can vegetarianism be unhealthy?

There was a very interesting article in the Independent newspaper on Thursday (21/02/13) titled From vegetarian to confirmed carnivore where John Nicholson stated that when he was eating a low-fat wholefood vegan diet he felt ill. He became obese and had irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), diarrhea, fatigue and headaches. His partner, who shared his way of eating, had depression and mood swings.

They decided to ditch the wheat, rice and potatoes and eat lots of meat, butter, cream, lard and goose fat. He felt better straight away and lost lots of weight. His cholesterol levels went down. This seems on the face of it to contradict everything that I have been saying on this blog, about people eating less meat and more starchy foods and vegetables. However, I think I can understand what is happening here.

John seems to have gone from one extreme to another. From veganism to eating lots of meat and animal fat. When people make radical changes in the way that they eat, often excluding whole food groups, they often gain weight or lose weight without trying. They may be getting more calories or fewer without knowing.

The placebo effect might explain some of why John started to feel a lot better straight away. I don't want to dismiss what he says though. It is possible that John had an iron or zinc deficiency which was rectified as soon as he started eating meat, especially as his first meat was ox liver. It might even be that he wasn't getting enough protein, although it's not that difficult to get enought protein on a vegan diet. Another possibility is that he was suffering from an allergy to wheat.

If he had been eating soya products, that might have caused problems. Soya contains phytic acid which reduces our ability to absorb iron and zinc and trypsin inhibitors which reduce our ability to digest protein. This might not be a problem with traditional foods like miso, tofu or tempeh, but might be more of a problem with other ways of eating soya.

John seems to have moved to what is in effect the Atkins diet. In the Atkins diet people do not try to control calories but eat as much meat and animal fat as they like. The main thing they are trying to avoid is carbohydrate. It is a low-carbohydrate diet. When you digest carbohydrate, glucose enters the bloodstream. If you have too much glucose in your bloodstream your body needs to remove the excess or it will cause problems. Your pancreas secretes the hormone insulin which tells the body to remove some glucose.

In most people insulin and glucose levels rise and fall. Too much of this causes problems though. Obesity is only one problem that can happen when we have big rises and falls of insulin and glucose. Obesity can give rise to other problems. It is now recognised that this is one of the biggest causes of ill health.

People on the Atkins diet tend not to eat vast numbers of calories because the diet is less varied than a normal diet. They can easily get bored with it or even a bit nauseous contemplating the prospect of yet more meat and fat. It is often said that people crave fat, but a lot of the fat we eat is hidden. If you eat a slice of cake, you don't realise how much fat is in it because the flavour is masked by sugar or something acidic such as lemon. We eat so much fat not because we love it so much but because we don't know it is there.

I don't have a problem with the Atkins diet. It does seem to work at helping people to slim. I do wonder about the long-term effects of staying on the Atkins diet though. I'm not just worried about heart disease and strokes, reducing protein has been linked to increased longevity.

I wonder if it would work just as well if instead of meat they ate fish, and instead of eating butter and lard they ate avocados and olive oil. In Crete people traditionally got lots of their calories from olive oil and far from harming them it seems to have contributed to health and long life.

Also, there are some forms of carbohydrate that are better than others at not flooding your bloodstream with glucose. Starch is better than sugar, and the amylopectin form of starch is better than the amylose form. You can measure the effect that a food has on your blood glucose levels. A low glycemic index (GI) is better than a high glycemic index. Long-grain rice is better than short-grain rice. Brown rice is better than white rice. Pasta and porridge are good too. If you eat some low GI forms of starch it won't have too bad an effect on your blood glucose levels.

Vegetables can seem to have a high GI but really they are mostly OK. Baked potatoes are not good though. So I shall continue to eat my long-grain rice and pasta, together with my pulses and vegetables. I do eat meat, cheese, fish and eggs sometimes but not every day. What John Nicholson has said in no way invalidates what I have stated on this blog about the problems of trying to feed everyone on the planet with lots of meat. We can't feed 7, 8 or 9 billion people with a diet high in meat.

A good point that John makes is that not everbody is the same. People vary as to what sort of foods they thrive on. I think it is likely that some people digest starch more readily than others. If so, they are less likely to thrive on a high starch diet even if it is low GI.

