What Do I Have To Eat As A Vegetarian To Give My Body Enough Protein

You might say: What should I eat? I am a Vegetarain! FOR your own sake, I wish you were not a confirmed vegetarian. But you maintain that you are, whatever the reason-religious, humane, hygienic, economical, medical or moral. And so my task now is to make vegetarianism safer for you-that is, unless I can persuade you to abandon this biologically unsound diet. Frankly, I am not an advocate of vegetarianism. However, I realize there exist strong religious convictions which reconcile thousands of persons to a meatless diet. And I have no intention of attempting to convert them to a meat diet (although I shall suggest foods that can increase the amount of high protein in such a diet without materially increasing the bulk).

All too frequently, enthusiastic vegetarians will convert to their way of eating others whose health may actually be endangered by this low-protein diet, and who have no strong religious convictions to prevent their adopting a more youth-protecting diet. It is to these fad vegetarians that any efforts at conversion in this chapter are principally directed. My wife told me not long ago of the couple who unloaded twenty-four packages of macaroni and spaghetti from their basket onto the checker's counter in a large supermarket. "We're vegetarians," the woman said to the checker, evidently by way of explanation for this somewhat eccentric purchase. That's exactly the danger point in most vegetarian diets. High-starch dishes take the place of high-protein foods. And the protein obtained from lentils, legumes, soybeans and nuts is neither a complete protein nor ample enough to counterbalance all the pure starches eaten to satisfy hunger. Actually, many vegetarian diets are nothing more nor less than biologically unsound, high-starch diets. How such regimens can promote health and protect against premature aging no one has ever been able to explain scientifically.

Generally speaking, vegetarians fall into three classes: The first group includes those who live mostly on fruits and nuts, and regard all animal food as physically degenerating and morally debasing. The second group objects to eating animal flesh, either for religious or moral reasons, but includes all vegetable foods, in addition to fruits and nuts. The third group is composed of dieters known as "lacto-vegetarians," that is, they are permitted all vegetable foods plus milk, milk products and eggs, although no animal flesh, either because of sentimental reasons or because of a false notion that a meatless diet makes for better health.

The vegetarian fad got its start about 1847 in England when many different societies were established for the advancement of this method of living. Except for certain religious groups, the fad has gradually declined in recent years. Yet there are still thousands of persons who are vegetarians for no other valid reason than that their families have always "done without meat."

In the first two groups-those eating nothing except fruits and nuts, and those eating these foods together with all vegetables-enormous quantities of plant foods must be consumed to provide even a minimum of the body's daily protein requirements. After a time, the human digestive tract is likely to have trouble taking care of so much bulk. (As a doctor from New Zealand commented to me while I was in Buenos Aires: "Man wasn't created with the digestive tract of a horse, so don't expect him to eat nothing but hay!") For this reason, many vegetarians find themselves suffering from various gastrointestinal ailments that would be relieved i£ they were to adopt a less bulky diet.

The "lacto-vegetarians" are not exclusively vegetarians, since they permit themselves eggs and milk products, both from non-vegetable sources. These vegetarians are merely non-meat eaters. And since they are obtaining a high-grade protein from eggs, cheese and other milk products, theirs is by far the safest vegetarian diet, provided they are careful to supply their bodies with the minerals and vitamins, in concentrated form, which they miss by not eating fish, poultry or red meats.

One prejudice against meat grew up in the old days when a mistaken theory was advanced that "dangerous and toxic effects of putrefying bacteria in the lower intestine" was a result of eating meat and meat products. Nothing, of course, could be farther from the truth. Any putrefaction that takes place in the intestinal tract usually results from half-digested starches in a digestive system that is overloaded with carbohydrates.

However, I still encounter vague allusions to a bodily condition called "intestinal intoxication" which is blamed directly on "eating meat." To those of you who are vegetarians merely to avoid this vague ailment, let me assure you that this condition has been much exaggerated, and has little, if any, scientific basis. So why bring on protein-starvation, with all its accompanying dangers to your health and to your desire to avoid growing old too soon, merely to avoid "intestinal intoxications"-a vague disorder, not scientifically established?

Properly cooked meats (and here I want to emphasize that pork in any form is not fit for human consumption) do not implant germs in the body, nor do they produce toxic conditions in the intestines. The hydrochloric acid in your stomach juices is so powerful a germ killer that by the time the digestive acids finish their job on the meat you eat, it is wholly bacteria-free. (This does not apply to the dangerous trichinae found in pork, because these are tiny parasites, actually worms and not bacteria.)

Meat is the most easily digested protein food and is highly nourishing. To shun it for any reason whatsoever is to deprive the taste buds of unmatched pleasures, as well as to cheat the body of a high-grade protein that carries with it valuable supplies of minerals and vitamins.

