re: Switching to vegetarian diet

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Read the China study

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The premise is that all animal foods—ranging from Chicken McNuggets to a fillet of wild-caught salmon—are responsible for modern ailments like heart disease and cancer.

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As we’ll see in this article, the book’s most widely repeated claims, particularly involving Campbell’s cancer research and the results of the China-Cornell-Oxford Project, are victims of selection bias, cherry picking, and woefully misrepresented data

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If there’s anything positive to take away from the book’s four hundred seventeen pages, it’s the promotion of a whole-food diet—and the resulting elimination of vegetable oils, high fructose corn syrup, refined grains, and other industrial products that tend to displace real food on our modern menus. But for those seeking scientific literature of a higher caliber, The Psychology of the Simpsons is likely to be a more satisfying (and animal-product-friendly) read.

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The low dietary intake of protein and sulfur amino acids by a plant-eating population leads to subclinical protein malnutrition

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I know today doesn't have any meat on the menu at my hous

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The low dietary intake of protein and sulfur amino acids by a plant-eating population leads to subclinical protein malnutrition

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Daily recommendation is roughly 60g per day. Between beans and nuts alone you can get that. Plus the little that is in veggies. So that statement is actually false.

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Body weight, body mass index, blood, and urinary markers of protein status were significantly lower, with an estimated 10% decrease of lean body mass in the study group compared with urban controls.

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In general, human bodies don’t work very efficiently without a regular dietary supply of all essential amino acids: “It would be difficult to find a protein that did not have at least one residue of each of the common 20 amino acids. Half of these amino acids are essential, and if the diet is lacking or low in even one of these essential amino acids, then protein synthesis is not possible” [Emphasis mine; reference: Campbell & Farrell’s Biochemistry, 6th edition]. Protein synthesis allows us to grow, heal, reproduce, and function in general. One of the specific outcomes of protein deficiency in humans is stunting, i.e. where humans who would otherwise grow bigger, don’t.

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Dr. Furhman seems to think that those of us who “believe” that food from animals provides a more biologically complete source of protein than food from plants “never thought too much about how a rhinoceros, hippopotamus, gorilla, giraffe, or elephant became so big eating only vegetables.” Hmmm. I have to say, I’m thinking the same thing about Dr. Furhman. Maybe he is unaware that humans aren’t really all that much like rhinoceroses, hippos, gorillas, giraffes, or elephants. But then maybe he just hangs out with a different crowd than I do.

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Humans and other large mammals ARE different.

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While non-ruminants (like humans) must get their essential amino acids from their diet, ruminants (like giraffes) “may also acquire substantial amounts of these amino acids through the digestion of microbial protein synthesized in the rumen” (see: Amino Acids in Animal Nutrition, edited by J.P. Felix D’Mello). This may come as a bit of a shock to Dr. Furhman and his readership, but humans don’t actually have rumens and utilizing this particular approach to the acquisition of essential amino acids from plant matter ain’t gonna work for us.

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Other non-ruminant grazers—see elephants, rhinos, and hippos—have a different eating strategy. They “eat for volume and low extraction.” In other words, the relatively low availability of protein in the food is overcome by the high volume consumed. In that regard—assuming you aspire to an elephant-like, rhino-like, or hippo-like bod—it may be possible to get sufficient protein from a strictly plant-based diet. If you don’t mind eating all the time. And pooping. Less than half of what is consumed by the high-volume grazers is utilized by the body; the rest—like a handsome stranger—is just passin’ through (see: Nutritional Ecology of the Ruminant, by Peter J. van Soest).

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Even cavemen ate more than just meat.
Where is the benefit in excluding veggies by doing an all meat diet?

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Are you fricking stupid? This in no way says you can not get sufficient protein from a plant based diet. Just because much of the plant eating population does not get enough protein does not mean you can not.

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