Myth # 10 Soy products are adequate substitutes for meat and dairy products.

MYTH #10:

Soy products are adequate substitutes for meat and dairy products.

The billion-dollar soy industry has profited immensely from the anti-cholesterol, anti-meat gospel of current nutritional thought. Whereas, not so long ago, soy was an Asian phenomenon, now soy products proliferate in the North American market. While the traditionally fermented soy products of miso, shoyu, tempeh and natto are definitely healthful in measured amounts, the hyper-processed soy “foods” are not.

Non-fermented soybeans are extremely high in phytic acid (54), an anti-nutrient that binds to minerals in the digestive tract and carries them out of the body. Vegetarians are known for their high rates of iron and zinc deficiencies (55).

Soybeans are also rich in trypsin inhibitors, which hinder protein digestion. Textured vegetable protein (TVP), soy “milk” and soy protein powders, and popular vegetarian meat and milk substitutes are entirely fragmented foods made by treating soybeans with high heat and various alkaline washes to extract the beans’ fat content or to neutralise their potent enzyme inhibitors. These practices completely denature the beans’ protein content, rendering it very hard to digest. MSG, a neurotoxin, is routinely added to TVP to make it taste like the various foods it imitates (56).

On a purely nutritional level, soybeans, like all legumes, are deficient in cysteine and methionine, vital sulphur-containing amino acids (56). Soybeans are also lacking in tryptophan, another essential amino acid (56).

Furthermore, soybeans contain no vitamins A or D, required by the body to assimilate and utilise the beans’ proteins (56). It is probably for this reason that Asian cultures that do consume soybeans usually combine them with fish or fish broths, The New Zealand government is considering removing soy formula from the market and making it available only by prescription (58).

Though research is still ongoing, some recent studies have indicated that soy’s phyto-oestrogens could be causative factors in breast cancer and infantile leukaemia (59). Regardless, soy’s phyto-oestrogens, or isoflavones, have been shown to depress thyroid function and cause infertility in some animals (60). As a practitioner, I have seen more than my share of vegetarians with hypothyroidism. They invariably rely on soy foods to get their protein.

Myth #9 Meat and saturated fat consumption have increased in the 20th century, with a corresponding increase in heart disease and cancer.

Meat and saturated fat consumption have increased in the 20th century, with a corresponding increase in heart disease and cancer.

Statistics do not bear out such fancies. Butter consumption has plummeted from 18 lb (8.165 kg) per person a year in 1900, to less than 5 lb (2.27 kg) per person a year today (52). Additionally, Westerners, urged on by government health agencies, have reduced their intake of eggs, cream, lard, beef and pork. Chicken consumption has risen in the past few decades, but chicken is low in saturated fat (chicken skin contains primarily polyunsaturated fat).

Furthermore, a survey of cookbooks published in the last century shows that people of earlier times ate plenty of animal foods and saturated fats. For example, in the Baptist Ladies Cook Book (Monmouth, Illinois, 1895), virtually every recipe calls for butter, cream or lard. Recipes for creamed vegetables are numerous as well. A scan of the Searchlight Recipe Book (Capper Publications, 1931) also has similar recipes: creamed liver, creamed cucumbers, hearts braised in buttermilk, etc. British Jews, as shown by the Jewish Housewives Cookbook (London, 1846), also had diets rich in cream, butter, eggs, and lamb and beef tallows. One recipe for German waffles, for example, calls for an entire pound of butter! A recipe for Oyster Pie from the Baptist cookbook calls for a quart of cream and a dozen eggs, and so forth and so on.

It does not appear, then, that meat or saturated fat consumption has risen in this century. What has gone up, however, is consumption of margarine and other trans-fatty acids, lifeless, packaged “foods,” processed vegetable oils, pasteurised/homogenised milk, commercially raised livestock and plant foods, and refined sugar. These, along with exposure to a growing number of environmental poisons, are our real culprits in the modern epidemics of cancer and coronary heart disease (and other chronic illnesses)

Myth #8 The “cave man” diet was low-fat and/or vegetarian

MYTH #8:

The “cave man” diet was low-fat and/or vegetarian.

Our Neolithic ancestors were hunter-gatherers, and two schools of thought have developed as to what their diet was like. One group argues for a high-fat and animal-based diet supplemented with seasonal fruits, berries, nuts, root vegetables and wild grasses. The other argues that primitive peoples consumed small amounts of lean meats and large amounts of plant foods. Once again, such notions of a “low-fat diet” are hard to reconcile with what we know of modern-day hunter-gatherer societies. Present-day African tribes readily consume the fatty portions of animals, especially organs such as the brain, liver and tongue. The Aborigines, another hunter-gatherer society, also have a diet rich in saturated animal fats (47).

