In Defense of Food

With the massive obesity problem our country is facing, many people are looking for new diets to stay healthy. One of those options is a vegetarian diet. Vegetarians refrain from eating meat because they are told that meat is "unheathly" or "humans aren't designed to eat meat." But are vegetarians really healthier than meat eaters? A vegetarian diet can be either healthy or unhealthy. But there is no evidence that a healthy vegetarian diet is healthier than a meat-based diet. One of the most interesting things about Linda McCartney's vegetarian cookbook, Home Cooking (1) is the number of dishes that call for various combinations of milk, eggs, butter, cheese and cream. Using only McCartney's recipes, it would be easy for a vegetarian to exponentially raise their cholesterol count while believing their diet is healthier than average. Clearly, in order to support the theory that vegetarianism is healthier than a balanced diet, there needs to be more gained from eliminating meat from your diet than a simple reduction in saturated fat.

In Brigid McConville's book, Parent's Green Guide (2), she states that 'You don't need to eat meat to stay healthy. In fact, vegetarians claim they are among the healthiest people around, and they can expect to live nine years longer than meat eaters (this is often because heart and circulatory diseases are rarer). These days almost half the population in Britain is trying to avoid meat, according to a survey by the Food Research Association in January 1990.'

The nine-year advantage is a commonly used fact by vegetarians, but is invariably an unsourced piece of evidence. Anyone who believes that by not eating meat for their entire lives will be adding a decade to their years on the planet is definitely wishfully thinking.

Statistical surveys do occasionally suggest that vegetarians, on average, live slightly longer lives. But one needs to keep in mind that their research has yet to isolate the presence or absence of meat in the diet as the only variable under investigation. There are always factors which can explain, equally well, any health differences found between vegetarians and meat eaters. For example, many vegetarians choose their diet for health reasons simply because they are told it is the healthier choice. But people willing to cut out meat for health reasons are likely to be making other lifestyle decisions for health reasons. Perhaps to smoke less, drink less or exercise more frequently. In other words: people unwilling to make sacrifices for their health will be more likely to eat meat than those who will make those sacrifices. Thus the healthy vegetarian diet becomes a lifestyle rather than just a diet.

A well-designed piece of research using may, in theory, control for extraneous variables. But it would be almost impossible. Researchers could also use a large sample population studied over a lifetime, to determine whether differences in the meat eaters and non-meat eaters were genuine measurements. Or they would find that the 'nine year advantage' statistic came from the fact that vegetarians tend to make more health precautions than meat eaters.

JBS Haldane also brought up another fault in the nine year statistic in his book Science and Everyday Life (3). He said: 'Not all vegetarians force vegetarian food on their children.