Why do so many people think meat is essential? (NOT DEBATE)

There is not supposed to be debating. It says so in the title and everything. Gah!

Some great points thought out though. Seems, not surprisingly, it is personal preference no matter what.

Cheers all. Enjoy whatever lifestyle you prefer.

Take a couple of deep breaths and get over yourself. Seriousy, it was only humor. Tacky humor humor. But humor none the less.

I think the important thing to remember here is that babies sound really friggin delicious.

Can anyone link me to any good recipes? I was thinking of doing them up like breaded veal cutlets, but I'm worried about the frying making them tough.

i figured someone would appreciate a bacon diaper!

I think that a lot of people just listen to the mainstream teachings/ideas/opinions. In reality, doing research - you will find that there is plenty of protein in other sources. It reminds me of the milk argument that in order to get calcium, for instance, you need milk. There are many sources to obtain calcium. It's just a lack of interest or education when people spout such things.

I don't care what the science is or the numbers or any of that crap.

Primates developed more complex brains and became human in part because they ate meat. Without that step I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be human.

That's good enough for me. Protein from meat gave us brains, and I like brains. I could never be a vegan or vegetarian.

I don't really care about what we're doing to animals in cages or any of that stuff either. There's a pecking order in nature, and nature is cruel. Humans are naturally cruel and animals do as bad or worse to each other. I'm all for humanitarian treatment where possible, but I also prioritize humans as the most important animal on earth. When I was born we were 3.5 billion in number and now we are 7 billion. Within my lifetime we will be 9 billion. I want to make sure humans are fed well, and if that means several hundred billion chickens lose out then so be it.

Interesting... Because keeping animals in cages and pumping them with drugs like antibiotics is about as far from "nature" as you can get. If everyone switched to a plant based diet we could better feed the soon to be 9 million people on this planet... It takes way more resources (seeds, grain, water, land etc), to feed animals to slaughter to then feed a person than to skip the animals and direclty feed the people...

Thank you!!

I'm in the process of becoming vegetarian, perhaps one day vegan. I didn't eat much meat before as it was and I find it easier to do veggies and still get all the nutrients I need (fiber, protein, iron, etc). I've learned so much actually researching sources of nutrients that don't involve meat. My SIL is full blown vegan and lost a ton of weight and is incredibly healthy. She's also well educated now on what is healthy and where she can get all the appropriate nutrients (years ago she went vegetarian and lost a lot of her hair due to lack of nutrients). Now she knows better and is more healthy than I've ever seen her and she avoids anything that's even touched an animal. I've been replacing many of my meals with vegetarian alternatives. I've been adding beans and nuts to many of my salads to aid in protein and iron alternatives. So far I actually feel better than when I was eating more meats.

I'm pescestarian (would love to make the full leap to vegetarianism and hope to transition this year) and gave up all other meats for ethical reasons. In doing so, I actually took control of my health and nutrition. I eat far better than before and make a more conscious effort to eat the right foods. I've had all the comments about "what about protein, etc" Oh and the cracker "What do you eat?" Uh, FOOD. All other foods like before, just without the meat. Shock horror, there are other foods aside from meats. Fruits, veggies, wholegrains, nuts, etc. I feel better than ever so just brush it off. Makes me giggle when someone is giving me a lecture about eating right, whilst I'm eating a good, balanced meal full of vitamins, and they're eating a sausage roll, crisps and chocolate.

I believe that with the right attitide, someone can actually have a nutritionally balanced diet as a vegan aside from B12. People are just too reliant on meat these days. My current SO was more or less vegan for years (he was vegetarian for 11 years and has an allergy to diary but he's back on meat), trained heavy, teaches martial arts, etc and he's in great health, and very fit.

Meat gives 100 health.
Fruits and veggies 50 health.

There you go.

I beg to differ but everyone is entitled to their opinion...even if they are wrong

I eat meat because I hate beans, soy shakes give me gas and I need to get my protein somewhere.

Also, my father makes the best steaks. Outback ain't got nothin' on daddy dearest.