Explorers such as Stefansson reported that the Innuit and North American Indian tribes would worry when their caches of caribou were too lean: they knew sickness would follow if they did not consume enough fat (48).

Canadian Indians would deliberately hunt older male caribou and elk, for these animals carried a 50-pound slab of back fat on them which the Indians would eat with relish. Native Americans would also refrain from hunting bison in the springtime (when the animals’ fat stores were low, due to scarce food supply during the winter), preferring to hunt, kill and consume them in the fall when they were fattened up.

More interesting is the way political prisoners are sometimes tortured in South and Central America: they’re fed a diet of lean meat and they die quickly. Why? Without the fat-soluble vitamins contained in animal lipids, the body is unable to utilise and synthesise the proteins and other nutrients present in the meat (49).

On his journeys, Dr Price never once found a totally vegetarian culture. Anthropological data support this: throughout the globe, all societies show a preference for animal foods and fats and people only turn to vegetarianism when they have to (50). Nutritional anthropologist H. Leon Abrams, Jr, has shown that prehistoric man’s quest for more animal foods spurred his expansion over the Earth, and that he apparently hunted certain species to extinction (50).

Price also found that those peoples who, out of necessity, consumed more grains and legumes, had higher rates of dental decay than those who consumed more animal products (51). Archaeological evidence supports this finding: skulls of prehistoric peoples who were largely vegetarian have teeth containing caries and abscesses and show evidence of tuberculosis (50, 51).

Based on all of this evidence, it is certain that the diets of our ancestors, the progenitors of humanity, ate a very NON-vegetarian diet that was rich in saturated animal fat.

MYTH #7: Vegetarians live longer and have more energy and endurance than meat-eaters.

MYTH #7:

Vegetarians live longer and have more energy and endurance than meat-eaters.

Surprising as it may seem, some prior studies have shown the annual all-causedeath rate of vegetarian men to be slightly more than that of non-vegetarian men (0.93% vs 0.89%). Similarly, the annual all-cause death rate of vegetarian women was shown to be significantly higher than that of non-vegetarian women (0.86% vs 0.54%). (40)

Russell Smith, PhD, referred to in myth # 5, in his authoritative study on heart disease, showed that as animal product consumption increased among some study groups, death rates decreased! Such results were not obtained among vegetarian subjects. For example, in a study published by Burr and Sweetnam in 1982, analysis of mortality data revealed that, although vegetarians had a slightly (.11%) lower rate of heart disease than non-vegetarians, the all-cause death rate was much HIGHER for vegetarians (41).

It is usually claimed that the lives of predominantly meat-eating peoples are short-lived, but the Aborigines of Australia, who traditionally eat a diet rich in animal products, are known for their longevity (at least before colonisation by Europeans). Within Aboriginal society, there is a special caste of the elderly (42). Obviously, if no old people existed, no such group would have existed. In his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Price has numerous photographs of elderly native peoples from around the world (42). Explorers such as Vilhjalmur Stefansson reported great longevity among the Inuit (again, before colonisation). (43)

Similarly, the Russians of the Caucasus mountains live to great ages on a diet of fatty pork and whole milk products. The Hunzas, also known for their robust health and longevity, eat substantial portions of goat’s milk which has a higher saturated fat content than cow’s milk (44). In contrast, the largely vegetarian inhabitants of southern India have the shortest life-spans in the world (45). Dr Weston Price, DDS, travelled around the world in the 1920s and 1930s, investigating native diets. Without exception, he found a strong correlation among diets rich in animal fats, with robust health and athletic ability. Special foods for Swiss athletes, for example, included bowls of fresh, raw cream! In Africa, Dr Price discovered that groups whose diets were rich in fatty fish and organ meats, like liver, consistently carried off the prizes in athletic contests, and that meat-eating tribes always dominated peoples whose diets were largely vegetarian (42).

It is popular in sports nutrition to recommend “carb loading” for athletes, to increase their endurance levels. But recent studies done in New York and South Africa show that the opposite is true: athletes who “carb loaded” had significantly less endurance than those who “fat loaded” before athletic events 

Vegetarians MYTH #5:

Meat-eaters have higher rates of heart and kidney disease, cancer, obesity and osteoporosis than vegetarians.

Such stupendous claims are hard to reconcile with historical and anthropological facts. All of the diseases mentioned are primarily 20th century occurrences, yet people have been eating meat and animal fat for thousands of years. Further, there are several native peoples around the world (the Innu, Masai, Swiss, Greeks, etc.) whose traditional diets are very rich in animal products, but do not suffer from the above-mentioned maladies (18). This shows that other factors besides animal foods are at work in these diseases.

