Word: vegetarians
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Eberle notes that vegetarian diets done correctly are high in fiber and low in fat. "But where are the calories?" she asks. "World-class endurance athletes need in excess of 5,000 or 6,000 calories a day. Competition can easily consume 10,000. You need to eat a lot of plant-based food to get those calories. Being a vegetarian athlete is hard, really hard to do right...
...that easy for the rest of America, either. Middle-aged to elderly adults can also develop deficiencies in a vegetarian diet (as they can, of course, with a poor diet that includes meat). Deficiencies in vitamins D and B12 and in iodine, which can lead to goiter, are common. The elderly tend to compensate by taking supplements, but that approach carries risks. Researchers have found cases in which vegetarian oldsters, who are susceptible to iodine deficiency, had dangerously high and potentially toxic levels of iodine in their bodies because they overdid the supplements...
Meat producers acknowledge that vegetarian diets can be healthy. They also have responded to the call for leaner food; the National Pork Board says that, compared with 20 years ago, pork is on average 31% lower in fat and 29% lower in saturated fat, and has 14% fewer calories and 10% less cholesterol. But the defenders of meat and dairy can also go on the offensive. They mention the need for B12. And then they ratchet up the fear factor. Kurt Graetzer, CEO of the Milk Processor Education Program, scans the drop in milk consumption (not only by vegans...
...endangered breed, let's entertain two arguments in favor of eating meat. One is that it made us human. "We would never have evolved as large, socially active hominids if we hadn't turned to meat," says Katharine Milton, an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley. The vegetarian primates (orangutans and gorillas) are less social than the more omnivorous chimpanzees, possibly because collecting and consuming all that forage takes so darned much time. The early hominids took a bold leap: 2.5 million years ago, they were cracking animal bones to eat the marrow. They ate the protein-rich muscle...
...meat and glucose gave early man energy to burn--or rather, energy to play house, to sing and socialize, to make culture, art, war. And finally, about 10,000 years ago, to master agriculture and trade--which provided the sophisticated system that modern humans can use to go vegetarian...