10 Things Vegetarians Get Wrong Meatless Myths That Need to Die

Alpha&Omega

Since I told my lifting buddies that I had switched to a vegetarian diet for the last while, they seem determined to convince me that meat/poultry/fish is the healthiest and safest way to go. One of the articles that was presented to me is the following: www[dot]t-nation[dot]com/diet-fat-loss/10-things-vegetarians-get-wrong

I'm curious whether folks have come across any of the cited studies in this article, or have any responses (backed up by academic literature if possible)? I would also be very curious whether there are ways to eat meat-free that will fulfill the requirements of a high protein diet while training, and won't leave me open to common deficiencies like Omega-3's (EPA & DHA), or vitamin b12 (since it seems all plant forms are analogues and prevent actual b12 being absorbed).

blatantrereg

EPA is abundant in plant food. However DHA is not. Supplementing with algae oil is a way of getting it from a plant source.

Vitamin B12 is in milk and eggs if you eat them. Otherwise you can supplement or consume fortified foods.

Carnosine is pretty much absent from a vegetarian diet. Supplementing with beta alanine can compensate for this, which is a precursor to it. It is an antioxidant which reduces glycation inside the body. The lower amount of existing glycation endproducts in vegetarian foods means this balances out generally, but you can get the best of both worlds by supplementing.

From the point of view of weight training it's worth considering that a vegetarian diet is low in creatine. You won't be deficient in it, but you would be likely to experience more benefits from supplementing it than you would if you already had higher amounts in your diet.

Oily fish is a very healthy food and outside of risks of exposure to pollutants you're very unlikely to attain health benefits from cutting it out. White meat and fish apart from shellfish are also unlikely to cause health problems, apart from pollutants in fish. Eating too much red meat could impact health negatively in particular by contributing to the formationof arterial plaques. Shellfish is at higher risk of contaminants and is generally high in salt.

In terms of environmental impact red meat has the biggest impact by a huge margin - a factor of about 20 over vegetarian foods. White meat, fish, milk and eggs are all roughly equivalent and have a higher impact than vegan foods but by a much lower margin. This is based on taking imports into account for someone living in this region of the globe. Often the notion of shipping is presented as an argument against vegetarianism in this regard but it is not true.

It is easy to eat a high protein vegatarian diet if you have access to foods such as tempeh, Quorn, seitan etc. Consuming more than about 2g/kg of body weight can have several negative effects on health. Note that phytates are accompanied by phytase which neutralise them to an extent. Informed food preparation can gretaly reduce them also. Soy is correctly referred to as being particularly high in phytates. However the content of tempeh can be reduced to almost zero. To achieve this it should be left at 5 degrees for a few days, and then fried. [I would expect frozen tempeh to spoil if this is attempted with it, but it is also sold in jars and vaccum packed/refrigerated.]

In terms of ethical treatment of animals obviously vegetarianism is preferable and arguments disputing this tend to be the most silly. There is a wide spectrum in this regard in meat production though. As a rule of the thumb in Ireland, consider pig meat to be the worst offender in terms of the level of suffering that was involved in its production. Pigs are almost universally factory farmed.

I'm not going to dig up academic sources but conference/journal papers are where I acquired almost all of this information. An exception is the information about environmental impact of various foods which was from The Guardian as I recall.

Tar.Aldarion

Crops aren't more ethical than raising cows. They destroy land, use more resources than you'd imagine, and kill more animals than you know.

Plant proteins aren't effective proteins. They cause more nutritional deficiencies than avoiding them altogether.

These are wrong, looking up the data on how many animals are killed by crop harvesting shows that the numbers presented in general are dubious at best and while animals die for crop harvesting...what do people think these hundreds of billions of animals are eating, is it all grass? They eat crops, drink ridiculous amounts of water, take up a lot of resources and it harms the planet.

The protein thing is complete nonsense.



B12 is fortified in foods like soy milk, cereals, nutritional yeast etc, and can also be taken as a tablet. I actually was getting too much B12 and had to stop supplementing.
I take a vitamin D and omega 3 supplements from here:
http://www.vegetology.com/

Voucher code: SEPT15
For an extra 10% off anything you order if anybody reading was interested.

BMJD

I'm so vegan I refuse to let myths die

seamus

The entire article is based on a myth in itself: That all people are vegetarian for the same reasons.

Many vegetarians refer to it as the "China Study." Might as well call it The Vegetarian Manifesto, because those avoiding meat can't stop quoting it.

I have never heard of it, and I've never once "quoted" anything about vegetarianism to anyone else.

The article reads like it was written by someone who has some issue with vegetarianism, but has never actually encountered one in real life and instead is countering arguments made by some fictional stereotype he's invented.

Level 5 Vegan

Aahh like there's a billion things wrong with the article it's a head wreck of a read and there's a billion pro-vegetarian articles that are also full of the same sort of biased nonsense.

If you google why going veg is good or why going veg is bad you'll find countless blog posts like this OP on either side of the argument and most of the time they're garbage.

Zombienosh

I lift and I'm vegan, and when you mention those two things together you always get raised eyebrows and some bull**** questions thrown at you.

It's really easy to get everything you need from your diet especially if you don't lift or bodybuild. If you do you can easily supplement some essentials, just as meat eaters also do.

Things that any one should supplement and things I do are,

Vitamin D, algae oils, creatine.

If you want you can throw a decent multi vitamin in there, or I also use magnesium sometimes. Other than that for ease you can use a protein powder, there are tonnes of different vegan ones out there, or if you're just veggie you can use whey.

Any questions let me know.

Teflon Ron

Zombienosh wrote: »

I lift and I'm vegan

Interesting. What's a typical days meal plan like?

I'd be interested in consuming a lot less meat.

Tar.Aldarion

You might be interested in here too!
https://www.reddit.com/r/veganfitness

Teflon Ron

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

You might be interested in here too!

Thanks! I'll take a look.