Several studies have supposedly shown that meat consumption is the cause of heart disease, cancer and bone loss, but such studies, honestly evaluated, show no such thing (19). For example, the studies that supposedly proved that meat consumption among the Innuit caused high rates of osteoporosis, failed to note other dietary factors that contributed to bone loss (and to the other chronic diseases listed in myth #5). Things such as refined sugar consumption, alcoholism and a junk food consumption equalled more bone loss were not done with real meat but with fractionated protein powders (20).

Certainly, when protein is consumed in such an unnatural fashion, separated from the fat-soluble nutrients required for its absorption and assimilation, it will lead to problems. Because of this, the current use of fat-free protein powders as “food supplements”, and low-fat or non-fat dairy products should be avoided. Trimming off visible fat from meats and removing duck and chicken skin before eating should also be discouraged.

Despite claims that studies have shown that meat consumption increased the risk for heart disease (21), their authors actually found the opposite. For example, in a 1984 analysis of a 1978 study of Seventh Day Adventists (who are largely vegetarian), H. A. Kahn concluded, “Although our results add some substantial facts to the diet-disease question, we recognize how remote they are from establishing, for example, that men who frequently eat meat or women who rarely eat salad are thereby shortening their lives” (21). A similar conclusion was reached by D.A. Snowden (21). Despite these startling admissions, the studies nevertheless concluded the exact opposite and urged people to reduce animal foods from their diets.

Further, both of these studies threw out certain dietary data that clearly showed no connection between eggs, cheese, whole milk, and fat attached to meat (all high fat and cholesterol foods) and heart disease. Statistician Dr. Russel Smith concluded, “In effect the Kahn [and Snowden] study is yet another example of negative results which are massaged and misinterpreted to support the politically correct assertions that vegetarians live longer lives.” When all of the data are taken into account, the actual differences of heart disease between vegetarians and non-vegetarians in these studies was less than 1%: hardly a significant amount (22).

It should be noted here that Seventh Day Adventists are often studied in population analyses to prove that a vegetarian diet is healthier and is associated with a lower risk for heart disease and cancer (but see the last paragraph in this section). While it is true that most members of this Christian denomination do not eat meat, they also do not smoke, drink alcohol, or drink coffee or tea, all of which may be factors in promoting cancer and heart disease (23).
The Mormons are a religious group often overlooked in vegetarian studies. Although their Church urges moderation, Mormons do not abstain from meat. Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith, declared a diet devoid of animal products as “not of God.” As with the Adventists, Mormons avoid tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine. Despite being meat eaters, a study of Utah Mormons showed they had a 22% lower rate for cancer in general and a 34% lower mortality for colon cancer than the US average (24). A study of Puerto Ricans, who eat large amounts of fatty pork, nevertheless revealed very low rates of colon and breast cancer (25). Similar results can be adduced to demonstrate that meat consumption by itself does not correlate with cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, kidney disease, or obesity (26). Obviously, other factors are at work.

It is usually claimed that vegetarians have lower cancer rates than meat-eaters, but a 1994 study of California Seventh Day Adventists (who are largely vegetarian) showed that, while they did have lower rates of some cancers (e.g., breast), they had significantly higher rates of several others (brain, skin, uterine, cervical and ovarian)!

Vegetarian MYTH #4:

The body’s needs for vitamin A can be entirely obtained from plant foods.

Vitamin A is principally found in animal products. Plants do contain beta-carotene, a substance that the body can convert into vitamin A. The impression given by some vegetarian sources is that beta-carotene is just as good as vitamin A. This is not true.

Firstly, the conversion from carotene to vitamin A can only take place in the presence of bile salts. This means that fat must be eaten with the carotenes to stimulate bile secretion. Additionally, infants and people with hypothyroidism, gall bladder problems or diabetes either cannot make the conversion or do so very poorly. Lastly, the body’s conversion from carotene to vitamin A is not very efficient: it takes 46 units of carotene to make one unit of vitamin A. What this means is that the sweet potato (containing about 25,000 units of beta-carotene) you just ate will only convert into about 4,000 units of vitamin A (assuming you ate it with fat and do not have a thyroid or gall bladder problem) [16].

Relying on plant sources for vitamin A, then, is not a very wise idea. This is why good-old-fashioned butter is a virtual must in any diet. Butter from pasture-fed cows is rich in vitamin A and will provide the intestines with the fatty material needed to convert vegetable carotenes into active vitamin A. Vitamin A is all-important in our diets, for it enables the body to use proteins and minerals 

Vegan Myth #3

The body can convert omega-6 fatty acids into omega-3 fatty acids as it needs.

