Do we need to eat meat to be healthy?

I hear about how humans are naturally omnivores, but does this mean merely that we can survive on meat if we have to or that we actually need it for health?

I have been a vegetarian since I was old enough to talk (yes, literally. I threw a tantrum if asked to eat fish...). I am over average height for a female, and no health problems other than a mild head rush from standing.

So, do we actually need to eat other animals to stay healthy? I'm sure I am not the only one who doesn't.

 

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I only know one vegan, and he seems healthy. He could outrun me that's for sure. He did a tour of duty in Iraq...

 

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No, if you get what you are lacking from meat in other foods. But if you cut it out completely and didn't replace it with anything then you would most likely be undernourished.

Edit:
I know don't like to hear it though (especially for young children)and they start shoving vitamins down your throat. So maybe there is more to it than that. :shrug:

 

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It's possible to maintain robust health eating no meat of any kind. But it's difficult and pretty high-tech.

Especially, this is true for young women who may become or are pregnant, lactating, etc; even more critically, if they are not wealthy and well educated.

For older Western men such as myself, well educated with reasonable incomes and access to distant sources of food, not injured or sick or menstruating or with any other such nutritional demands, and physiologically ever more vulnerable to the excess iron etc of meat, vegetarian diets are more likely to be a good idea.

 

Unless you are on an intravenous supplement, the answer should be clear.

 

Not so sure whats so high tech about being vegetarian ( even the challenges posed by vegan lifestyles are not so difficult if one can be a vegan solider in iraq)
:shrug:

 

Pfffft. What a load of shite! Difficult? High tech?

And tell me, sir, what technologies were all those vegetarian folk scattered about Asia and elsewhere a couple thousand years ago availing themselves to?

Education, sure. Perhaps the 70 odd percent of overweight and obese Americans--who are likely eating a hell of a lot of meat--could use a bit of education too, eh?

And affluence? Seriously, please do expound upon this as you seem to know a great deal.

 

The people of the High Arctic, most of the year, before the modern era.

What you don't know of is any culture with a plant-only diet.

There have never been any known strictly vegetarian peoples.

Especially during reproduction (pregnancy, lactation, etc) some kind of animal protein source fills critical nutritional needs much more easily than anything else.

And meat on average needs much less in the way of processing, toxicity avoidance, etc. Plant foods almost all involve a fair bit of knowledge and handling skill.

Consider what is actually involved in supplying a nutritionally balanced vegetarian diet to a resident of, say, Chicago, year 'round. Count the continents involved.

 

I don't think that people who handle vegetables and grains needs to be liscenced but I believe butchers do need to be.

as things stand now we all get our foods from all over the world. But there is no reason a vegetarian needs to more. Grains, beans, veggies and fruits can all come, for example, from within the USA. If they eat dairy, well ditto. Further a higher % of vegetarians try to eat local, buy from local growers, etc. Unless the meat eater is living like the Inuit (used to) the meat eater depends at least as much on high tech, since they eat veggies and fruits and grains - if only white wheat flower on their burgers - also.

And since most meat production requires enormous agricultural technology to produce the feed for the meat animals, you have a much less efficient and added set of step, technologically, in most meat eating.

If you are bringing down your own deer and other in season meat or shooting squirrels, you might be an exception.

 

what would happen to people whose main source of nutrition is meat?

 

For starters, only animal products such as meats, poultry, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, and yogurt contain complete proteins. Complete proteins are proteins which consist of all nine essential amino acids in proportioned amounts. Essential amino acids are amino acids which your body cannot naturally synthesize, but must instead rely on diet for.

Secondly, Vitamin B12 is only found in animal products. Vitamin B12 deficiency can occur in diets independent of animal products, resulting in an insufficient production of hemoglobin (Vitamin B12 is necessary for the synthesis of hemoglobin to occur). Essentially, hemoglobin is an iron-containing protein component of red blood cells. Hemoglobin enters the lungs via the bloodstream and attracts available oxygen to distribute to cells throughout the body. This is why people suffering from Vitamin B12 deficiency often feel weak, tired, and lightheaded, have pale skin, sore, red tongues with bleeding gums, and over time can suffer damage to the nerve cells.

Most sources of nutrition can be found in plant products, but not with the ease and convenience in which they are found in animal products. In addition, there are various dietary alternatives and nutrition supplements necessary for sustaining a vegetarian or vegan diet which many population groups across the world do not have access to. For example, try telling a Congolese villager to eat soybeans and bacteria instead of meat for proteins and Vitamin B12, and watch his reaction.

 

All food processors need to be licensed, inspected for safety and cleanliness, etc. You may be more familiar with butchers, who are often local and handling local stuff, than canners and other processors, who usually aren't - the technology investment is usually very large, for a plant food processor.

That's not the point.

Yes there is. It is not at all easy, or cheap, to get a balanced vegetarian diet from local stuff in most non-tropical areas - include a little meat, and it's much easier.

Animal feed in general is much less processed, preserved, etc, than human plant food.

Many animals eat grass and hay directly, all year long, from a stack in the barn - not even the harvested seeds, some of them.

They don't have to put so much effort into balancing their diet, though. They can eat whatever veggie stuff is handy and cheap from near by, and not ship in sources of - say - iron, calcium, the right vitamins.

I'm not saying it's impossible to eat a good veggie diet in the north country - just that it's more technology dependent (two hundred years ago it would have been impossible), and not nearly as easy to arrange as a good diet with a little meat thrown in.

 

Oh, thank you sir, for redefining vegetarian for us. You are indeed a slippery sucker. Try vegan.

Aye. Them pastoral nomads and such-like be a "high tech" bunch--again, thanks for redefining the colloquial usage!

Rather amusing to watch you dig your holes.

 

All nutrients can be had from a purely vegetarian diet. Most Indians are vegetarian. Great men like Mahatma Gandhi, George Bernard Show, Sir Paul McCartney (I can go on on listing them) have been veggies and their health never suffered as a result.

And then what about the humanitarian aspect? Do you justify killing a death-fearing animal and eating its flesh? Do you yourself like to be killed and eaten by another? If you cannot kill your pet dog for flesh, how can you do same to lamb?

 

Like James said, B12 is the only possible problem, but you can get that from Tempeh and Seaweed.

I was vegetarian for eight years and suffered no health problems. I don't eat a lot of meat now, can go days without any.

 

/yawn

From the guy who cites Sir Francis Galton and Adorno and Horkheimer. Welcome to the 21st century, mate! There are, in fact, some more recent texts--and updated and all with actual facts and shit, like--than Laurel's Kitchen and all that 70's hippy shit that went on--with good intentions and all--about "complete proteins" and whatnot.

 

Oh no I am a vegetarian but not a vegan. I eat eggs, though I insist on eating only free range ones.

 

Mediterranean diets are a good idea imo.

 

No, only something like 1/3 of Indians are vegetarian. And it's far from clear what percentage of those choose not to eat meat, rather than simply being unable to afford it.

I know a great many Indians, and almost all of them eat meat (just not beef). Maybe 10% of them are (lacto/ovo)-vegetarian; about the same as any given American college student population. I have never met a vegan Indian.

And, in the first place, India is hardly a good example of nutritional practices. They have one of the worst malnutrition problems in the world.