As the doctor from New Zealand so graphically expressed it, the human intestinal system is not adapted to a purely vegetarian diet. Man is an omnivorous animal, that is, he is geared to digest both plant and animal foods, with the greater emphasis on animal foods. To deviate from his natural set-up is to place a severe strain, not only on his digestive tract but on his general health as well. An interesting study was conducted some years ago by the Medical Research Council of Great Britain to determine the effects of flesh foods on the health and physique of two neighboring African tribes living in Kenya. One of the men conducting the investigation was Sir John Boyd Orr who later became director of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

One tribe, called the Masai, lives exclusively on milk, meat and blood-a protein-and-fat diet. The other tribe, known as the Akikuyu, lives entirely on cereals and vegetables. It was discovered that the protein-eating Masai tribesmen, when full-grown, averaged five inches taller and twenty-three pounds heavier, and had 50 per cent greater muscular strength than his vegetarian neighbor, the Akikuyu. The women of the two tribes evidenced similar differences. As for general health, the vegetarian Akikuyu was found to be suffering from defects, as well as anemia, lung troubles, tropical ulcers and other debilitating diseases, all of which were at a minimum in the meat-eating Masai tribe. Since the two tribes shared the same environment and heredity, the marked difference in their physique and general health can only be explained by the difference in their diets.

Dr. Logan Clendening, prominent author-physician, declared: "Warnings against the eating of meat are not only absurd, but positively harmful." All informed nutrition authorities agree with his statement. It is next to impossible for an all-vegetable diet to provide your body with an abundance of the essential nutrients so vitally needed if you are to enjoy a long life, and a youthful one. While it's true that soybeans, nuts, peas and beans do contain protein, their protein content is high only in comparison with other vegetable foods-and very low and incomplete when compared with meat, eggs, milk products and seed cereals. The three outstanding exceptions are millet, sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds-each of them highly digestible vegetable proteins. Moreover, millet and sunflower seeds contain all the essential amino acids equivalent to animal protein.

The nuts, lentils and legumes upon which many vegetarians depend for their protein have a high starch content. This further complicates the question of vegetarianism, since the problem in human nutrition is not of obtaining enough carbohydrates, but rather how to decrease the consumption of too much high-starch food! Time and again I have had the late George Bernard Shaw and Mahatma Gandhi pointed out to me as good examples of "vegetarians" who have lived long and vigorously. Yet here's the flaw in this argument: Neither one of these two famous characters were vegetarians in the strictest sense of the word-they simply did not eat meat. Both of them ate liberally of eggs, milk and cheese, thereby fortifying their bodies with high-grade protein.

The main point I want to leave with all vegetarians (those, at least, whom I can't persuade to adopt a more balanced diet) is this: While it is possible for you to do without flesh foods, you most certainly cannot live long and youthfully on a diet that does not provide you with the complete proteins, minerals and vitamins which comprise the chief nutritional values of animal foods. If you do not touch flesh foods (the most concentrated source of high-grade protein), then by all means you should include ample quantities of eggs, cheese, skim milk powder, buttermilk or other sour milk products, and seed cereals in your daily meals.

By the way, using skim milk powder liberally in cooked and uncooked foods is a splendid way of fortifying a diet with extra protein. And when buying cheese, make sure it is marked "natural cheese," because certain so-called cheeses marked "process cheese" find their way into the kitchen under false pretenses. Read your labels when buying cheese and other packaged foods. It takes some real detective work these days to penetrate beneath the disguises assumed by the numerous synthetic and devitalized items which masquerade under names commonly associated in our minds with natural foods. For your health's sake, be label-conscious. If you are a vegetarian, and have passed your fortieth birthday, you would do well to consider this important physiological fact that has a direct bearing on your ability to live long and healthily: One advantage of a high-protein diet is that you can eat less in bulk, yet be well nourished, whereas the average high-starch diet overloads the stomach, placing a severe strain on a no-longer-quite-so-young heart.

However, if you're still determined to follow a meatless diet, then at least let me urge you to adopt the protein-fortified recipes for meat substitutes that I've prepared in Part II. These will give you extra amounts of protein, without adding harmful amounts of bulk to a diet which I suspect is already overloading your stomach with starches and bulk. I hope you'll weigh the evidence, pro and con, which I have attempted to present in this chapter, and then ponder long and seriously over the irrefutable facts about the disadvantages of a strictly vegetarian diet. I realize that most of what I have said may be entirely at variance with what you've been conditioned to believe about nutrition. Yet be fair to yourself. Take time to mull over and digest these facts before going on to the next chapter.

This entire program of Eat-and-Grow-Younger demands an open mind, an earnest desire to learn the simple truths about correct nutrition, and a willingness to work faithfully toward the goal of looking and feeling far younger than your calendar years.

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