This falsehood is akin to myth number two. Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids are polyunsaturated fats of which two, linolenic (an omega-3) and linoleic (an omega 6), are essential to human life and must be obtained from food as the body cannot synthesise them. Although very small amounts of omega 3 linolenic acid are found in whole grains and dark green leafy vegetables, it is principally found in animal foods (especially fish and eggs), as well as flax seed oil. Omega 6 linoleic acid is mostly found in vegetables, but small amounts are present in certain animal fats. To assuage vegans who fear they may not get enough omega 3 linolenic acid, some vegetarian sources assert that the body can simply convert excess omega 6 linoleic acid into omega 3 linolenic acid, and other omega 3 fatty acids such as EPA and DHA, two fatty acids intimately involved in the health of the brain and immune system.

Renowned lipid biochemist Dr Mary Enig, of the University of Maryland, and other authorities have shown that the body cannot change the omega number of fatty acids. The body can change the fatty acid’s degree of saturation and also its molecular length, but not its omega number (12). In other words, omega 6 fatty acids can only be converted into other omega 6 fatty acids; omega 3s only into other omega 3s.

Again, I have seen the results of this misinformation in my practice. I’ve had several patients of Northern European descent with severe mental and immune problems caused by a lack of EPA and DHA, two omega-3 fatty acids not found in plant foods (DHA is found in small amounts in some algae). People native to warmer climates in the world can manufacture these fatty acids from other omega-3s, but those of Northern European or Innuit descent cannot. Since their ancestors ate so much EPA- and DHA-rich fish, their bodies eventually lost the ability to manufacture these fatty acids (13). For these people, vegetarianism is impossible; they must consume either eggs or fish in order to survive.

There is also a very real danger from consuming too many omega-6 fatty acids, principally found in vegetables. The body requires both omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. However, when the body’s cells are overloaded with omega-6s, their ability to utilise the omega-3 is inhibited (14). 
Chronically low levels of omega-3 fatty acids are associated with higher cancer rates and immune dysfunction. Excessive levels of omega-6 fatty acids are also strongly correlated with a high incidence of cardiovascular disease (as is excessive consumption of refined sugar and trans-fatty acids)

Vegetarian Myths: MYTH #2:

Vitamin B12 can be obtained from plant sources.

Of all the myths, this is perhaps the most dangerous. Vegans who do not supplement their diet with vitamin B12 will eventually get anaemia (a fatal condition) as well as severe nervous and digestive system damage (6). Claims are made that B12 is present in certain algae, tempeh (a fermented soy product) and brewer’s yeast. All of them are false.

Like the niacin in corn, the B12 analogues present in algae and tempeh are not bioavailable. We know this because studies done on people’s blood levels of B12 remained the same after they ate spirulina and tempeh; there was no change, clearly indicating no absorption by the body (7). Further, the ingestion of too much soy increases the body’s need for B12 (8). Brewer’s yeast does not contain B12 naturally; it is always fortified from an outside source.

Some vegetarian authorities claim that B12 is produced by certain fermenting bacteria in the intestines. This may be true, but it is in a form unusable by the body. B12 requires intrinsic factor from the stomach for proper absorption in the ileum. Since the bacterial product does not have intrinsic factor bound to it, it cannot be absorbed (9).

It is true that vegans living in certain parts of India do not suffer from vitamin B12 deficiency. This has led some to conclude that plant foods do provide this vitamin. This conclusion, however, is erroneous as many small insects, their eggs, larvae and/or residue, are left on the plant foods these people consume, due to non-use of pesticides and inefficient cleaning methods. This is how these people obtain their vitamin B12. This contention is borne out by the fact that when Indian Hindus migrated to England, they came down with pernicious anaemia within a few years. In England, the food supply is cleaner, and insect residues are completely removed from plant foods (10). 
The only reliable and absorbable sources of vitamin B12 are animal products, especially organ meats and eggs (11). Though present in lesser amounts, milk products do contain B12. Vegans, therefore, should consider adding dairy products into their diets. If dairy cannot be tolerated, eggs, preferably from free-run hens, are a virtual necessity.

That vitamin B12 can only be obtained from animal products is one of the strongest arguments against veganism being a “normal” way of human eating. Today, vegans can avoid anaemia by taking supplemental vitamins or fortified foods. If those same people had lived just a few decades ago, when these products were unavailable, they would have died.

In my own practice, I recently saved two vegans from death from anaemia by convincing them to eat generous amounts of dairy products. Both of these sickly gentlemen thought their B12 needs were being met by tempeh and spirulina. They weren’t.