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Vegetarianism / The Myths of Vegetarianism
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Surprising as it may seem, some prior studies have shown the annual all-causedeath rate of vegetarian men to be slightly more than that of non-vegetarian men (0.93% vs 0.89%). Similarly, the annual all-cause death rate of vegetarian women was shown to be significantly higher than that of non-vegetarian women (0.86% vs 0.54%). (40)
Russell Smith, PhD, referred to in myth # 5, in his authoritative study on heart disease, showed that as animal product consumption increased among some study groups, death rates decreased! Such results were not obtained among vegetarian subjects. For example, in a study published by Burr and Sweetnam in 1982, analysis of mortality data revealed that, although vegetarians had a slightly (.11%) lower rate of heart disease than non-vegetarians, the all-cause death rate was much HIGHER for vegetarians (41).
It is usually claimed that the lives of predominantly meat-eating peoples are short-lived, but the Aborigines of Australia, who traditionally eat a diet rich in animal products, are known for their longevity (at least before colonisation by Europeans). Within Aboriginal society, there is a special caste of the elderly (42). Obviously, if no old people existed, no such group would have existed. In his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Price has numerous photographs of elderly native peoples from around the world (42). Explorers such as Vilhjalmur Stefansson reported great longevity among the Inuit (again, before colonisation). (43)
Similarly, the Russians of the Caucasus mountains live to great ages on a diet of fatty pork and whole milk products. The Hunzas, also known for their robust health and longevity, eat substantial portions of goat's milk which has a higher saturated fat content than cow's milk (44). In contrast, the largely vegetarian inhabitants of southern India have the shortest life-spans in the world (45).
Dr Weston Price, DDS, traveled around the world in the 1920s and 1930s, investigating native diets. Without exception, he found a strong correlation among diets rich in animal fats, with robust health and athletic ability. Special foods for Swiss athletes, for example, included bowls of fresh, raw cream! In Africa, Dr Price discovered that groups whose diets were rich in fatty fish and organ meats, like liver, consistently carried off the prizes in athletic contests, and that meat-eating tribes always dominated peoples whose diets were largely vegetarian (42).
It is popular in sports nutrition to recommend "carb loading" for athletes, to increase their endurance levels. But recent studies done in New York and South Africa show that the opposite is true: athletes who "carb loaded" had significantly less endurance than those who "fat loaded" before athletic events (46).
Our Neolithic ancestors were hunter-gatherers, and two schools of thought have developed as to what their diet was like. One group argues for a high-fat and animal-based diet supplemented with seasonal fruits, berries, nuts, root vegetables and wild grasses. The other argues that primitive peoples consumed small amounts of lean meats and large amounts of plant foods.
Once again, such notions of a "low-fat diet" are hard to reconcile with what we know of modern-day hunter-gatherer societies. Present-day African tribes readily consume the fatty portions of animals, especially organs such as the brain, liver and tongue. The Aborigines, another hunter-gatherer society, also have a diet rich in saturated animal fats (47).
Explorers such as Stefansson reported that the Innuit and North American Indian tribes would worry when their caches of caribou were too lean: they knew sickness would follow if they did not consume enough fat (48).
Canadian Indians would deliberately hunt older male caribou and elk, for these animals carried a 50-pound slab of back fat on them which the Indians would eat with relish. Native Americans would also refrain from hunting bison in the springtime (when the animals' fat stores were low, due to scarce food supply during the winter), preferring to hunt, kill and consume them in the fall when they were fattened up.
More interesting is the way political prisoners are sometimes tortured in South and Central America: they're fed a diet of lean meat and they die quickly. Why? Without the fat-soluble vitamins contained in animal lipids, the body is unable to utilise and synthesise the proteins and other nutrients present in the meat (49).
On his journeys, Dr Price never once found a totally vegetarian culture. Anthropological data support this: throughout the globe, all societies show a preference for animal foods and fats and people only turn to vegetarianism when they have to (50). Nutritional anthropologist H. Leon Abrams, Jr, has shown that prehistoric man's quest for more animal foods spurred his expansion over the Earth, and that he apparently hunted certain species to extinction (50).
Price also found that those peoples who, out of necessity, consumed more grains and legumes, had higher rates of dental decay than those who consumed more animal products (51). Archaeological evidence supports this finding: skulls of prehistoric peoples who were largely vegetarian have teeth containing caries and abscesses and show evidence of tuberculosis (50, 51).
Based on all of this evidence, it is certain that the diets of our ancestors, the progenitors of humanity, ate a very NON-vegetarian diet that was rich in saturated animal fat.
Statistics do not bear out such fancies. Butter consumption has plummeted from 18 lb (8.165 kg) per person a year in 1900, to less than 5 lb (2.27 kg) per person a year today (52). Additionally, Westerners, urged on by government health agencies, have reduced their intake of eggs, cream, lard, beef and pork. Chicken consumption has risen in the past few decades, but chicken is low in saturated fat (chicken skin contains primarily polyunsaturated fat).
Furthermore, a survey of cookbooks published in the last century shows that people of earlier times ate plenty of animal foods and saturated fats. For example, in the <i>Baptist Ladies Cook Book </i>(Monmouth, Illinois, 1895), virtually every recipe calls for butter, cream or lard. Recipes for creamed vegetables are numerous as well. A scan of the <i>Searchlight Recipe Book</i> (Capper Publications, 1931) also has similar recipes: creamed liver, creamed cucumbers, hearts braised in buttermilk, etc. British Jews, as shown by the <i>Jewish Housewives Cookbook</i> (London, 1846), also had diets rich in cream, butter, eggs, and lamb and beef tallows. One recipe for German waffles, for example, calls for an entire pound of butter! A recipe for Oyster Pie from the Baptist cookbook calls for a quart of cream and a dozen eggs, and so forth and so on.
It does not appear, then, that meat or saturated fat consumption has risen in this century. What has gone up, however, is consumption of margarine and other trans-fatty acids, lifeless, packaged "foods," processed vegetable oils, pasteurised/homogenised milk, commercially raised livestock and plant foods, and refined sugar. These, along with exposure to a growing number of environmental poisons, are our real culprits in the modern epidemics of cancer and coronary heart disease (and other chronic illnesses) [53].
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