Given all the vital functions we know that animal products play in our bodies, how do vegetarians survive for any appreciable length of time? Bioiavailable forms of vit. A, and K2 (MK4 form), and iron are found only in animal products. The complete package of gelatin, chondroitin sulfate, and glucosamine — all essential parts of joints and connective tissues is available only from animals. Myristic, and stearic acids regulate hormonal activity and are found exclusively in animals. The body requires fats to transport the fat-soluble minerals, and vegetarian diets are, by definition, low-fat. The plant form of omega-3 fatty acids are poorly converted by humans tot the long-chain form, DHA, that we use. Plant fats are high in pro-inflammatory omega-6 fats.

And yet, I know many seemingly healthy, vital, and long-lived vegetarians.

How is this possible?

We can get stearic acid from cocoa fat. It's trendy to say the more correct "cacao" these days, but that makes me feel like a bird.

I guess there's variation in an individual's ability to produce vitamin a from beta-carotene. Or in their (or their gut bacteria's) ability to produce K2 from K1. Or in the case of b12, the ability to cycle b12, preserve it in the system, rather than become more quickly depleted.

Me, too. Even a few vegans. In one family of vegetarians, they are all extremely healthy except for one son. He could really use some meat. But he's been vegetarian since birth (aside from mother's milk) and is an adult, so I say nothing. He can read & make up his own mind.

Bonnie — but how is it possible that he's healthy? The keystone of low-carb and paleo eating is the thesis that a human's diet should be at least 50% fat (mostly from animals) to align with our evolution and meet our nutritional needs. If that's not true, then the entire paleo paradigm as a broad-based recommendation for health falls apart.

Who can eat enough cocoa/cacao powder to meet their daily requirements? Where are the research studies showing the individual variation you're speculating about? And in the case of B12, *every* vegetarian/vegan I know supplements with cobalamin; even they know their foods are deficient in that.

Yes, they know about the b12. But there is some variation, when people don't supplement, in how long it takes for a frank deficiency to develop.

I don't think I'm speculating about individual variation there. Variation is a given. People vary, there will be variation in how quickly a person develops a particular deficiency if they are deprived of a nutrient. It would be kind of weird if this wasn't true.

On the cocoa--stearic acid thing, just how high do you think the daily requirement for dietary stearic acid is, anyways? I didn't even think there was one. It's not considered an essential fatty acid, that I know of. Not that I don't think eating it's a good idea, but on what basis is it essential?

Well first of all it takes a really long time to get deathly ill from low-level starvation.

But I wonder if the successful vegetarians are like gorillas. They eat tons of vegetable matter, but their calories are 59% fat. Because the soluble fiber is metabolized as free fatty acids, just like we get free fatty acids from animal food.

Found on Carb Wars -



What Does a 400 Pound Gorilla Eat

He isn't. The family eats plenty of dairy - lots of good fats there - but somehow this one young man doesn't thrive on the diet the way the rest of the family does. He's always cold, too, and we have long winters up here. I feel sorry for him. But maybe he's in a warmer climate now - they moved a few years ago & I've lost touch with them.

I can't figure out how the vegan family I used to know stayed healthy. No animal products at all & lots of soy-based fake meats.

I was a vegetarian for 5 years (in my teens and 20s) and I got plenty of fat from nuts and seeds, eggs, full fat yogurt, cheese, peanuts, butter, vegetable oils. Granted veganism is more difficult, but nuts and seeds and peanut butter would go a long way towards satisfying fat requirements.

I find it difficult to accept that it takes 40+ years to show signs of nutrient deprivation. I know one lifelong vegan whose only sign of deficiency at age 63 is a "middle-aged" spread.



On the basis that it's one of the preferred foods of the heart. I'll have to dig up my reference for that.

Sound like a lot of omega-6 fats (nuts and seeds, peanuts, vegetable oils) and lectins (peanuts). How is it that people stay healthy over the long term eating that way?

True. I think we are a relatively resiliant species and that it takes a while for the damage to show up. I probably have an edge over younger people in that only 2-3 generations of my family had followed 20th century eating recommendations. And my mom was a bit of a rebel. As a child, I ate more animal fats, fewer vegetable fats (we never never never had margarine, always butter). I may not have had optimum health but i was reasonably healthy. It wasn't till I was 50 that i began to show signs of metabolic syndrome.

Does that include olive oil? I eat a ton of olive oil.

On the first point... okay, you hadn't specified 40 years. My varying times for nutrient deficiency to show up is based on various accounts by ex-vegans that I've read over the years. 40 years does seem like a stretch. But other than b12, human beings do have the ability to get or synthesize pretty much all of the essential nutrients from various plant sources. It might not be ideal, it might not be optimal, not everybody might thrive on it. There are populations that live almost exclusively off of sweet potatoes, cassava and other starchy tubers. It's not optimal, you'll find studies on kwashkiokr etc. done on the children in these places.

Maybe your vegan friend is eating bacon when nobody's looking? Or just supplementing b12.




This is why I don't ascribe to Paleo as a "broad-based recommendation for health." I don't mean that as a dig at Paleo. I think what we know is the Inuit were free of Western disease. And the !Kung and the Kitivans, etc. We could hope that looking at what these groups have in common--real food, little in the way of refined foods--is enough to make the difference, and go eat at a Kitivan/!Kung/Inuit buffet. But would we be right? Weston Price wrote about various groups with slightly different strategies to achieve the same nutritional ends.

Oatmeal has been shown in some studies to be capable of causing a mineral deficiency and increase in cavities, Stephan Guyunet posted on this years ago, I think it was the Mellanby's doing the experiments. Vitamin D was capable of fixing this. Or replacing grains with potato, then the phytic acid wasn't there to chelate the minerals. One group Price wrote about was the Gaels, they ate primarily oats as their carbohydrate source--but their diet was rich in both minerals and fat-soluble vitamins from a high intake of seafood. Who knows? A diet of oatmeal and seafood might be safe, a diet of primarily beef (being close to groups we know of that ate mostly buffalo or elk, in nutrition) might be safe--but take the beef from one safe diet, and the oatmeal from the other safe diet--and the idea that "what out ancestors ate" was safe might not be safe in this new combination. The beef could have just barely enough mineral content, and the phytic acid from the oatmeal tip a person into a deficiency. (I'm not saying this would happen, just pretending it does to make a long, belaboured point). Paleo people didn't live on "paleo principles," they had long-developed food cultures. A people that didn't wouldn't thrive, long term.

And the !Kung--most of the fat in their diet comes from the mongongo nut, that's an especially rich source of omega-6. I don't think it's at all clear that a high omega 6 diet, in and of itself, leads to inflammation and Western disease. It's not hard to find an association of these. Or reasonable studies that show a plausible mechanism. Personally I avoid plant oils not because of the omega 6 in them--I don't worry about the omega 6 in nuts or even peanuts--but because most of these refined oils taste like crap to me.