Meat: It's What SHOULD Be For Dinner
...leting themselves of some of the essential nutrients needed for a healthy body. There are many vitamins which cannot be fully obtained from the foods that vegetarians often restrict themselves to. One of those vitamins being vitamin B12. It is very important in the maturation of red blood cells as well as the synthesis of the myelin sheath of nerve tissue, which may result in Multiple Sclerosis (Mercola). A deficiency can also lead to anemia and/or birth defects. “The breast-fed infant of a vitamin B 12-deficient mother is at risk for severe developmental abnormalities, growth failure, and anemia” (Mercola). Besides vitamin B12, a vegetarian diet also lacks in vitamin D. Vitamin D, in its full-complex form, is only found in animal fats. Vegetarians try to fulfill their vitamin D requirement by eating foods that contain vitamin D3 such as avocados, sunflower seeds, and alfalfa (Byrnes). However, some clinical studies have shown that it may not have the same effect of vitamin D in it’s full form (Byrnes). Therefore, it is not healthy to follow a vegetarian diet that wipes out much needed vitamins. Vegetarian propaganda claims that animal products are the cause of some life threatening diseases and conditions such as heart disease, cancer, and obesity. “Most heart disease is diet-related—caused by animal products”(GoVeg.com), is a claim that was featured on the PETA website. However, that claim has no scientific foundation. For example, countries such as Greece and France that have very high meat consumption also have very low rates of heart disease. Therefore showing that meat is not in direct correlation with heart disease. Many advocates of vegetarianism say that people who avoid meat have lower risks of cancer than those who do not avoid it. This is another claim which was posted on PETA’s website, “...with every bite of meat, we increase our risk of cancer” (GoVeg.com). However, these types of claims are usually supported by poorly done studies. For example, a study done by Dr. Ernest Wydner claimed that there was a close relationship between animal fats and colon cancer (Byrnes). Yet further research found out that the concluded data was really based on vegetable fats, not animal fats (Byrnes). Another factor which led to falsity of the study was that the meats used were processed meats (Byrnes). Therefore it was the cooking methods and the chemicals that were added which contribute to the risk of cancer, not the meat by itself. Many of the studies that blame animal products for different forms of cancer are not well conducted because they do not include other variables which could have had an effect. Keep in mind that studies conducted on meat-eating canonic groups of people show that they have a very low risk of cancer. As the number of vegetarians is increasing throughout the world, so is the demand for chemically processed soy products. These products are made primarily from soy and are chemically flavored to imitate the taste of a certain meat products such as: hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken nuggets, etc. Some recent studies have shown that soy may enhance a widely found kind of estrogen-feeding breast cancer(The Other Side of Soy). This should be a major concern to all vegetarian women or women who are considering a vegetarian lifestyle. Especially because the current odds of being diagnosed with breast cancer for women is 1:4. Many of the concerns around soy lie within the chemical in it that imitates estrogen, “...two glasses of soy milk a day, over the course of a month, contains enough to the chemical to change the timing of a womans menstrual cycle” (The Other Side of Soy). Anything that could change the timing of my menstrual cycle in just a month doesn’t sound very healthy to me. Besides the negative effects of soy on women, studies have also shown that soy, when eaten as tofu, may accelerate the aging of the brain, “Dr. Lon White of NIH says that he found greater brain aging and shrinkage among elderly men...who had eaten tofu at least twice a week during middle age” (The Other Side of ...