc).. things that are otherwise rarely found in ancient cultures... wish I had the source on that...

Answer 7

First of all, this stance has to be put in context. Meat can form part of a healthy diet, but it can also form part of a very unhealthy diet!

If you look at the obesity figures and the diets of people who are overweight, obese and morbidly obese, the vast majority of them eat meat. Obese people who are vegetarian are very few and far between.

Meat doesn't have to be unhealthy - it just has to be eaten in proportion to other foods (carbs, fruit and veg etc), and also people need to understand which meats are better for you than others.

I am veggie, and have been since i was a toddler - but I do live in a meat/fish eating family. Even i know that steak should be eaten occasionally, whereas chicken and fish are pretty good for you, for making up your protein and omega quotas - red/fatty meats will simply raise your cholesterol, but it's OK to eat them now and again. Eating fast food made from cheap ingredients every day isn't good for you.

i respect other people's decision to eat meat, as much as i would like them to respect my decision to not eat it. it's all personal choice and I am grateful that i live in a country where it's possible to lead a healthy vegetarian lifestyle and for this to be socially acceptable.

Answer 8

If we didn't live in such a spoiled world where we're lucky enough to get such a variety of foods, people wouldn't find the time and place to complain and whine about "animal rights" and if genetically or not we were meant to eat other animals.

Answer 9

Around the middle of the 20th century, meat production changed from smaller family farms to industrial facilities. Animals are crammed into smaller spaces, fed unnatural diets, pumped up with hormones and antibiotics. Girls are entering puberty at younger and younger ages due to the hormones in the milk. Obesity rates in the U.S. are climbing because people eat more meat and eat larger portions of food.

Perhaps long ago, meat was not unhealthy, but in modern times, the way it is produced, it cannot be considered good for you.

And Gary Taubes, who wrote that New York Times piece, is a shill for Fatkins. Who died of a brain hemorrhage after falling on a sidewalk and was grossly obese when he did die.

Answer 10

There is saturated fat and cholesterol in meat, in large quantities this is unhealthy. Some may argue that any all together is unhealthy. This is why people with clogged arteries or certain heart diseases are advised to limit their intake of meat. For me personally I can not take an animal kill it and then eat it, I can't touch raw meat without feeling sick, that seems unnatural to me, obviously this is just me, but yes it can be unnatural for some people to eat meat mentally at least you can't argue with that.