Vegetarian Kids Grow up Slim & Healthy

from personal experience. I tried being a vegetarian , I worked at a health food (Down to Earth on S. king street, Hawaii) store that promoted vegetarian diets. I was not allowed to come near the store with any type of meat product, I worked in the kitchen making and selling food all day, I ate only what I was recommended to eat. I found I was always tired and got sick faster, after I quit working there I went back to my chicken and rice diet and found I had way more energy than when i wasn't eating meat... I also grew up with a kid who's parent thought the whole family should be vegetarians, he was always sickly, it wasn't until he started eating meat he had energy. I know the that most people who have cardio vascular diseases eat a lot of meat, but we are missing other factors, such as how it is cooked, with oils, and other products high in fat. The problem with vegeterrorist, is that they are almost violent in their opinions, yes vegetarians have shown to have lower cardio vascular diseases, I think that comes from being more aware and staying away from the same oils people make meat in. I also noticed there are a quite a bit of fat vegetarians, I guess it doesn't lean you out if you don't control the portions... there is no studies that vegetarians are less autoregressive than meat eaters or even live longer. Remember, Hitler was a vegetarian and didn't smoke or drink either, he has Parkinsons, and was incredibly aggressive. come to think of it, I have met more aggression from vegetarian than I do from meat eaters, they are also very snobby in attitude toward people who do eat meat.
as for weight lost I did try the Atkins diet, for 3 years, I lost 60 lbs and had tons of energy, in fact too much. Inuit traditional diets are 100% meat, fish, seals, whales, caribou etc ( http://www.naturalnews.com/022868.html )... they live a healthy life style and despite modern beliefs have low cholesterol and virtually unknown heart problems. it is the Inuits who live a modern lifestyle who suffer from all these things.
there are alway pros and cons to every diet... vegetarians will argue about weight gain, heart problems. and non vegetarians will argue lack of B12, and low amount of proteins and anemia.
we all have to find the right diet for ourselves, our bodies are all different and function differently. Personally I am tired of vegeterrorist and their militant attitude that everyone should be like them. they really don't care about our health, they just want everyone to agree with their point of view. that is really fascist. if you don't eat meat then just don't, leave everyone else alone. not everyone who eats meat dies from meat related diseases, there are a lot of meat eaters on the planet, the people who die from cardio vascular diseases die from a combination of factors meat may contribute, but so does lack of exercise, cooking in fatty oils, eating lots of sugary foods etc... don't say oh he ate meat and died, that is just ignorant. One of my good friends died a few years ago, she was a vegan, yoga instructor and was studying Asian Medicine. she passed from having tumors in her lungs and brain. she did everything "right" and she still passed. so don't use meat as a scape goat for your own prejudices. This is just one example. There are more...

Would Dr Spock be considered a reliable source? His over thought advice has seemed to have done soo much damage to our culture.

I wonder...if all a person ate was plants and fruit and was not able to take any supplementation of any kind, how long would they really live? There would be no B12 or iron available. Their levels of biotin would be next to nill. My guess - not very long and not very well.

However, on a diet of meat (including the organs), fish, eggs, poultry you could live very well forever. You'd be deficient in nothing - not even vitamin C.

Eating meat does not make one obese. This is absurd. Eating too much food makes you obese and specifically too many carbohydrates like pasta, rice, breads, etc.

As much as vegetarianism helps our health, let's not assume that vegetarianism automatically makes you healthy, or that vegetarianism always keeps you slim. I became a vegetarian on my own (with two meat-eating parents no less!) around 5th grade, and besides one slide from vegetarianism early on, I've stayed that way. And I'm anything but slim and healthy! Am I slim and healthy? Certainly not. I'm a fast and furious eater, and have only just started excercising, and have maintained a chubby body size for years. Had I eaten meat since 5th grade, however, I would almost certainly be obese.

Even just eating less meat helps, when going fully vegetarian just won't happen. Americans eat far more meat than most countries: there's meat in everything, as any vegetarian knows well. It's hard to escape this, and all the extra fat in meat coupled with large portions and an inactive lifestyle common to we Americans makes meat-eating a bad idea, unless you're taking steps to be healthy anyways.