I have been always told (and still are told) to eat my vegetables ever since I was a small child. Back then, I had been led to believe vegetables were filled with ultimate goodness and that if I didn't eat them I would surely die a terrible death and "The skin is the best part, the most nutritious, YOU MUST EAT THE SKIN", must've been said at every dinner. But are vegetables really that healthy?
Here's the science-
As is probably the most popular word in any health environment, the healthiest person is the one who has a balanced diet. This hypothesis is based on the fact that too much of any one thing may be harmful to you, as who knows what your body tolerates. We are all different and genes are a massive part of the way our bodies are made up. For example, imagine Jenny eats Food A for a lifetime. Alex eats Food A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M....etc. Now what happens if Food A is poisonous? Well Jenny surely dies as she has only eaten Food A. Alex, on the other hand, ate Food A AND all the other foods, so did not fill himself up proportionally with Food A as Jenny did. To sum it up, everyone's bodies can tolerate moderation but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I bet you didn't know you could get water poisoning...
My point is that vegetarians must take extra care to balance out their diet as they exclude a large part of the 'normal' diet when they decide to be vegetarians.
As well as this, the main problem with vegetarians is that they don't get enough protein into their diet. Within our diet, protein is most abundant in meat because it is the sole component of collagen fibres, located within muscles of animals. Therefore, the best vegetarians must obtain their dietary protein from other sources and I say best because, give or take, most vegetarians do not do it enough. If there is not enough protein within the diet i.e. 46g for women, 56g for men, muscle waste will occur whereby the protein starved body literally digests it's own muscle tissue. Kwashiorkor is an example of muscle wastage, a disease that occurs in African famine.
The best vegetarian avoids muscle wastage by eating plenty of beans such as kidney beans, almonds and soya. Soya, in particular, has always been very popular due to it's integration into replica meat, similarly to the brand Quorn. There are yet more problems with these though, however. The types of protein contained within these meat alternatives have, first of all and in the main, a lower amount of protein gram for gram than any meat. Therefore one would need to fill up one's stomach more than a meat eater to get the same amount of protein as them. Secondly, this problem is compounded as some proteins have a different biological value, which is to do with how well the body absorbs the nutrient. In the case of egg whites, the biological value is 100- the best value and the optimal selection of proteins for the body to absorb nitrogen. The biological value of the proteins found in the meat alternatives is far less than that of real meat, so one would have to eat even more meat alternative to make up for it.
Iron is an important for humans as it is found in the haemoglobin proteins that are the oxygen carriers in our erythrocytes (red blood cells) which are within the blood. It is therefore very important to eat high iron-containing foods such as red meat, poultry, lentils, beans, leaf vegetables, tofu, chickpeas, black-eyed peas, fortified bread, and fortified breakfast cereals[Wikipedia] in order to make more haemoglobin when the old erythrocytes are replaced. So what's this got to do with vegetarians if there are plenty of vegetarian iron sources? Well there are two types of iron: non-heme and heme and guess what? Yes that's right, heme is the superior in terms of it's absorption and is only found meat sources. This means vegetarians must consume more iron that those who eat meat and it is therefore not uncommon for vegetarians to develop iron defiency anaemia, where the lack of supplies of iron in the body are so low that haemoglobin cannot be formed. Meat eaters win again! P.S for the girls: During the menstrual cycle, many erythrocytes are lost in the period so it is very important for females to eat plenty of iron-containing foods.
Calories are the other big one affecting vegetarians. On average, fats contain 9 calories per gram and proteins and carbohydrates both contain 4 calories per gram. Fibre, the nutrient which makes up at least 80% of a vegetarian's diet, contains 2 calories per gram- that's 4 times less than fat and twice as less than carbs and protein. This means that vegetarians must add fats to their diet that are not present in everyday vegetables such as oliver oil or butter (and if they are vegan they are stupid). The knock-on effect of this is that vegetarians would then be increasing their risk of high cholesterol and then heart disease blah blah blah.
It's not looking great for the human rabbits of the world but in spite of all these negatives, there are in fact some very good things about being a vegetarian.
Vegetables contain little or no saturated fat and this makes vegetarians especially resistant to heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), type 2 diabetes (insulin resistance), kidney disease, osteoporosis, dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease and above all obesity. Answer me and answer me truthfully, have you ever seen an obese vegetarian?!
A true vegetable is a savoury part of the leaf, stem or root of a plant. We're talking carrots, broccoli, cabbage and cucumber- the main ones! They contain lots of:
Dietary fibre- for a healthy digestive system
Vitamins C and E- two vitamins that the body needs
These are all good things.
This may go some way to explain why vegetarians have a lower mortality rate than the most frequent meat eaters. But I believe there is something else behind the reason that vegetarians are seen to be healthy.
Those who choose to be vegetarian obviously have a degree of control over their lives (bar those buddhists who are emotionally blackmailed into it). They boast self-confidence and independence to be set apart from the norm and quite obviously have a strong self-concept of what they want and what they don't. Forgive me if I'm wrong but this is almost sounding like the ideal human. And that's it folks, a happy vegetarian is a long living one. Physical science isn't the be end and end all of why vegetarians are healthy, it's the emotional side you also have to consider. The type of people that are vegetarians are quite clearly not chavs (ever met a vegetarian chav?...)- they are successful people who for whatever reason, decide to only eat vegetables.