In case people are thinking that they can just add butter and cream to their normal foods and get away with it, it doesn't work like that. If you want to eat lots of meat and fat and lose weight then you would have to go on an extremely low-carbohydrate diet, or you will just put on weight.

reducing meat consumption

In this week's New Scientist magazine (23/02/13 page 5) it tells us that the UN Environment Programme has revealed that 80% of the fertiliser use in farming globally is for meat production. Pastures are fertilised to boost grass production and for fodder crops. I guess that by 'fodder crops' they mean maize and soya, and also wheat and barley (I'm not sure if soya requires nitrogen fertiliser, as a legume perhaps it does not).

Half of the fertiliser put onto the land isn't used by the crops. It runs off the land into the rivers and seas and causes environmental damage. The solution, according to the authors is for fertiliser to be used better and for us all to eat less meat.

This figure of 80% is a surprise, and it fits in with what we already know about how much of the crops grown - mainly maize and soya - are fed to farm animals. It's also mentioned in the Guardian article about this UN report (18/02/13).

In the Guardian article it says that the authors of the report are not suggesting that we give up eating meat. They are suggesting we become demitarians - eating half as much meat as we are used to. I agree with this, but there are a couple of points I'm not so sure about.

The lead author, Professor Mark Sutton, says we should replace most of the meat on our plates with vegetables. Meat provides us with protein and calories, and although we could do with less of both of these, we're probably going to need something to make up for the shortfall if we replace meat with carrots, broccoli etc. Vegetables don't have much in the way of protein or calories, but pulses are a cheap form of protein (and have some calories) and grain in the form of rice and pasta are the cheapest form of calories (and have some protein).

One of the problems in asking people to eat less meat (or less junk food) is that they think they're going to be expected to live off celery and lettuce. They don't have to, they can have tasty rice and pasta dishes. Vegetables are thought of as too expensive for poorer people, which isn't true, but it's easy to see how rice and pasta are the cheapest foods, much cheaper than any form of meat.
Professor Sutton also says that people in poor countries should be 'allowed' to increase their consumption of animal protein. It is true that in some countries people don't get enough protein, although in other poorer countries people do get enough - it's just that they like the idea of eating more meat. I don't see why it has to be animal protein though. Since the UN changed it's official estimate of how much protein people need downwards in 1985 we've known that people don't need that much of it.

People who aren't getting enough protein are usually people who aren't getting enough food. If someone gets enought calories from rice they will be getting almost enough protein. It doesn't take much in the way of beans, peas or lentils to give someone both the quantity and quality of protein that they need. In Indonesia people were encouraged to eat less tempeh (a traditional food deriving from soya beans) and more chicken. I think that was wrong. Protein from tempeh or tofu, or beans or lentils, is just as good as animal protein. It's more efficient to convert soya beans into tempeh or tofu than into chicken and pork.

Professor Sutton says that chicken and pork are the meats that cause the least amount of environmental damage. "Chicken is one of the most efficient [meats] as it grows very quickly and you can collect the manure," he says. Chickens have one of the best conversion rates of grain and soya to meat. Better than pigs, so let's not encourage more pig keeping. I would expect eggs to be an even better way of getting cheap protein than chicken meat. Also, freshwater fish and things like crayfish are even better than chickens. Mammals and birds use up a lot of their calories in generating heat internally, so cold-blooded animals are even better converters of plant protein into animal protein.

So I agree with the principle of demitarianism, but there should be more emphasis on grains (like rice and pasta) and pulses. We shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that food falls into a spectrum with affordable junk food at one end of the spectrum and unaffordable fruit and vegetables at the other end of the spectrum. Also, I don't think we should encourage the poorer countries of the world to produce more animal protein.

food mislabeling

Food mislabeling is an issue that's been in the news a lot recently. This post isn't about horse meat though. It's about something less important but it does say a lot about the attitude of retailers. Yesterday I went to Borough Market in London. I wanted to see what it looks like now all the building work has been completed. I also wanted to buy a few things, like blood oranges.

Blood oranges come from southern Italy and Spain and are available at some markets now. They have a different colour and taste from the usual oranges. There are different cultivars, the Moro being the best flavoured. There are several places in Borough Market where blood oranges are sold. The first one I came to didn't label the blood oranges on display with the name of the cultivar. I picked up two and asked the assistant at the till if she knew what the variety is. She didn't know.

The next place I went to I could see that the name on the box was Moro. This was the tiny lettering that the grower puts on the box that the fruit are transported in. Again, there was nothing that the seller put on his label to say what cultivar it is.

The third place I went to was the biggest of the fruit and vegetable sellers. It is called Turnips. There were a number of boxes of blood oranges, and they had placed on top of them a laminated information sheet. This sheet was all about the Moro cultivar. So I assumed they were all Moro. Until I looked on the box and it said Tarocco. So what are they, Moro or Tarocco? I think what they do is to put the same information sheet on their blood oranges, irrespective of what cultivar they are.