Plenty of my friends are vegetarians. The only one I ever worried about was my "carb veggie" friend. She wouldn't eat meat and she'd skip the veggies too if she could help it. She mostly lived off of cheese pizza, potato chips and spaghetti. That's not a very balanced diet.

Funnily enough I was reading only yesterday what former vegan Gillian Riley (google her) has to say about meat. Here is an excerpt:

WHY I EAT MEAT
One thing you can be sure of with me is that I'll never suggest anything to you that I don't do myself. Part of what's kept this work fascinating for me over so many years is that I'm always trying things out: how to sleep better, reduce stress, have more energy, vitality and sharper thinking. Some things seem to work, others don't, but I don't stop trying stuff out. And because it's a trial of one - which is important to me but not necessarily a lot of use to anyone else - I always look for related research of any kind. It has all become more and more useful as I get older.

At the time I tried vegan eating I genuinely believed it was the way to go, and now I'm so pleased I gave it a really good trial, and vegetarian too. I didn't become ill but I certainly lost my energy. Then, I read yet another book on nutrition, and this one suggested to me that animal products, including meat, were very beneficial to health... and so I gave that a try. I've not looked back since then simply because both the body I live in and the body of research about it are in absolute agreement.

I write this mostly in response to news that filters through, and I'm sure will continue to filter through, that red meat is dangerous to our health. For example, a client alerted me to an article titled, "The unpalatable truth about what we eat and cancer that appeared in The Times last month.

There are three statements in this article that I love and absolutely agree with:

"Food is serious, we ingest it and it becomes us."

"Diet of course causes cancer, we can see that in how easily immigrants change their risk when they adopt the food of their host nation."

"There is a lot we can do to minimize our risk. But we are rarely told about this."



These statements are spot on, but then we get to the advice about cancer, and we are told:

"The most important anti-cancer change you can make is to avoid being overweight and to drink no alcohol at all... You should also avoid processed meat... and limit red meat in general."

The researcher quoted in the article said he was limiting his red meat consumption to three servings a year - but this advice is by no means conclusive. The research behind this, referred to in The Times article, is known as The Nurses' Health Study, which tracked thousands of health professionals over many years. A great many research papers have been published about it, and it has received widespread publicity in the media, but it is a seriously flawed study for a number of reasons:

- Epidemiological studies can only indicate associations between the elements they study; they can never show that any one element directly causes another. For example, those nurses who ate more red meat also smoked and drank more, had a higher BMI and exercised less. Adjustments are made for such factors, but they can only be estimates and will skew the results. I do wonder what else that group of nurses might be up to.

- This study compares the effects of a poor diet to the effects of a very poor diet. To get what I'm saying about this, look at this quote from Craig B Thompson, President of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York:

"It matters what you eat, where your calories come from... we now have good evidence... if you overfeed somebody with fat, you don't increase their cancer risk at all; if you overfeed them with carbohydrate you dramatically increase their cancer rate... protein is somewhere in between."

I've taken this from a lecture in 2011, now on YouTube, and there are a substantial number of doctors and researchers who would agree.

Now, whether this is correct or not, the Nurses' Health Study wouldn't be able to prove nor disprove it, as there were no nurses eating low-carb, nor even low-ish to moderate carb. It doesn't matter how many papers have been published from the Nurses' Study; they are founded on very limited data.

- The Nurses' Health Study uses a questionnaire to collect the data, requiring people to remember what they had eaten over the past year. Do you know how many servings per week you had of anything a year ago? Not only do people often not remember, but it's well known that people tend to answer these questionnaires more along the lines of what they were supposed to have eaten, rather than what they actually did eat. Which explains why the reported calorie count per day would have meant they were all skin-and-bones - which they weren't.

- Perhaps most important of all, any epidemiological study in the US involving the consumption of animal products inevitably includes animals that were raised and fed in ways that are not at all natural to them. An astonishing 97% of cattle in the US are 'feedlot', which means they eat grains and/or soy and/or corn. Cattle are supposed to eat grass. That's green grass, growing, alive, in a field. There isn't any epidemiological research that compares consumption from grass-fed to feedlot animals, but some things are known:

1. Any product from grass-fed animals contains considerably more omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to reduce the risk of cancer. Even hay feeding can reduce the omega-3 content by as much as 60%.

