Originally Posted by sebrinaw You said in another thread that you think that you can only get high qulaity protein and iron from meat but that is most definatly not true. |
| According to studies, vegetarians have better health than people that eat meat. They have lower rates of coronary artery disease, gallstones, cancer (particularly lung and colon cancer), kidney stones, colon disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. A vegetarian is also less likely to be overweight than a non-vegetarian. In 1961, the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that ninety to ninety-seven percent of heart disease, the cause of more than half the deaths in the United States, could be prevented by a vegetarian diet. In 1990, the British Medical Journal Lancet reported on a study by Dr Dean Ornish of the University of California. Dr Ornish found that a vegetarian diet reversed clogging of the arteries in patients with serious heart disease. In 1990, Dr Walter Willet, who conducted a study of diet and colon cancer, said, "If you step back and look at the data, the optimum amount of red meat you eat should be zero." Vegetarians have much lower cholesterol levels than people that eat meat. Heart disease is found much less in vegetarians. Studies have also shown that vegetarians have up to half the cancer rate than those of non-vegetarians. Cases of breast cancer are much lower in countries that have low meat diets. Vegetarians eat more antioxidants such as vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotenes and phytochemicals. Phyotochemicals are components in plants that help to prevent disease. Antioxidants decrease the chance of getting heart disease, cancer and other diseases. Meat eaters have much higher rates of cancer than vegetarians. Animal products are high in sodium, which causes the blood to retain water and also causes plaque to build up in the arteries, lowering the flow of blood, which are major causes of high blood pressure. According to William Castelli, MD, director of the Framingham Heart Study, vegetarians live three to six years longer than meat eaters. He said, "vegetarians have the best diet. They have the lowest rate of coronary disease of any group in the country and they have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40% of our cancer rate." |
Originally Posted by fiddlefern loving-my-babies- I am a christian, so I'll give you my opinion. I'm going to put on my orthodox, literalist hat to answer this question, though actually I see the Bible as a story of the unfolding relationship between God and God's people, rather than as an instruction book. But anyhow, I seem to remember Paul saying in one of his letters that while everything is permitted (he was talking about the law), not everything is good for us. Sorry to be vague about the verse- I'm nak. If I find it later, I'll pop back in. So anyway, I'm not sure that we have a mandate from God to eat meat- I think we're given the freedom to do so, but then we get to figure out for ourselves what is healthy. Kinda like the whole pork thing- we now have the ability to test for the diseases that pork carries, so we don't need them to be off-limits anymore, but the Israelites did need that restriction for their health. Oh- and I'd like to second raven's comment about us being omnivors, at least biologically. If we had evolved (or were designed, if you prefer) to be purely plant-eaters, we'd have all broad, flat, teeth- no tearing teeth- and a more extensive intestine to break down all those starches. Before I became pregnant, I ate very little meat- maybe a small portion once or twice a week- but that was for ethical/environmental reasons. Now I eat organic meat, but I agree with Raven that we in this country eat WAY too much of it in general. Meat-eating is a really emotional topic for a lot of people, I think, because there's so much more involved than just our own health. There's the health of the planet, and a lot of other issues, wrapped up in what we eat. |
