Why are more and more people becoming vegetarian?

Perhaps the more relevant question is...    

Why do we eat animals?

More and more people are realising that the only reason that they eat animals is because their parents did. Challenging thought eh? Especially in the 21st Century when we now know that we can lead happy, healthy, fulfilling lives without eating and causing harm to animals—and—that a meat-free diet is also healthier for the planet.

Meat industry campaigns

Faced with growing community awareness of cruel animal practices, and reports such as Livestock's Long Shadow (published by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations in 2006),highlighting the damage caused by animal production  it is no wonder meat industry bodies such as Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) are spending millions of dollars trying to convince Australians to continue to eat animals.  The industry is also faced with increasing and effective competition from a wide and growing range of vegetarian alternative foods in supermarkets, restaurants and cafes.

Advertising campaigns such as the one featuring Sam Neill, suggesting that if we don't eat meat we won't be smart and Sam Kekovich’s ‘it's un-Australian not to eat lamb chops' are the work of highly paid and creative advertising firms. 

And how many Australians are aware that Meat & Livestock Australia funded the research behind the CSIRO Total Well-Being Diet that advocates, perhaps unsurprisingly, eating large quantities of meat? So is this a diet that will ensure total health? An examination of the Total Well-Being Diet raises some rather significant questions about what they failed to tell you…

As for actor Sam Neill... Were they still around today, some of humanities finest and most brilliant minds (who just happened to be vegetarians!)  Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Sir Isaac Newton, Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Confucious, Leonardo da Vinci, Leo Tolstoy, Benjamin Franklin, George Bernard Shaw , Gandhi, Lord Byron, Henry Thoreau, Charlotte Bronte, Alice Walker plus a couple of Nobel Prize winners… Dr Albert Schweitzer and Isaac Singer and millions of other lesser known, but highly intelligent people who have chosen a meat free diet, might like to test their IQ against Sam’s!

Read their views on the subject of vegetarianism!

CSIRO "Well-Being" Diet: What they didn’t tell you

The diet is based on a study of 100 women who were divided into two groups, one of which consumed a 'high protein' diet, the other of which consumed a 'high carbohydrate' diet. (Noakes et al, 2005)  The study was carried out over a period of 12 weeks.  During that time, both groups lost the same amount of weight (about 7kg from an average starting weight of about 86kg).  At this point, you might want to ask why the diet should be any better than any other diet.  We don't know!

The use of the words total well-being in the title of the diet clearly promotes the idea that this is a diet which will result in optimum health.   Therefore, one would have thought that a government research body would have considered the relevance of independent research suggesting that consumption of large amounts of meat may be a risk factor for colorectal cancer before considering this an appropriate promotional title for this diet.

A study co-authored by Sir Richard Doll (the man who was responsible for showing the link between smoking and lung cancer) estimated that dietary factors account for about 30% of cancers in developed countries (Doll & Peto, 1996).  In 2003 the World Health Organisation produced a report called Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases.  It pointed out that another study (by Armstrong and Doll) showed a strong correlation between the incidence of cancer of the large bowel (colorectal cancer) and meat consumption, and an analysis of the scientific literature in 2002 also indicated that consumption of processed meat increased the risk of colorectal cancer. 

The UK's top cancer research body, Cancer Research UK, says  “many studies have shown that eating high levels of red or processed meat increases your risk of bowel cancer”.  This statement is made on the basis of several analyses of all the relevant scientific literature on meat consumption and colorectal cancer (World Health Organisation, 2003; Sandhu et al, 2001; Larsson & Wolk, 2006), as well as a  European study of the incidence of colorectal cancer in 478,040  people (the “EPIC” study: Norat et al, 2005).  These analyses clearly show there is a particularly increased risk of colorectal cancer in those who eat processed meat, which includes ham, bacon, salami and sausages. 

In 2006 the American Cancer Society said that consumption of red and processed meats were associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer and that risks were higher with processed meat consumption (Kushi et al, 2006). 

The 'high protein' diet in the study on which the Total Wellbeing Diet is based involved eating 200g 'lean beef or lamb' at least 6 times per week, plus an extra 100g of 'lunch meat', chicken or fish daily.  So the message from the study was that eating this amount of meat produced 'nutritional and metabolic benefits'.

It looks as if the MLA-funded research from the CSIRO is way out of step with the views of internationally respected bodies such as the World Health Organisation, Cancer Research UK and the American Cancer Society.

For this reason, it is worth taking a closer look at the European study of the incidence of colorectal cancer (EPIC) which is the biggest study ever of the link between diet and health.  The colorectal cancer observations were just one part of this ongoing study.