2. Feedlot animals are sick animals, which is why antibiotics are routinely added to their food. The antibiotics then get carried into their products and subsequently into us when we eat them. Someone eating feedlot animal products (meat, dairy, eggs) every day will be consuming antibiotics every day, and this will have an effect on their own gut bacteria, an important factor in health. Not to mention the growth hormones.

3. Meat from grass-fed animals is known to contain significantly more antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, potassium, zinc, iron, magnesium and selenium - to name a few.

NUTRIENT DENSITY

Making sure it is from grass-fed animals, I eat meat because it makes a significant contribution to the best possible health through the delivery of important nutrients:

The fat-soluble vitamins A, D and K2.

B-Vitamins, especially B-12 Vegans and vegetarians have lower levels of vitamin B-12, a deficiency that can lead to a significant increase in homocysteine. (1)

Long-chain omega-3s, as mentioned above, assuming the animals, birds or fish were fed in ways that were natural to them.

And, of course, high quality protein.


I know all these nutrients can be supplemented or found in plant foods, but most cannot be found in forms that are as potent. They are either less bioavailable (not well absorbed into our bodies, as with iron for example) or their form is incomplete (as with omega-3s).

And as for weight loss and the maintenance of that weight loss (just in case you're interested):

"Evidence is accumulating that diets with reduced carbohydrates and increased levels of high quality protein are effective for weight loss." (2)

Last but not least, there's a digestive enzyme called pepsin produced in our stomach, and its sole purpose is to digest animal protein. It doesn't make sense to me that our bodies would produce such a thing unless we were suited to eat animal protein.

At the very least, this subject is still hugely controversial. There is little doubt that you will continue to read in the newspapers about the supposed danger of eating red meat. Saturated fat is now known to raise the good cholesterol, not the bad, so no need to be afraid of it as it, too, is an important nutrient, especially for the brain.

This is such a huge, massive, colossal subject, and I know I've only skimmed the surface. Please forgive me if I've missed things out; I've just wanted to alert you to perhaps another opinion on this, and one that's not so often presented in the media.


NOTES

1 "Vitamin B-12 status, particularly holotranscobalamin II and methylmalonic acid concentrations, and hyperhomocysteinemia in vegetarians." Herrmann W, Schorr H et al (2003) The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 78(1):131-136

2 "Protein quantity and quality at levels above the RDA improves adult weight loss." Layman DK (2004) Journal of the American College of Nutrition 23 (6): 631S-636S

from eatingless.com

i know that for me, meat is essential. i have fructose intolerance. my safest foods are meat, potatoes, spinach, and mushrooms. meat is the only food with no fructose in it. if i want to be healthy and have all my vitamins and minerals, i need to eat meat.

i had been a vegetarian before. i felt bad for the animals. so for 4 years the only animal products i ate was dairy. my health got seriously bad. my teeth started to rot out and i got real weak. i was eating the protein i needed and everything but i could not digest most of the stuff i was eating. the fructose content was too high.

the doctors who dxd me said that 85% of america is most likely fructose intolerant.

i still wont eat lamb or veal.

If you come to my house I am more likely to cook a vegetarian dish than a meat one. I'm not a big meat eater, especially when I am on my own.

My friends never notice until I tell them AFTER they've eaten it. That's when they start to criticise the fact I cooked a vegetarian meal. Why?!

To me, its good but not essential. Protein is important but you can get it elsewhere.

Well meat is essential for SOME eating plans, like Paleo and Keto.....just saying. In your case, it's not, so I would ignore those who are being disrespectful. As long as you're getting nutrients from other sources, you'll be fine.

I'm a vegetarian and I consider myself healthy. I think it is harder to get in protein compared to meat eaters. However, I do get in my protein! It would be even harder for a vegan...

our bodies evolved eating a mixed diet for thousands of years. An omnivorous diet is optimal