Bear in mind that what they say about Borough Market and similar places is that if you're not sure then you can ask the vendor and they will tell you all about the produce that they are selling. All the people working there were busy, but if I had asked I would probably have got the same response as at the first place.

It's not important if someone like me can't get my Moro blood oranges. In fact, I can get them, elsewhere. What is important is that even at somewhere like Borough Market they can't even be bothered to get their labeling right. I can't work out if they are stupid or if they think we are stupid. Another thing I don't like is when I ask for something, they tell me it's out of season, even when I know it is available elsewhere.

I've been getting my Moro blood oranges at 4 for £1 from Berwick Street market in Soho. So they're not some kind of expensive item that ordinary people can't afford.

I've got 3 more examples of casual labeling, all from Sainsbury's. A couple of years ago I bought a cheap camellia plant. It was labeled as the variety Debbie, a variety that I am familiar with and I like the form of it's flowers. It's in flower now, for the first time, but it's definitely not Debbie. It was quite cheap to buy, and if they had said that it could be any variety, or if they said it was had pink flowers, I might still have bought it. But I don't like being told that it is one thing and then finding it is something else.

I was in the bakery section of Sainsbury's recently and there were 4 round loaves in a basket. They all looked exactly the same, they all had the same packaging, but 2 were labeled 'sourdough' and 2 were labeled with a fancy French name that I didn't recognise. I think that they were just all the same.

In some of the bigger Sainsbury's they have a café. I like their filter coffee. But if I ask for filter coffee, one of 3 things happens. They either pour some coffee out of a vacuum flask. This seems to taste the best. Or they have a machine with a tap. Or they use a similar method as when they're making latte or cappuccino. I think this is technically called an Americano. I don't mind so much but I would like to know what I'm getting.

blood oranges

horse meat, burgers, asthma, eczema and salt

Listening to the radio yesterday evening proved to be very infomative about the food that we eat. I turned on to Radio 4 at 9 pm and heard the news. It said that horse meat has been found in burgers, including Tesco burgers. This is up to a third of the meat in burgers being horse meat.

I think I heard someone mention 'cross contamination'. This is not cross contamination, this is systematic fraud. Horse meat is intended for pet food and is unfit for human consumption. Horse meat in itself is not a bad meat to eat, but you need to understand that meat that is intended for human consumption is handled according to certain standards, including hygiene standards, and meat that is intended for pet food is handled with much lower standards. Horse meat is not intended for human food, and will have been handled to much lower standards. And don't think it is just horse muscle tissue that is in burgers. It's going to be lots of stuff, including the genitals. Officials have said that human health is not in danger, but how do they know that?

It's not surprising so many people have become vegetarians. They must be glad they did.

The irony is that most people would not eat a cow's heart. And yet they eat cow's heart every day in their burgers. If I was in a restaurant in France and cow's heart was on the menu, I might have some. If horse meat was on the menu, I might have some. If I thought it was quality meat and not something that died riddled with disease and has spent a week in a skip outside an abbatoir because it was originally intended for pet food.

I don't eat cow's heart or horse meat because I don't eat burgers. Yet I wouldn't turn up my nose at cow's heart or horse meat. Most people would turn their nose up at them, yet they eat them every day in burgers.

After the news was the Inside Health programme. They talked about a few things, but most interesting to me was the research linking junk food to asthma and eczema, and experts talking about salt and all the uses that salt is put to in junk food. I was aware that excessive salt intake leads to heart attacks and strokes, and I was aware that most of the salt that people get is from junk food. I wasn't aware that salt is used to bind to polyphosphates in meat and fish products to create a jell that binds them. Without lots of salt they would just fall apart.

Bon Appétit!


My Lidl Pony

 I found this on a forum:-

Horse is a perfectly edible meat, but plays no part in the legitimate meat processing routes in the UK or Ireland - so where was this horse meat from and how can anyone be sure that it was slaughtered and stored in accordance with current regulations?

he or she makes a number of important points below:-

• where were the horses from?
• were the horses healthy or did they die of old age or disease?
• were they slaughtered in accordance with regulations?
• was the resultant meat stored at the correct temperatures in accordance with regulations?
• was it cheap knock-off past its use-by date horse meat from a country where horse meat is eaten?