The  EPIC study  (Norat et al, 2005) is a prospective study, which means that  people recruited into the study are followed for several years.  During this time their dietary practices are followed, as is the incidence of colorectal cancer. 

Of the 478,040 subjects, 1,329 developed colorectal cancer over the 4.8 year study period.  The main findings of this powerful study were:

• consumption of processed and red meat (greater than or equal to 160g per day) was associated with an increased risk (1.35) of colorectal cancer;
• consumption of processed meat (more than 80g per day) was associated with an increase in colorectal cancer risk (1.42).

The findings of this study are directly relevant to the Total Wellbeing Diet and raise considerable concerns.  The level of meat consumption that the EPIC study was associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer is less than the 300g per day suggested intake in the Total Wellbeing Diet. 

This raises the obvious question of whether this much higher level of meat intake for several years would be associated with an even higher risk of colon cancer.  Colorectal cancer is increasing in incidence in Australia.  There were 12,844 new cases of colorectal cancer diagnosed in 2001 and the risk rates in Australia are the highest in the world.

The journal Nature is one of the world's top 2 scientific journals (the other being the US journal Science).  In an editorial on 22 December 2005 headed A recipe for trouble it commented on the Total Wellbeing Diet in less than glowing terms.  It said that some nutritionists questioned the wisdom of pushing a diet which relied heavily on meat consumption, given the health risks associated with high meat consumption.  It pointed out that the diet, even though it was promoted as beneficial to everyone, in fact had only been shown to be beneficial to a certain subpopulation of overweight women.  And finally, Nature states the obvious, which is that the book was funded by the meat industry, whose products feature predominantly in the diet, which of course creates the impression of a conflict of interest.

So what else did a diet book professing to present a recipe for total well-being and good health fail to tell you?  - that vegetarians have significantly reduced rates of obesity, coronary heart disease, hypertension, type II diabetes and diverticular disease.

Should the CSIRO’s Total Well-being Diet be taken with a large pinch of salt?

You decide.

Quotes from historic Vegetarians

“Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole
world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind.”

"If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.”

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”

—Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
physicist, Nobel Prize Winner,
Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Century’

 

"The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion."

—Socrates (470- 399 BCE)
Greek Philosopher and Teacher

 

"The earth affords a lavish supply of riches, of innocent foods, and
offers you banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter; only beasts
satisfy their hunger with flesh, and not even all of those, because
horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass.”

“ As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. Primoque a caede ferarum incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum (The blood of animals was the first to stain our weapons).”

—Pythagoras (ca. 580 - 520 BCE)
Pre-Socratic Greek Mathematician and Philosopher

 

“I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”

—Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)
Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Musician, Engineer, and Scientist

 

“Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends.”

“Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.”

—George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
Irish Author, Essayist and Nobel Laureate for Literature 1925

 

“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”

—Thomas Edison (1847 -1931)
American inventor

 

“I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we
should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our
bodily wants.”

“To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.”

—Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)
Indian Statesman and Philosopher

 

“Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an
act which is contrary to moral feeling: killing. By killing, man
suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity,
that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself and by
violating his own feelings becomes cruel.”

“As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.”

“Thou shalt not kill' does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings. This commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.”

—Count Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910)
Russian Novelist, Poet, Ethicist

 

“My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chided for my singularity, but, with this lighter repast, I made the greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension.”

“Flesh eating is unprovoked murder.”

—Benjamin Franklin

 

“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
American inventor

 

“The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies.”

“The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret... It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain tis full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.” Nobel Peace Prize Address

—Dr Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965)
Physician, Missionary, Theologian,
Nobel Laureate for Peace 1952

 

“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.”

—Alice Walker (1944 - )
American Author,
Multi Award winner including the Pulitzer Prize 198

 

“I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other....”

—Henry Thoreau: (1817-1862)
American author and naturalist

 

“There will never be any peace in the world as long as we eat animals.”

“I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.”

—Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904 - 1991)
Author, Nobel Laureate for Literature 1978

---

References

Doll, R & Peto , R (1996) pp 197-221 in Oxford Textbook of Medicine, eds Weatherall, DJ et al.
Kushi, LH et al (2006) CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 56, 254.
Larsson, SC & Wolk, A (2006) International Journal of Cancer 119, 2657.
Noakes, M et al (2005) American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 81, 1298.
Norat, T et al (2005) Journal of the National Cancer Institute 97, 906.
Sandhu, MS et al (2001) Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention 10, 439.
World Health Organisation (2003) Diet, nutrition and the prevention of chronic diseases.