meat-eating

Dr. Jens Kjeldsen-Kragh, M.D., of the Institute of Immunology and Rheumatology at the National Rheumatism Hospital of Oslo, conducted a study about the usefulness of vegetarian foods in arthritis. He found that switching to a vegetarian diet resulted in improved grip strength and much less pain, joint swelling, tenderness and morning stiffness in about 90 per cent of a group of arthritis patients, compared with controls eating an ordinary diet. The patients noticed improvement within a month, and it lasted throughout the entire year-long experiment. Dr. Kjeldsen-Kragh concluded that about 70 per cent of the patients improved because they avoided fats that are likely to instigate the inflammation process.

For specific causes of death, compared with regular meat eaters, low meat eaters had ~30_45% lower mortality from pancreatic cancer, respiratory disease, and all other causes of death, fish eaters had ~20% lower mortality from malignant cancer and ~20% higher circulatory disease mortality, and vegetarians and vegans had ~50% lower mortality from pancreatic cancer and cancers of the lymphatic/ hematopoietic tissue. These findings were essentially unchanged on further adjustment for BMI, and generally were robust across categories of sex, smoking, and BMI for the 6 most common causes of death.

For all malignant cancers, both fish eaters and vegetarians and vegans combined had significantly lower mortality than regular meat eaters [HR: 0.76 (95% CI: 0.63, 0.91) and HR: 0.82 (95% CI: 0.72, 0.94), respectively]. Vegetarians and vegans combined also had significantly lower mortality than did regular meat eaters for pancreatic cancer [HR: 0.47 (95% CI: 0.26, 0.86); P-heterogeneity = 0.065] and cancers of the lymphatic/hematopoietic tissue [HR: 0.43 (95% CI: 0.27, 0.70)], and low meat eaters had significantly lower respiratory disease mortality than regular meat eaters [HR: 0.69 (95% CI: 0.49, 0.97); P-heterogeneity = 0.14].

There is general agreement that red meat consumption increases the risk of colon or colorectal cancer. This was the only food association with cancer that was labeled ___onvincing__ in the recent report from the World Cancer Research Fund, American Institute for Cancer Research (42). The evidence, of course, largely came from studies of meat consumption in nonvegetarians, although data from Adventist vegetarians in California concur (43).

Although protein deficiency is widespread in poverty-stricken communities and in some nonindustrialized countries, most people in industrialized countries face the opposite problem__rotein excess. The RDA for a 70-kilogram (154-pound) person is 56 grams; however, the average American man consumes approximately 100 grams of protein daily, and the average woman about 70 grams. Many meat-loving Americans eat far more protein. Some research suggests that high protein intake contributes to risk for heart disease, cancer, and osteoporosis. However, because high protein intake often goes hand-in-hand with high intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol, the independent effects of high protein intake are difficult to determine.

If we gave up eating beef we would have roughly 20 to 30 times more land for food than we have now.