If anything was not done properly with the last four points it could mean that there are public health concerns due to the risks associated with contaminated meat.

global food waste and factory farming

I read a letter in today's Daily Mail that expresses the most important points that I have been trying to make in this blog. Food waste is an issue prominent in the news recently, and Philip Lymbery of Compassion in World Farming wrote that feeding so much grain and soya to farm animals is another way that we waste food. I would have liked to place a link to this letter (Feed the world) in this post but couldn't find one, so I shall link to a post in his blog that has the same message.

I shall give a few of the facts stated in the letter

• a third of the world's cereal harvest is fed to farm animals
• 90% of the world's soya beans are destined for factory-farmed animals
• for every 6kg of plant protein such as cereals fed to livestock, we get back, on average, only 1kg of meat or other livestock products
• for every 100 food calories of edible crops fed to livestock, we get back just 30 calories in meat and milk
• factory farms are food factories in reverse, they waste food rather than make it

There were two letters in New Scientist recently that interested me. The first was a response to a review of a book 'One Billion Hungry: Can we feed the world?' by Gordon Conway. The review said that we need to double global food production by 2050 (Separating the wheat from the chaff by Fred Pearce New Scientist 13/10/12).

Alistair McCaskill wrote a letter (10/11/2012) saying that if today's population stands at 7 billion and is forecast to rise to 9 billion by 2050, why would it take a doubling of food production to feed this extra 2 billion? Fred Pearce answered, and said we have to allow for rising demand - especially for meat.

Clive Semmens replied to this (01/12/12) by saying that it would be much better to try to reduce consumption - especially of meat - in the more affluent. That would be good for the global environment and for health too. He went on to say that he's not advocating vegetarianism, merely moderation.

This is exactly my point of view. It seems to me that trying to double global food production is just not going to work. It doesn't matter how much genetic modification you have, it's simply not going to happen. Making meat more expensive by taxing it and refusing to allow the opening of more factory farms will help enormously. We tax ice cream and put VAT on it because it is a luxury. We should recognize that meat is just as much a luxury.

That is not going to harm poor people. Firstly, the really poor are the 1 in 8 of the global population who go hungry. Secondly, if meat is twice as expensive but people eat half the amount it isn't going to cost them, and it won't affect them aversely in nutritional terms - just the opposite. The same is true of cheese and butter. Meat, cheese and butter are not and can never be cheap calories or cheap protein.

Maize, soya, wheat and anchovies are the cheap calories and protein. That's why they're fed to animals, after all. The almost billion people who go hungry would be quite happy to have extra calories and extra protein from whatever source. They have the knowledge of how to make these things taste wonderful, whether it's traditional Mexican cuisine or the traditional East Asian cusines. The more affluent of the world might desire burgers and other processed foods, but they should be encouraged to move away from the flavours of fat, sugar and salt. I know what I would rather eat, especially now that we know what goes into beefburgers, and I'm not just talking about horse meat.

Life on benefits: starving?

I've just been reading this article in today's Independent. Charlie Cooper tries getting by on £175 a week. He says poverty made him eat lots of pizza. It's a pity that poverty didn't make him go to supermarkets with a notepad and pencil and make him write down the price per kilo of different foods. If he had done so then he might have come to realize that healthy rice and pasta are much cheaper than unhealthy pizza.

Charlie said that some of the time he went hungry. Many people do go without food. So what is the cheapest possible diet that is reasonably healthy? My calculations are that if you eat two thirds of a kilo of long grain rice and one third of a kilo of frozen mixed vegetables, then you will get all the calories that you need in a day, all of the protein, and also your 5 a day.

That would not be an ideal diet, and it certainly would be boring, but you could live off that indefinitely, and it costs 52p per day. I'm not suggesting that poor people should eat just this, but it's better than not eating anything.

One kilo of long grain rice costs 40p (from Lidl and others) and has 3,550 calories (kcals) and 70g of protein. Two thirds of a kilo costs 27p and has 2,367 calories and 47g of protein.

One kilo of frozen mixed vegetables costs 75p (from Sainsbury's) and has 310 calories and 23g of protein. One third of a kilo costs 25p and provides 103 calories and 8g of protein.

Two thirds of a kilo of rice and one third of a kilo of veg together costs 52p, provide 2,470 calories and 55g of protein. Men need 2,500 calories per day and women need 2,000. People need 55g of protein a day. This may astonish some people who think that to get enough protein you need to eat meat, fish, cheese or eggs. Rice and veg are low in protein but people really do not need as much as they think. People in Britain, including poor people, usually eat 85g a day.

Sainsbury's basics frozen mixed vegetables have peas, broccoli, cauliflower and carrot. Peas contain protein, and this protein balances the protein from the rice in terms of amino acids. So, you can be pretty sure that you're getting both the quantity and quality of protein that you need. As far as your '5 a day', you will be getting most of your vitamins and minerals. You don't need to have both vegetables and fruit, vegetables by themselves are good enough.

I think most people can afford 52p a day. What seems to be happening is that people spend their money on expensive rubbishy foods then run out of money and go hungry. If they ate more cheap healthier food then they wouldn't run out of money.

The cheapest pizza I could find is Tesco Everyday Value cheese and tomato pizza. It costs 60p, has 647 calories and 26g of protein. So it is more expensive and has fewer calories.

If someone had slightly more money, then I would suggest porridge for breakfast, a pasta dish for lunch, and a rice dish in the evening. Porridge and pasta aren't much more expensive than rice. Pasta and rice dishes are healthy, but the more cheese, butter and cream that you add the more expensive it is and the less healthy.

If you have more money then you can start adding fruit, some olive or rapeseed oil, and some animal protein. This may sound like a hypothetical exercise, to try and find the least amount of money that it costs to have a reasonably healthy diet. But it is not hypothetical at all. People are going hungry. And they can do something about it with a small amount of effort and information.

smugness about science

A few days ago there were articles in a couple of newspapers about celebrities and their pseudo scientific ideas. There is a campaign group called Sense About Science. They did something on their site about celebrities and fads and some of the newspapers did articles on it, including this one in The Independent.

I don't think they've checked their facts though. It's as if they've already made up their minds that things like vitamin pills and fasting must be pseudoscience and they aren't interested in recent research. Don't get me wrong. I believe in science. I just can't accept the lazy smug attitude of some people who claim to have a monopoly of rationality.

After slagging off a lot of celebrities about their health tips, the campaign group commends Jennifer Anniston and Al Murray for what they think are their more rational ideas. Jennifer Anniston is praised for saying that fasting is 'bad for the body'. Al Murray is praised for saying that 'popping vitamin pills is a waste of time and money, apart from perhaps cod liver oil'. Ursula Arens and Lucy Jones, both from the British Dietetic Association, are quoted in support of each of them.

Is Sense About Science not aware of the research publicised by Dr Michael Mosley about fasting? As this news article shows 'Scientists are uncovering evidence that short periods of fasting, if properly controlled, could achieve a number of health benefits, as well as potentially helping the overweight, as Michael Mosley discovered'. I have posted on Dr Mosley and intermittent fasting a while ago.

When it comes to vitamins, there is more and more evidence that vitamin D is very important in a number of different ways, and that it is difficult to get enough through a balanced diet or though exposure of skin to sunshine (some vitamin D can be synthesised though sunlight). In this news article it says 'Writing in Scrubbing Up, Prof Blair said: "Vitamin D can be found in some foods such as oily fish, eggs and mushrooms - but only 10% of a person's recommended daily amount is found naturally in food. Put bluntly, eating more fish and getting out in the sun a bit more won't make much of a difference to your vitamin D levels". I have posted on vitamin D a while ago.

There is vitamin D in cod liver oil, although that's not what it's mainly used for. Most cod liver oil has added vitamin D and it often has added vitamins A and E too. I prefer to buy fish oil and then buy my vitamin D separately. If anyone has the right to be smug, it would be someone like me who has been taking extra vitamin D for years. That seems perfectly rational to me. As each new piece of research comes along showing the value of vitamin D, I am pleased that I have been taking supplements for years. I'm glad I didn't listen to these people.

If it is unscientific to believe that vitamin pills are anything but 'a waste of time and money', why is it that so many foods are fortified with vitamins? Why aren't scientists complaining about that? Not only don't they complain about it, they think it is a clever thing to do.

Another thing I didn't like is this paragraph 'Gary Kemp, former singer with Spandau Ballet, came to the aid of medical science by declaring that acupuncture as performed by his chiropractor didn't do much for him and that "hardcore science" should be everyone's first port of call when dealing with a serious illness'. I don't know much about acupuncture. I'm not interested in alternative or complementary medicine and it's outside the scope of this blog. But my understanding of acupuncture is that it is a valuable method of pain relief. 'Hardcore science' has shown that this is true. I don't want anyone in pain to dismiss something that could help them because of the cynics.

Tracey Brown, managing director of Sense About Science said "we have had more examples than ever sent to us of people in the public eye who clearly do check their facts". Well, Tracey, perhaps it is you who should check your facts.